Hi. Welcome to On Politics, your guide to the day in national politics. I’m Lisa Lerer, your host. |
 | | Doug Mills/The New York Times |
|
The campaign rallies have been replaced with rambling, disjointed Rose Garden news conferences. Constructing a “garden” of statues is the new “big, beautiful wall.” It’s Joe Biden, now, who lacks the “stamina” and “strength” to be president. |
In 2020, the Trump show is in reruns. |
Rather than adopt a new political strategy for a campaign in crisis, President Trump is sticking with the tactics that first propelled him into office. He may be stuck in a pre-coronavirus, pre-recession, pre-unrest era, but the country most certainly is not. |
In 2016, Mr. Trump could run as an outsider, promising to “drain the swamp” in Washington. Now, he’s president of that swamp. And polls show that most Americans believe the country is sinking, fast. |
An ad released by Mr. Trump’s campaign on Wednesday is the latest example of how incumbency doesn’t suit his strategy. It features a ringing phone and a series of turbulent images from recent news stories — protests, flashing police lights and burning buildings — as a narrator warns that Mr. Biden will worsen the unrest and falsely accuses him of seeking to defund the police. |
“Who will be there to answer the call when your children aren’t safe?” the narrator asks. |
The problem is that the images and news stories capture events that happened during the Trump administration, raising the question of whether the president, himself, has answered that call. |
(Sidebar: Can we please retire the ringing phone motif in presidential campaign ads? Or at the very least update it to a text message? K, thx.) |
At the same time, Mr. Trump has all but ignored the most powerful tool in his arsenal: control of the federal government. Incumbent presidents are notoriously difficult to unseat because they transform into leaders able to marshal the power of the White House behind their re-election bids. |
And yet, when it comes to the virus, Mr. Trump has focused his response on the kind of salesmanship that was a hallmark of his last campaign. |
As cases soar, there is no clear national strategy for combating the virus, beyond vague promises of a vaccine. No federal plan for reopening, testing or contact tracing, apart from scattershot public health recommendations. |
Even the public pageantry that presidents, particularly those up for re-election, perform to look like they are governing remains conspicuously absent. The president doesn’t hold televised round tables with top public health experts, and he hasn’t delivered an Oval Office address since March. He spent much of his time in the Rose Garden on Tuesday attacking Mr. Biden, breaking with a tradition that incumbents not overtly campaign from the White House. |
Instead, he has tried to out-market the virus. In the early weeks, he took the White House podium for daily news briefings to talk about the “great” job his administration was doing to tackle the disease. He shifted responsibility for containing the spread of the virus to governors, while calling to “LIBERATE” states that didn’t reopen fast enough. And he attacked testing as “overrated,” saying it made his administration “look bad.” |
As the death toll grows, state and local leaders across the country — including within Mr. Trump’s own party — have simply begun ignoring his directives. |
Prominent Republicans say they won’t attend the party convention in Florida, which Mr. Trump moved from North Carolina to avoid social distancing restrictions. Senate Republicans appear unlikely to include a proposal for a payroll tax cut pushed by the administration in the stimulus bill expected next week. |
Even at a time when trust in government nears historic lows, supporters of Mr. Biden see the lagging federal response to the virus as a political asset. No one is excited to take penicillin, one Democrat told me this week, but you’re sure happy to have that prescription when you need it. |
Mr. Biden released an ad in Texas on Wednesday, urging Americans to wear masks, wash their hands and socially distance. It features images of families and emergency medical workers, and makes no mention of Mr. Trump. |
“I will not abandon you,” Mr. Biden says in the ad. “We’re all in this together. We’ll fight this together, and together we’ll emerge from this stronger than we were before we began.” |
In 2016, Mr. Trump was able to drive programming during the campaign, steering the news cycle into covering the twists and turns of his extraordinary run. |
Now, the pandemic is the top story. And Mr. Trump can’t change the channel. |
We want to hear from our readers. Have a question? We’ll try to answer it. Have a comment? We’re all ears. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. |
Join us to discuss this very unconventional convention season |
The NYT Politics live events are going digital. I’m helping to kick off the first of a four-part series on Thursday, with my fabulous colleagues Katie Glueck, Jennifer Medina, Annie Karni and Rachel Dry. We’ll be talking about political conventions — how they’re changing, why they matter and what it’s like to give a speech that can make or break your political career. |
The margin in a Texas runoff: Seven. Votes. |
Across sparsely populated Southwest Texas, the hunt is on for uncounted votes. At least seven. That’s the vote difference in Texas’ sprawling 23rd Congressional District between Tony Gonzales and Raul Reyes, both running for the Republican nomination. |
“This isn’t over folks,” Mr. Reyes told his followers on Facebook after coming up short by seven votes. “We owe it to you to fight to the end.” |
He received 12,339 votes compared to 12,346 for Mr. Gonzales in Tuesday’s runoff election. Some absentee, provisional and overseas ballots remain to be counted, and the campaigns were contacting all 29 counties to determine how many. |
Mr. Gonzales, at the same time, declared victory on Facebook, and his campaign announced the hiring of two lawyers with expertise in elections to head up a “ballot integrity” legal team. |
Speaking to reporters Wednesday, President Trump seemed inclined to hedge his bet — he endorsed Mr. Gonzales — saying that the race was “still a little bit going on,” then adding that “Reyes is a great candidate but so is Gonzales.” Mr. Reyes was endorsed by Senator Ted Cruz. |
Any delay in declaring a Republican winner is not likely to be helpful in the party’s chances to retain a seat being vacated by Representative Will Hurd of Texas, who did not seek re-election to a fourth term. |
Democrats have viewed the 23rd District, which covers all or parts of 29 counties between San Antonio and El Paso, as one of their best opportunities to win a Republican-held seat. Their candidate, Gina Ortiz Jones, who lost to Mr. Hurd by 926 votes in 2018, is running again. |
Elsewhere in Texas, Democrats chose candidates in two districts long held by Republicans that party officials believe will be competitive this year. |
In the 31st District, which covers suburbs north of Austin, Donna Imam, a tech engineer, defeated Christine Eady Mann, a physician, for the Democratic nomination to face Representative John Carter, a nine-term Republican. No Democrat had come within 20 percentage points of Mr. Carter until 2018, when he defeated M. J. Hegar, now a Senate nominee, by less than three points. |
And in the 24th District, in the suburbs between Dallas and Fort Worth, Democrats nominated Candace Valenzuela, who would be the first Afro-Latina in Congress. A win from her would replace Representative Kenny Marchant, a Republican who had won each of his elections by at least 15 points until 2018, when he won by just 3 points against a Democrat who spent less than $100,000 on her campaign. |
| Reid J. Epstein, Thomas Kaplan and Stephanie Saul contributed reporting. |
This morning’s On Politics newsletter misstated the university in Alabama where Tommy Tuberville was football coach. It was Auburn University, not the University of Alabama. |
Were you forwarded this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox. |
Thanks for reading. On Politics is your guide to the political news cycle, delivering clarity from the chaos. |
Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. |
|
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home