THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONALSUNDAY, JULY 26, 2020 N 21Election
For months, President Trump
belittled Joseph R. Biden Jr. as
an opponent cowering in the
basement in a mask as he sought
to dismiss the seriousness of a
pandemic threatening the na-
tion’s health — and his re-elec-
tion prospects.
But with his sudden embrace
of masks and the canceling of the
Republican National Convention
in Jacksonville, Fla., on Thurs-
day, Mr. Trump has reluctantly
conceded to the reality of a politi-
cal landscape that has been
transformed by disease and fear.
A pandemic that once struck
Democratic states like New York
and California has moved with
alarming force into red America
and helped to recast his contest
with Mr. Biden, his presumptive
Democratic opponent.
Mr. Trump’s attempt to down-
play the coronavirus, or deride it
as a threat exaggerated by his
Democratic opponents and the
media, has met the reality of
rising caseloads, death counts
and overwhelmed intensive care
units in places like Texas, Ari-
zona, Georgia and Florida, all
states that he won in 2016 and
that the Biden campaign had
until now viewed as long shots.
The president’s handling of the
virus is shaping up as not only a
policy failure, but also a political
one. Rather than strengthening
his position against Mr. Biden,
Mr. Trump’s response to the
virus appears to have created a
backlash among voters — one
that has only elevated his oppo-
nent.
“The movement of Covid into
the South and West has finally
caught up with Trump,” said
Linda L. Fowler, a professor of
government at Dartmouth Col-
lege. “While the disease was
decimating blue states, he was
able to pretend it wasn’t happen-
ing. But now the context has
changed considerably and his
people are hurting, underscored
by the sinking poll numbers, the
problems for G.O.P. congres-
sional candidates, and the fact
that the party faithful was reluc-
tant to attend the convention.”
The political perils of Mr.
Trump’s course were driven
home a few hours before he
announced he was scrapping the
Florida convention. A Quinnipiac
poll found that Mr. Biden was
now leading Mr. Trump in Flor-
ida by 13 percentage points, a
stunning margin in a state that
has become — since the recount
in the 2000 presidential election
between Al Gore and George W.
Bush — Exhibit A of a nation
where elections are decided by
decimal points.
National and battleground
state polls over the past two
weeks suggest how much Mr.
Trump is out of step with the
nation on the pandemic, in con-
trast with Mr. Biden. Most Amer-
icans support the use of masks
and are apprehensive about
students returning to school or
the reopening of cities. And they
have lost confidence in the presi-
dent’s ability — or willingness —
to steer the country out of a
crisis, to the decided advantage
of Mr. Biden.
A Washington Post-ABC News
poll this past week found that
Americans trusted Mr. Biden
over Mr. Trump to handle the
Covid-19 crisis by a double-digit
margin, 54 percent to 34 percent.
With the election less than four
months away, and with no evi-
dence that Mr. Biden was being
hurt by campaigning in a mask
and supporting tough measures
to contain the virus, Mr. Trump
had little choice but to at least
try to change course.
“He’s wearing a mask and
canceling the convention,” said
Mark McKinnon, who was in
charge of advertising for Presi-
dent George W. Bush’s re-elec-
tion campaign in 2004. “That’s a
head-snapping reversal for a guy
who hates to be wrong, hates to
back down and, worst of all,
hates to be perceived as weak.”
The canceling of the Florida
convention would appear, for
now, to also play to the Demo-
crats’ advantage. Mr. Biden and
his aides no longer have to worry
that his scaled-down virtual
acceptance speech would look
small and silly next to a full-
blown speech by Mr. Trump, as
Republicans had once hoped.
And the Democrats cut back
their convention methodically
and with no drama and little
notice, calibrating to the wors-
ening pandemic and to the cau-
tions of medical professionals
against large gatherings. By
contrast, Mr. Trump and his
party stumbled into this decision,a long and messy process that
included a last-minute switch of
the convention to Florida from
North Carolina.
The chaos surrounding the
convention planning mirrored
the chaos that surrounded deci-
sion-making on many issues in
the White House, including
Covid-19. Mr. Trump announced
the cancellation at the start of his
Thursday coronavirus briefing,
with no real plan about what, if
anything, the Republicans would
do in its stead.
“The Republicans now have a
month to put together a remote
convention and the Democrats
had a three-month head start,”
Ms. Fowler said. ”And they have
wasted a lot of money. It sort of
reinforces the competence prob-
lems that this administration has
been dealing with.”
Mr. Trump, who has long been
a master of imagery, had been
hoping to draw a contrast with
Mr. Biden, downplaying the
seriousness of the virus as he
pushed to open cities, hold big
rallies and gather for conven-
tions like the one he wanted inJacksonville. His stance recalled
the long history of Republicans
portraying themselves as un-
bending, resilient and self-suffi-
cient — the purported party of
strength. (It also recalled the
swagger with which Mr. Trump
approached his real estate deal-
ings when he was a developer in
New York.)
“The Trump strategy was to
campaign as the strong man,”
Mr. McKinnon said. While Mr.
Biden was hidden “in a mask in a
basement he would be stepping
maskless into adoring crowds at
a packed convention.”
But over the past two weeks,
mask requirements have been
imposed at Walmart, Target, CVS
and McDonald’s. Mitch McCon-
nell, the Republican leader of the
Senate, started showing up in the
Capitol wearing a mask. These
days, it is a maskless Mr. Trump
who looks the outlier — not Mr.
Biden showing up at a campaign
event with black cloth over his
mouth
The end of the conventions this
year is the latest evidence of how
much Covid-19 has thoroughlyupended the 2020 race. But Mr.
Trump’s decision to bow to pres-
sure and pull out of Florida
showed the crosscurrents he is
managing as he tries to win
re-election in the midst of a pan-
demic.
Covid-19 is exploding there.
And Florida — under the leader-
ship of Gov. Ron DeSantis, a
Republican and close ally of Mr.
Trump — has become for many
in the medical community a case
study in how not to deal with the
virus. That no doubt would have
been a dominant theme of the
coverage of the event should it
have been held there. Mr. DeSan-
tis, like Mr. Trump, opposed
mask requirements and stay-at-
home orders.
The Democrats had already
decided the risk of a crowded
convention outweighed whatever
benefits came from packing
thousands of people into a sta-
dium for a four-day celebration.
The upsurge of Covid-19 cases in
Tulsa, Okla., after Mr. Trump’s
insistence on a crowded rally
there served as a warning of
what could have been a political-
ly damaging aftermath for aconvention in Jacksonville.
Republicans who had de-
spaired at Mr. Trump’s campaign
found solace in how he has
changed this past week: holding
White House briefings, wearing a
mask, abandoning the conven-
tion, listening to science. They
attributed it to the shake-up at
his campaign, when he appointed
Bill Stepien as his campaign
manager, ousting Brad Parscale.
“This presidential race is going
to tighten,” said Scott Reed, who
was the campaign manager for
Bob Dole, the Republican senator
who ran for president in 1996.
“Stepien has brought a much-
needed dose of discipline to the
campaign and the results are
clear — sharper press confer-
ences, masks and booting the
Florida national convention. The
economy is maintaining
strength, and now all that is
needed is a vaccine to give the
country hope and optimism
about the future.”
But Mr. Trump has already lost
a lot of ground on the issue that
seems likely to define the out-
come of the race with Mr. Biden.
The idea that Mr. Trump at this
late date will change course —
that he will consistently promote
the use of masks or listen to Dr.
Anthony Fauci, the government’s
top infectious disease expert —
assumes that Mr. Trump will
suddenly find the campaign
discipline that has mostly eluded
him over the years.NEWS ANALYSISAfter Mocking Biden’s Caution, Trump Is Following His Lead
The rise in Covid-19 cases in
Florida prompted President
Trump to scrap the G.O.P.
convention there, and he has
started donning a mask. The
Democratic convention was
canceled months ago, and
Joseph R. Biden Jr. has been
wearing a mask all along.SAUL MARTINEZ FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESBy ADAM NAGOURNEYHANNAH YOON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMESARTS & LEISURE
An article this weekend on Page 5
about the director Krzysztof
Warlikowski, who is staging
“Elektra” at the Salzburg Festival,
misspells the surname of a Polish
actor. He is Jacek Poniedzialek,
not Pondiezialek.
Corrections
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