26 United States The EconomistSeptember 5th 2020
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hortly afterGeorge Floyd was killed by a Minnesotan police-
man last May, Joe Biden condemned the riots that his killing
had sparked. “Protesting such brutality is right and necessary,” he
said. “Burning down communities and needless destruction is
not. Violence that endangers lives is not.” He repeated his denun-
ciation several times over the next few days. President Donald
Trump meanwhile accused him of ignoring the issue.
So it has continued. Though Mr Biden has more often expressed
support for the ongoing racial-justice protests against police bru-
tality, he has not failed to condemn the violent fringe that, in Ore-
gon, Illinois and now Wisconsin, continues to haunt them. “There
is no justification whatsoever for violence, looting,” he said last
week, after the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha sparked yet
more rioting. The following day—at the Republican conven-
tion—Mr Trump for the umpteenth time accused him of failing to
condemn what Mr Biden had just condemned.
The hammering the former vice-president has taken on this is-
sue—every evening on Fox News as well as from Mr Trump—has
unnerved some of his supporters. Some suggest a 1968-style silent
majority, sickened by the violence, is building against the Demo-
crats. It sounds plausible. But there is no strong evidence for it yet.
That means the Democrats anxiously demanding that Mr Biden is-
sue ever more and louder denunciations of the street violence are
essentially taking their cues from Mr Trump and Tucker Carlson,
who do not have their interests at heart.
The evidence of the past three months is that Republicans do
not want to set Mr Biden straight on law-and-order. They want to
see him hopelessly entangled in the issue—bullied into express-
ing ever more forceful denunciations of the riots (as he did again
this week, in a speech in Pittsburgh), which they will duly dismiss
as “too little too late”. A better course for Mr Biden’s advisers would
be to consider what the canny Mr Trump does not want his Demo-
cratic opponent to talk about. Could it be a public-health catastro-
phe, for which a majority of voters blame the president, which is
predicted to take a quarter of a million lives by election-day? That
is a likelier conjecture.
Especially when you consider the promise of Mr Biden’s recent
efforts to recast the politics of the coronavirus catastrophe: bytreatingit asnotmerelya public-health crisis, but also an inextri-
cably connected economic one. “We will never get our economy
back on track...until we deal with this virus,” the former vice-presi-
dent told the Democratic convention last month.
That was shrewd on two counts. First, because it linked the two
issues that voters care about most—notwithstanding Mr Trump’s
fiery rhetoric, even Republicans are more worried about the pan-
demic and the economy than they are about violent crime. Second,
because Mr Biden is in effect trying to use Mr Trump’s biggest
weakness, his acknowledged failures on the coronavirus, to un-
dercut his biggest remaining strength: a diminished, but some-
how enduring, reputation for effective economic management.
The economy is the only issue on which Mr Trump outpolls Mr
Biden. For that matter, it is the only issue on which he has consis-
tently out-performed his low approval ratings ever since his in-
auguration. Founded upon his years as a tvboardroom titan, as
well as his more recent success in spinning the strong economy he
inherited as his creation, Mr Trump’s reputation for economic
wizardry was the single main reason he had looked highly compet-
itive before the coronavirus struck, despite his unpopularity.
With the unemployment rate now at 10%, the gap between how
Americans rate the president on the economy and overall has
shrunk significantly. According to Gallup, 48% of Americans ap-
prove of him on the economy, while 42% approve of him overall.
That is the main reason he now looks much less competitive. Yet in
a closer election than the polls currently predict, this residual
strength could still save him. At the least, it appears to be Mr
Trump’s best hope.
A survey of suburban voters in the swing states of Arizona,
Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—pub-
lished last month by Third Way, a think-tank—underlines that.
Though only 39% approved of Mr Trump, 48% said he was still
making a decent fist of the economy. That might look like a losing
hand. But the survey suggested that even a fairly modest uptick in
the economy could move opinion in Mr Trump’s favour pretty dra-
matically. The respondents chose Mr Biden over Mr Trump by a
nine-point margin. But asked how they would feel if the unem-
ployment rate were to drop to 8%, they split their vote between the
two candidates. Given how likely that order of economic improve-
ment is over the next two months, this should worry Biden strat-
egists rather more than the spectre of a 1968-re-run.From boardroom to bust
At the same time, the survey suggests Mr Biden’s effort to blunt Mr
Trump’s economic edge—by offering a more expansive definition
of the coronavirus crisis—could succeed. A small majority of Third
Way’s suburbanite voters already attributed the economic crisis in
part to Mr Trump’s poor management of the epidemic. A much
larger majority said the economy could not be fixed until the virus
had been brought under control. Both views are anathema to Mr
Trump, who has shirked responsibility for the health crisis, even
as he claims to have a recovery from the economic crisis in hand.
They appear to represent a clear opening for Mr Biden’s claim that
the president is not only culpable for the crisis but incapable of
leading America out of it.
It is his strongest attack-line and, though it is never wrong to
denounce violence, he should not be swayed from it. With apolo-
gies to James Carville, this election is about the covid-economy,
stupid. (Albeit that, with additional apologies to Bill Clinton’s oft-
quoted strategist, Mr Biden must not forget law-and-order.) 7Lexington It’s the covid-economy, stupid
Contrary to what some fearful Democrats believe, law-and-order looks unlikely to decide this election