Yesterday's big news was of course that the president and his wife had tested positive to COVID. The president is said to be showing mild symptoms and has been flown to Walter Reed for treatment and observation.
This series of posts has simply to do with the "horse race" aspect of the election, so the question I want to address is, how will this development impact the campaign for re-election? I listen regularly to the Commentary Magazine Podcast, where John Podhoretz and company hold forth on a daily basis. In yesterday's edition John offered the opinion that the president's illness (and the illness of others on his staff, including the campaign manager, Bill Stepien) spelled doom for his re-election hopes. Get ready for a Biden presidency, he warned.
I was already thinking that way before this development. I don't believe that virtually every poll is getting the electorate wrong. Biden's lead in the RCP average this morning is exactly 7% (50.1-43.1). Trump has just endured arguably the worst week of his campaign (if not his presidency), and now he's probably barred from in-person campaigning for the next two weeks at least (best case).
To the extent that his personal appearances before cheering crowds in airport hangers did any good for his campaign at all, that's over. To the extent that having an active and non-quarantined campaign manager for the next two crucial weeks matters at all, that's over. The discussion from here on out may revolve not around which candidate is trending in the polls, but around Biden's eventual margin of victory.
A secondary question may be, can the Republicans staunch the bleeding enough to retain control of the Senate during the first two years of the Biden administration?
Admittedly I may have to take back this presumption of a Biden victory, but the Trump campaign is like a Nascar driver that has been running second all along, and now as the race enters its final laps he's just blown a tire and will have to cruise into the pits. It looks like Biden will be the driver standing atop his race car and drinking the milk!
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See also:
Trump's Diagnosis and the Election, by Richard North Patterson
Trump's Strategy of COVID-denial is Defeated by COVID, by Damon Linker
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