Trump’s Coronavirus Spin Won’t Help Him in November

Jonathan Bernstein

23 Mar 2020, 09:49 PM IST

(Bloomberg Opinion) --

I need to talk a little about the politics of the coronavirus response. I know, I know: Many people don’t want to hear about it and just want everyone to do what’s right.

Sorry. It’s still important. What we need to know about its effects on the 2020 elections — and what Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell really need to know — is that substance will be far more important than spin. No one in November is going to care what Joe Biden said or did in March, and they’re not going to care — sorry, Senator McConnell — about who voted which way on a procedural vote on the way to passing a major coronavirus-related stimulus bill.

(I should explain. McConnell insisted on holding a cloture vote Sunday despite not yet having an agreement on the bill, and naturally the vote failed. It’s possible McConnell just counted votes poorly; he might have thought that the vote would reveal a split Democratic caucus and bring pressure on Democrats to fold. If so, he was badly mistaken, since he got a party-line vote that demonstrated that Republicans needed to give more to get the bill through both chambers.)

Republicans should be most worried because recessions typically doom incumbent presidents. For example, see Alan I. Abramowitz’s forecast item from last week, when he was looking at what a mere 5% or less downturn in second-quarter GDP would do to an incumbent according to his model. It now appears likely that we’re in for a much bigger slump. As Abramowitz correctly notes, it’s possible that a recession clearly caused by a natural disaster (or at least caused by the policy reaction to a disaster) might not be as harmful to Trump. But it certainly might be.

As the same time, no one knows what kinds of direct public-opinion effects the coronavirus and the measures taken to stop it could have on Trump. There just isn’t any good historical comparison available. We do know that high-casualty wars are very costly to presidents, but whether this is at all similar is simply unknown. But surely it’s at least a threat to Trump’s prospects. (There’s a persistent myth that being a wartime president brings reelection, but the evidence mostly points the other way).

What this means is that Trump and the Republicans have an absolute political incentive to do whatever is possible to prevent the worst damage to both public health and to the economy.

It also means that spin, and especially attempts to deflect blame onto Democrats, aren’t very likely to work out. If that was possible, then the models (such as Abramowitz’s) wouldn’t work at all; after all, every president, from George Washington to Barack Obama, tried to shift the responsibility for bad things to others, but the evidence tells us that voters don’t buy it. In other words: If Trump wants to get re-elected, and if McConnell wants to remain Senate majority leader, they need to to focus all their energies on alleviating the crisis, not attempting to shift blame for it.

1. Norm Ornstein and Tom Mann on the continued need for better continuity in government plans. They’ve been amazingly persistent about this for years (and I’ve made it a hobby-horse of my own here) and … still nothing. I do think it’s still premature for Congress to switch to remote voting — but not at all premature for them to put plans in place so the nation’s government can function no matter what.

2. Dave Hopkins at the Monkey Cage on the nomination process in light of the 2020 Democratic contests. He and I disagree on this — I think actions of party actors were central to how things played out this time — so if you regularly read my stuff, be sure to check out his interpretation of what happened.

3. Also at the Monkey Cage: Bethany Albertson and Shana Kushner Gadarian on anxiety and trust in politics. They explain why it’s important that Trump separate himself from the daily task-force briefings if he wants people to believe them.

4. Great Jon Cohen interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci.

5. Jared Bernstein and Dean Baker on the Republican stimulus bill.

6. Here at Bloomberg Opinion, Michael R. Strain and Glenn Hubbard on what small business needs.

7. And Ben Smith on Fox News and the coronavirus.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics and policy. He taught political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio and DePauw University and wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.