Utkarsh Shalla
The recent death of George Floyd at the hands of four Minneapolis police officers provoked an anti-racism ‘Black Lives Matter’ (BLM) movement not just throughout the United States, but also in several Western European countries. While citizens no doubt bear the right to peacefully protest, the fundamental democratic expression protected under the First Amendment of the America Constitution, some protestors were noticed to have turned violent and taking advantage of such chaos, amidst the lockdown due to COVID-19, to break into retail shops and flagrantly steal.
While most politicians of the Democratic party have reacted to these events by focusing on the need for police reform and criticising America’s institutional racism, President Trump was provoked to narrow his remarks to the illicit activities of the protests; tweeting on May 25th: “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” This phrase is a reference to the statements of the Miami police chief, Walter Heraldry, who in the peak of the Civil Rights Movement (1967) remarked that “shooting them on sight” was the only way to stop violent protests, which is being paralleled to today based on the similar volume and themes of the protests. Therefore, given the polar nature of the opposition Democratic party’s stance on the situation, with House Democrats taking a knee in respect of Floyd’s memory and the presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden meeting Floyd’s family, in comparison to the President’s strict message of military hostility the question must be asked whether today’s political climate points towards a favorable or unfavorable future for the incumbent’s chances of re-election.
Perhaps the most important factor in predicting election outcomes in American elections is the performance of the economy, as it has never happened that an incumbent has managed to get re-elected in the backdrop of falling economic growth. Unemployment numbers and job growth in the labour market are key measures that every President cautiously heeds to choose either a Clarifying or an Insurgent campaign. When economic numbers point to increasing prosperity, the incumbent ‘clarifies’ or emphasizes his role in steering the economy in that direction; while in the opposite scenario, he acts as an ‘insurgent’ to the status quo policies promising change to the economic order. Until COVID-19 forced most States to enforce lockdowns, causing the unemployment rate to soar to an estimated 16-20%, the President had cherished his Clarifying position overlooking no opportunity to boast of the longest running bull run of the economy in its history. However, the freeze of economic activity caused by lockdowns, not just nation-wide but also international, has left the Trump campaign in a confused state; should they boast of the $3 trillion fiscal stimulus recently passed? But what if the economy doesn’t bounce back till the election comes around? On top of that, Floyd’s death has dramatically changed the political narrative with the liberal faction of the country calling for not just institutional reform but also the absolute defunding of the policy system, a strong talking point of the Republicans who pride themselves in advocating for more policing.
This changing narrative seems to translate into weak public opinion in the President’s favor. Recent polls conducted by Monmouth University, ABC News/Washington Post and CNN show a double digit lead by Biden over the President. Moreover, these polls were wholly or partly conducted over telephone, rather than less reliable online surveys, therefore are less likely to have a selection bias. While the White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, has emphasized the recent bounce in the stock market as it experienced the hottest 50-day market rally in its history to embellish the President’s campaign nickname: “the jobs-Presidents;” soaring stock prices may not feel comforting to one of the 30 million citizens who have filed for unemployment benefits who are more likely to be blue-collar workers, the sector of the electorate that was most appealed by Trump’s message in 2016.
Trump has also faced backlash from his own party, with establishment Republicans like Colin Powell and even former President W. Bush claimed they’d rather vote for Biden than their own party’s incumbent. Members of his own administration have criticized his dedication to ‘send in the troops’ to curb the riots like Mark Esper and James Mattis, his current and former Secretary of Defense respectively. Moreover, his party’s establishment has become so disgusted by his actions as the Executive Head that the Lincoln Project, a prominent Republican Political Action Committee (PAC), recently launched an advertisement encouraging registered Republicans to vote against their party; it is unprecedented in American political history that a PAC would spend its lobbying money against its own party.
Parallels have been made to the riots of the late 1960s that were in reaction to Martin Luther King’s assasination, and later stimulated by anger over the Vietnam War, from which the shooting-looting phrase originates from. Nixon won the ’68 election by primarily appeasing to the ‘silent majority’ of conservative white Americans scared of seeing their country torn apart by unprecedented civil unrest; a technique Trump has started to employ by publicly declaring “I am your President of law and order” and mentioning his pursuit of the triumph of the same ‘silent majority’ in his tweets.
However, elections are not determined by public opinion but by simple mathematics as there is a reason that Trump won the electoral college in ’16 while losing the popular vote; he only needs to focus on the key ‘swing’ states which if they swing in his favor again would allow him to gain enough electoral votes to beat Biden. These are Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the ‘rust-belt’ states referring to the loss of blue-collar jobs in those regions; the economic disenfranchisement of those voters made them swing to Trump’s populist message of ‘bringing jobs back’ to America. However, unlike Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden has long been a champion of the working class, often called the ‘blue-collar’ Senator due to his deep political roots in Unions. Perhaps that is why the President has announced the continuation of his Make America Great Again rallies in those states in order to lay enough ground before Biden is able to use his ‘working class’ charm to steal those key voters away. Moreover, while there has been an overwhelming outcry against the President over statements concerning BLM protestors it is important to note that liberal Democrats are geographically concentrated in metropolitan cities, while white conservatives are spread out in rural states making that outcry only limited to certain pockets of the country.
That being said, there are still several months left before the November general election, assuming COVID-19 doesn’t force any delays, and American politics is too unpredictable for such an early assessment by polls or public opinion to be right. Moreover, an incumbent President bears enormous power and influence as the head of the Executive Branch that cannot be ignored no matter negative public sentiment. Only time, and the events that shall follow once the country emerges out of quarantine, will tell whether there will be a 46th President or a Trump re-election.
(The author is an undergraduate student at New York University studying politics)
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