A new security fence was erected overnight
Donald Trump had swept to the presidency vowing to build a wall. On election day it was not his barrier at the border but one around the White House that was making the headlines.
The 8ft foot black chain fence erected overnight along the perimeter of the president’s residence, long nicknamed the People’s House, was said to be “unscalable” to anyone who tried. It reflected the mass protests expected on America’s streets whatever the result — a sign of a nation bracing itself for what comes next.
But it was also a fitting end to a campaign dominated by insults, exaggerations and mutual contempt that has left America’s political divide deeper still. Right from the start the election race was framed in apocalyptic terms, not just “the most important race of my lifetime” — as candidates always say — but one of the country’s founding values.
For Joe Biden, the former US vice president, Mr Trump posed a threat to the very “soul of the nation”, an aberration that must be proved to be a blip rather than the new norm.
For the president, his Democratic rival would change forever America’s way of life, a puppet for “radical socialists” who would do away with the country’s “guns, oil and God”.
US Election 2020 – When do the swing states announce their results?
Well before the first Democratic primary votes Mr Trump appeared to have written that script, determined to paint whoever his opponent was as so left-wing as to be effectively unelectable. However in Mr Biden he had an unhelpful opponent on that front.
The 77-year-old was no radical — he had spent five decades in Washington and had a career defined by coalition-building.
His victory in the Democratic primaries, after early stumbles in Iowa and New Hampshire, had come in opposition to socialist democratic senator Bernie Sanders, who vowed “political revolution”.
Mr Biden had been picked, it appeared, because as an old white man from Pennsylvania with eight years of White House experience he seemed the safest bet to defeat Mr Trump.
The question of character, and more specifically leadership in a crisis, would become one of the central features of the election after the issue that defined the race — the pandemic.
Days after Mr Biden effectively wrapped up the nomination with his Super Tuesday primary wins in early March, the Covid-19 outbreak took hold in America.
Mr Trump ordered everyone in the country, around third of a billion people, to stay at home unless it was necessary to venture out.
Joe Biden saw off Bernie Sanders in the primaries
The biggest test of his presidency had arrived. One clear and immediate political impact was the economy. Mr Trump’s campaign team had put the booming growth of over 3 per cent and record job numbers at the heart of his re-election.
Now the ‘businessman president’ was overseeing jumps in unemployment not seen since the Great Depression in the 1930s. Stock markets plummeted. Growth became a sharp downturn. The plan was to ask that famous Ronald Regan question: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” After the Covid-triggered crash, that strategy had to be parked.
It was also a test of leadership. How the president handled the pandemic — as Republican senator Lindsey Graham reportedly told Mr Trump — would determine the election result.
At first Mr Trump declared himself a “wartime president” fighting the “invisible enemy” of the virus. He gave daily White House briefings as Mr Biden turned his early campaigning virtual.
The result was a jump in the president’s approval ratings to the highest of his first term, in a ‘rally around the flag’ effect. But as spring turned to summer turned to autumn the president moved away from his scientific advisers, focussing instead on reopening the economy to get it growing again.
There were erratic moments — floating the injection of disinfectant as a treatment being a notable one, triggering a media backlash that saw Mr Trump end his daily briefings. The challenge for the president, critics said, was you cannot spin a pandemic.
As the daily case number shot up a second time over the summer, Mr Trump blamed more testing. Week by week, the proportion of Americans who approved of his handling of the pandemic dropped.
By the autumn a clear majority in polls consistently disapproved. Mr Biden, meanwhile, focussed on landing the big moments without blunders.
He picked as his vice president choice Kamala Harris, who had challenged him from the main nomination. The Californian senator, daughter of an Indian mother and Jamaican father, made the ticket racially diverse and, despite later attacks, was less left-wing than other options.
His team, reading the polls, made Covid-19 the central issue of the campaign. They believed voters wanted stable leadership and hoped their man ticked that box rather than Mr Trump. But there were dangers. Virtual campaigning saw Mr Biden broadcast from his Delaware basement for most of the summer, a fact mocked and derided by Trump supporters.
He struggled to and in the end never did overcome Mr Trump’s lead on who was better to handle the recovery, according to eve of election polls.
Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic has come under intense scrutiny
Throughout the race there were moments of immense tumult. The biggest anti-racism protests in five decades swept America after George Floyd’s death during arrest. Mr Trump vowed to re-establish “law and order” as episodes of violence and looting were seen in US cities and called out “cancel culture” as statues of Confederate generals toppled.
He gave a convention speech on the South Lawn of the White House before a packed crowd, despite the pandemic, in contrast to the largely virtual Democratic convention. But the polls would not budge.
Mr Biden throughout the year had a nationwide poll lead of between five and 10 percentage points and kept ahead in most of the big battleground states.
Even the most dramatic twist of all, Mr Trump himself getting coronavirus — leading to the president being put on oxygen and rushed to hospital — did not appear to radically alter the dynamics.
For all the ‘campaign-changing moments’ of the race — the opening up of a Supreme Court seat, swiftly filled, was another — none appeared to fundamentally alter the race. Voters seem to have made up their mind early on the president, one way or another. In the final weeks.
Mr Trump doubled down on his economic focus, mocking Mr Biden for listening to scientists and warning the Democrat’s lockdown would stifle a recovery. Mr Biden avoided the traditional campaign events, inviting at most a few hundred supporters to attend “drive-in” rallies by care.
By the end of the race, Covid-19 cases were surging again, with daily case counts hitting record highs. America had seen more than nine million positive tests and 230,000 deaths from Covid-19 in 2020.
The president went on a final rally blitz, including 10 in the last two days. His hope was to drive up turnout among his supporters enough for a shock comeback victory.
Asked about the race hours before polls closed, Mr Trump, who would be watching the results from the White House fortress, predicted a “tremendous” night. But he was also circumspect. "Winning is easy,” he said, with the fate of his second term unknown. “Losing is never easy. Not for me it’s not.”
Свежие комментарии