Wall Street Journal
POLITICS
ELECTION 2020
Turbulent 2020 Presidential Campaign Approaches a Storm
Impending Supreme Court pick, first Trump-Biden debate will test an election landscape no shock seems to alter.
By Gerald F. Seib
September 25, 2020
There is no such thing as calm in the 2020 presidential race, but the campaign has arrived on the verge of a real storm.
In a race where no shock seems to alter the landscape, two big ones are about to arrive in a period of four days, testing whether the status quo is as stable as it has seemed.
First, President Trump has promised to name on Saturday his choice to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, setting off a contentious confirmation fight. And then Tuesday, Mr. Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden will meet in the first of three scheduled debates.
Both events have the potential to alter the arc of the race in its final weeks—and, in the case of the Supreme Court fight, in tightly contested Senate races as much as in the fight for the White House.
There is, however, no guarantee that even moments this big will significantly affect an electorate in which most Americans appear locked in on their presidential preference. In January, the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that 50% of voters preferred Mr. Biden in a matchup with the president, while 44% named Mr. Trump and 6% said they were undecided.
A week ago—just before the death of Justice Ginsburg and after a pandemic, an economic slide and the onset of an emotional national debate on racial justice—the poll found sentiments virtually unchanged: 51% for Mr. Biden, 43% for Mr. Trump and, again, 6% undecided.
In such an environment, the decisive question is what might move that small sliver of undecided voters. The president clearly hopes the court fight will help. But in campaign-rally rhetoric, he is hardly putting all bets there. He has continued to hammer his law-and-order theme, and this week offered senior citizens an election-year gift by promising them all a $200 discount on prescription-drug purchases, without any clarity on how the giant bill for that would be paid.
Most controversially, Mr. Trump repeatedly refused to say he would accept the results of November’s election or promise a peaceful transition of power, apparently seeking to lay the groundwork for an election settled in the courts.
For his part, Mr. Biden pointedly declined to join in the pitched rhetoric surrounding the Supreme Court fight. He instead sought to project an image of calm—and to keep attention focused on the president’s handling of the coronavirus.
"Darwin was the first to use data from nature to convince people that evolution is true, and his idea of natural selection was truly novel. It testifies to his genius that the concept of natural theology, accepted by most educated Westerners before 1859, was vanquished within only a few years by a single five-hundred-page book. On the Origin of Species turned the mysteries of life's diversity from mythology into genuine science." -- Jerry Coyne
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