In a column for the Daily Beast, conservative Matt Lewis stated that whatever advantage Donald Trump may have had as a sitting president seeking re-election is long gone after botching the government's job to protect the health and safety of Americans from the now-exploding coronavirus public health crisis.
According to the longtime political observer, the COVID-19 crisis has the president back on his heels and spending his days defending his reeling administration from criticism as the country shuts down and thousand die when, in normal circumstances, he would be out on the road touting his achievements and attacking his potential opponents.
Writing "The problem for Trump isn’t just the negative developments he’s being tagged with, but also the negative campaigning he can no longer get away with," Lewis explained, "Trump clearly has his hands full with a major crisis. What is more, the seriousness of this pandemic (and the fact that Trump has already botched his handling of it) makes it very hard to deploy his brand of scorched-earth mockery. Doing so would not just provoke a potential backlash for its unseemliness, it would also reinforce the notion that Trump isn’t fully focused on saving lives."
According to the conservative, Trump's campaign had planned on keeping him in the White House with relentless attacks on his possible opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, but now that has been shelved as they do damage control.
"Trump is a master at distracting us from big news stories. Except, with this one, he can’t just change the subject with a mean tweet. As Dr. Fauci has said, 'The virus determines what the timetable is, not us.' (God help us if another story comes along that is big enough to overtake the COVID-19 headlines,) he wrote. "Trump’s team never wanted this election to be a referendum on his competence. The plan was to spend the spring smearing his opponent. We know that because that’s who Trump is, and because that has been the plan for every modern incumbent president."
"Joe Biden was poised to be that sitting duck. Although his high name ID makes him less susceptible than past challengers to being 'defined' by an incumbent president, one could certainly imagine a scenario where Trump would have unleashed ungodly amounts of money attacking Joe Biden this spring," he added before predicting, " It’s starting to feel like this election is slipping away from Donald Trump."
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