Consider This from NPR - An Unprecedented Election Season Ends The Way It Began: With Voters Locked In

Episode Date: November 2, 2020

NPR political correspondents Tamara Keith and Asma Khalid reflect on an election season shaped by unprecedented events: a global pandemic, President Trump's COVID-19 diagnosis, and the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — none of which seemed to dramatically change the shape of the race. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Some strategists will tell you that a good political campaign should have the same message at the beginning and at the end. What you say at the beginning, we often tell our clients, you know, you should be able to air your launch video at the end of the campaign. That was Doug Thornell, a longtime Democratic strategist and ad man. So here's Joe Biden in April of last year kicking off his campaign. But if we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation. The character of this nation. Well, here's Biden in a closing ad last week. Characters on the ballot, the character of the country.

And this is our opportunity to leave the dark, angry politics of the past four years behind us. And on the other side, President Trump launched his reelection campaign talking about the strength of the economy. And as long as you keep this team in place, we have a tremendous way to go. Our future has never, ever looked brighter or sharper. That was June of 2019. And these days, he's campaigning on the promise of an economic comeback. Next year will be the greatest economic year in the history of our country. Of course, the whole notion of a closing message implies that there are still voters left to persuade. And there may be some, but consider this. In a year when so much has changed in the lives of so many Americans, this election has looked remarkably stable.

From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro. It's Monday, November 2nd. After months of campaigning, we are finally on the cusp of knowing what happens next in the White House and in the halls of Congress. The NPR Politics Podcast will be there with you every day with the latest results and will tell you what you need to know in these uncertain times. It's Consider This from NPR. So let's start last December. Article one is adopted. As the first articles of impeachment passed the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi shot a glare at a few Democrats who applauded in the House chamber. She did not want it to look like a celebration. The question is on the adoption of Article 2.

That same week, polls showed Joe Biden held a slim lead over Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in the fight for his party's nomination, and with a slim lead over President Trump in a hypothetical general election matchup. But Biden would go on to lose the Iowa caucuses. So it's on to New Hampshire. And the New Hampshire primary. We're in this for the long haul. In fact, Biden did so poorly in New Hampshire, he didn't even make a big speech there that night. Instead, he headed straight for South Carolina. I'm going to tell you, you have no idea how great it is to be back in South Carolina. And that's where he turned it around. February 29th, leap day, he won the South Carolina primary and ran away with the nomination. We just won and we've won big because of you.

And that last day of February was important for another reason, too. It was the day that the CDC announced the first known American death from COVID-19. It happened in Washington state. And within weeks, the pandemic would change the election in ways that no one saw coming. I talked with two reporters from NPR's political team about the historic events of this past year, the ones that changed the course of the campaign and, in a surprising number of cases, didn't. Asma Khalid, who's been covering Joe Biden this year, and Tamara Keith, who's been covering President Trump.

Congrats to both of you on making it to November. At least two days into it. Thank you. After that first American died of COVID-19 on February 29th, Tam, how did the White House respond to the arrival of this disease in the U.S.? Yeah, I was there at the White House on February 29th for a coronavirus task force briefing. I want to provide an update to our people. And they were trying to be reassuring at that time to say, you know, most Americans don't have anything to worry about. At this moment, we have 22 patients in the United States currently.

Some officials were saying, but that could change at any moment. President Trump was emphasizing the positive, as we now know. He knew how serious it was and how serious it could be. But he was publicly cheerleading, which is something that became a theme throughout. There were short periods in mid-March, for instance, when President Trump called for people to stay home to slow the spread. But most of the time, President Trump has been focused on getting the economy going again. So healthy people, if you're healthy, you will probably go through a process and you'll be fine. Over the course of March, it becomes clear this pandemic is going to define the campaign. The

economy shuts down, unemployment skyrockets. What did that look like from where each of you were sitting? You know, at the start of March, it didn't really seem to be that coronavirus was going to overtake our lives as it has. On the eve of Super Tuesday, March 2nd, was really this critical moment where Joe Biden consolidated the support, I think, of his former rivals. I am ending my campaign and endorsing Joe Biden for president. Within a few hours, we saw Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, the former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and former Texas Congressman Beto O'Rourke all endorsed Joe Biden on the ground in Texas. I'm delighted to endorse and support Joe Biden for president.

And there was just, you know, no sense that folks should be social distancing at that point. I don't know that any of us knew that we should be sanitizing our hands or maybe not shaking hands at that point. And that was a big moment. It really made it clear that this was going to be a two person Democratic primary between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. And that same week, I traveled with President Trump to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. And let's just say that things were not going well, especially in the area of testing. But anybody that needs a test can have a test. There simply was not an infrastructure in place to test people for the coronavirus. And at the time, I remember asking if this thing was worse than we realized. This big, vast land of ours, this great country

of ours, we have 240 cases. Most of those people are going to be fine. He was really downplaying things. He was saying, well, maybe it's not any worse than the flu. And I came away from that trip to the CDC thinking, oh, wow, things are about to change in a big way. You know, for me, that moment when I think it finally occurred to all of us who had been covering Joe Biden's campaign that things were fundamentally changing was the night of March 10th. I was with Joe Biden in Ohio. He gave some remarks at a town hall in Columbus on gun safety.

I believe Bernie Sanders was also supposed to be in Cleveland that night. And within hours, you know, the next thing we knew, both of these rallies had been canceled. And, you know, Biden is flying back to the East Coast, but I'm still in a hotel room in Cleveland. I flew a commercial flight back to D.C. the next morning. And, you know, know really I had no sense that that would be the last commercial airplane flight I would be taking for months. And within days the entire country was shut down and it really took the energy out of the primary and any chance that Bernie Sanders was going to have to make a comeback and win the nomination

it was just gone. I think that coronavirus really hastened the end of the Democratic primary. So in late May, the economy is virtually shut down, people are dying of COVID-19, and then police in Minneapolis kneel on the neck of George Floyd, killing him. How does this event and the national protests that followed shape the presidential campaign? So, you know, for a couple of months, as the pandemic was spreading across the country, Joe Biden didn't really leave his house in Wilmington, Delaware. After George Floyd's death was when we first saw him make one of these rare appearances outside of his house. Nobody can pretend any longer what this is all about. He visited a church in his hometown to meet with Black community leaders

and address some of the frustrations around George Floyd's death. And that was the beginning of when we saw Joe Biden venture out to try to hold in-person, albeit socially distant, campaign events. I can't breathe. George Floyd's last words, but they didn't die with him. They're still being heard, echoing all across this nation. And Tam? The image that people will remember from this time for President Trump came on June 1st. He had quickly turned to make his focus as related to

the issues that were being protested to be a focus on law 1st. He had quickly turned to make his focus as related to the issues that were being protested to be a focus on law and order. Our nation has been gripped by professional anarchists, violent mobs, arsonists, looters, criminals, rioters, Antifa, and others. He delivered a speech about law and order in the Rose Garden. While he was speaking, you could hear the crowd being cleared from a park nearby. You could hear the canisters of pepper spray being shot into the crowd. The brutal death of George Floyd. My administration is fully committed. And then after his speech, he walks through the park over to St. John's Church, this historic church that had been damaged in protests the night before.

And you're watching this video now of the president walking through Lafayette Park. You know, this is a park where the protesters have been lined up for days now protesting against. And to get that photo op, which is now included in his ads, they had to forcefully clear peaceful protesters out of the way. And for so many people, that really just sums up President Trump's approach to that time. In August, you get some of the events that we would see in any presidential election, the announcement of a running mate, the party conventions in this crazy upside down year. Even the conventions are not normal, with most of it happening virtually and Trump delivering an acceptance speech from the White House. And then in September, with nearly 200,000 Americans dead of COVID-19, the liberal lion of the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, dies of cancer. Another event that you would expect to

upend the presidential race. What was the actual impact of it? Well, for Democrats, it became this huge motivating factor. You know, the online donor website ActBlue for Democrats say that they raised a record amount of money, I believe, between Friday night and midday Sunday. Something like a hundred some million dollars was raised on the site. And for President Trump, he, I think, really thought that nominating Amy Coney Barrett, and ultimately she was confirmed, was going to be a big selling point in the final weeks of his campaign. But what ended up happening is the event in the White House Rose Garden and private events indoors. Judge Amy Coney Barrett. That turned into a super spreader event. Numerous White House officials, senators, the president of the

United States and many people in his inner circle all got coronavirus. What a day of dramatic developments again that test overnight. Marine One on the White House lawn preparing to take the president to Walter Reed. Walter Reed National Military Medical Center after testing positive for coronavirus. That took the president off of the campaign trail and completely contradicted the whole idea that he was trying to push as a candidate that everything was OK, nothing to see here with coronavirus. So that brings us to the final stretch. And how does where we are right now compare to where you thought we would be a year ago before all this upheaval? Gosh, Ari, that feels like answering this like hypothetical, surreal question that I totally can't even compute because it doesn't mesh with where we have been, right? And the

reality of COVID. What I will say, though, is that at the beginning of this presidential election cycle, Biden entered the primary relatively well-known, relatively well-liked, and thought to be the Democrat who had the best shot of taking on President Trump. And that is exactly where this race has ended, right? Like, he is the Democrat who is taking on President Trump. And I don't feel like much has changed in the trajectory of this race. If you look at polling, it has been very, very steady. And, you know, look, I know a lot has changed in our own lives, whether it's school shutting down,

a sputtering economy, but none of that has seemed to fundamentally change the arc of this campaign. Yeah, coming into this, I imagined that this would be a dark and difficult campaign year, that this would not be a campaign of joy and uplift. I mean, reelects basically never are. But this certainly has been a more difficult year than I think anyone could have imagined. And certainly a different year than even we imagined in January. But if you look at the RealClearPolitics polling average on January 1st of this year, Biden was at 49 and Trump was at 43. Today, that same average has Biden at 51 and Trump at 44. So almost no change at all.

And so tonight for their final events, Joe Biden is going to be in Pennsylvania and Donald Trump is going to be in Michigan. And I think we could have predicted that 11 months ago. NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith and political correspondent Asma Khalid, thank you for all of your reporting this year and good luck in this homestretch. You're welcome. Happy to do it. You're listening to Consider This from NPR. I'm Ari Shapiro.