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Two men love fire and water in the craziest election campaign the world has ever seen. This is what our correspondent Donald Trump and Joe Biden experience in the race for the White House.
Shortly before Tuesday’s election, Joe Biden knows he has no chance. He returns to his usual speech: that Donald Trump’s second term in office would be devastating and that only he himself could restore the “soul of the nation.” His wife Jill is by his side.
For the scheduled electoral party, they can only be turned on by video. I feel the sadness that lies in the room. Biden roams the audience, talks longer and presses more intimately than usual. I stand still and think: this is what the ending feels like.
Biden actually loses on Tuesday: he only finishes fifth in New Hampshire’s Democratic primary. A disgrace. His candidacy is half dead.
Donald Trump wants to celebrate. He brought with him the current issue of the “Washington Post,” which he proudly presents to us in the East Room of the White House: Trump acquitted – Trump acquitted. Sprout from him for 62 minutes, kick, praise, wander. The impeachment process is over, the economy is booming, donations are at a record high, all signs point to re-election.
Donald Trump after acquittal from impeachment: The signs were for re-election. (Source: Drew Angerer)
That was a jaunt to the second week of February 2020 that I’m thinking about over and over again. Biden on the ground, Trump floats. Then came the craziest election campaign the world has ever seen. And this is how I experienced it:
Two men, whose characters couldn’t be more different, want to lead America. They are fighting each other, but also a virus that has never controlled the country. With the wounds that racism and violence have inflicted on the nation, with the fatigue, energy, fear and all the other feelings of a troubled nation. A cynic against a moralist. A man who wants to heat things up. And one who wants to cool off. Two like fire and water. That is the choice.
Back then, just after that week in February, things started to move. Black voters in South Carolina save Joe Biden, who then rallies all the moderates behind him at record speed and dispatches Bernie Sanders. At the same time, Donald Trump wants to convince the nation that the coronavirus is just “the next fraud by the Democrats.” I experience Biden’s triumph on “Super Tuesday” at his victory party in Los Angeles and sit at Trump’s first briefings on the so-called coronavirus. It is the last days that seem normal. So we went home.
The electoral campaign will remain frozen until June. I only see the candidates on the screen. Trump leaves the White House day after day. He talks head and neck with Corona, belittles him, announces miraculous cures. Biden occasionally logs in from the makeshift television studio in his basement and remains invisible. They ridicule him for it, but it’s his smartest move. He stops. The election should remain what it is: a referendum on Trump.
Trump sinks in public image three times this year: In the first corona wave, he shows no interest in fighting. At the protest for racism after George Floyd’s death, to which he is unable to speak. With his own crown disease, which reveals how negligent and reckless he is.
Joe Biden in Florida: More Americans trust him than Trump in the Corona crisis. (Source: Brian Snyder / Reuters)
It turns out that Trump’s greatest talent is failing: the gift of distraction. Law and Order, China, Biden as a supposed gateway to socialism. Nothing can overshadow the crown and the crisis in the public debate, as millions fall into poverty and schools remain closed. Trump’s long-awaited prankster is canceled, a shot until Election Day. The United States is voting with 230,000 Covid deaths and a third wave.
With each appearance, Biden remembers Trump’s fatal equanimity in Corona. Biden: “I’ll listen to the scientists.” Trump: “There is no more blockade with me.”
Only in the summer does Biden venture out of the house. An apparition in Pittsburgh, placed in front of a dozen journalists in large circles, for the purpose of keeping a precise distance. A visit to Wisconsin, a gathering in the garden with ten voters. The greatest possible precaution for the 77-year-old challenger.
The 74-year-old incumbent, however, was happy, free, and negligent. In August, the rallies start again like nothing, with thousands at the country’s airfields. No masks, no spaces.
Air Force One on approach to Phoenix, Arizona: Trump wins the imagery campaign. (Source: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
Air Force One serves as the backdrop. The big cinema: King Donald I floats in to talk to the people. There is no cell phone that is not taken out. The last act is also new. Instead of the Rolling Stones’ quiet start “You can’t always get what you want,” “YMCA” is now booming after the last move. For the first time in September in Pennsylvania, I see Trump, well, dance; Now he does, after almost every performance, he becomes the face of his election campaign. If Trump sinks, he does it by dancing. Young man, there is no need to feel bad!
This is how Trump wins an electoral campaign: the electoral campaign of images. Their performances exude energy and enthusiasm. At the last push, he finds his way back to the role of entertainer. Celebrate if you deviate from the manuscript. But the specter of defeat creeps into his speeches over and over again, albeit disguised as a joke. “If I lose to him,” he says of Biden, “you’ll never see me again.”
In the last few meters he seems manic and panicky. He tweets at 2:30 p.m., runs across the country, makes three appearances in three states a day. His attacks are getting more and more extreme: in Trump’s history, Biden is insane and super criminal, as diabolical as he is foolish, a left-wing pawn and “the worst candidate who ever wanted to become president.” He demands investigations against his political opponents. Trump says little or nothing about his plans for a second term. Biden is a politician, he complains. The president prefers to remain an outsider.
He fled again and again to 2016 – Back then, the Hillary Clinton email subject and the FBI investigation into the matter helped him win. Now he’s trying to do the same with Joe Biden and his son Hunter. But Biden is not Clinton.
Are you interested in the American elections? Washington correspondent Fabian Reinbold writes a newsletter about the election campaign, his work in the White House, and his impressions of the United States under Donald Trump. Here you can subscribe to the “Post from Washington” for free, which then lands directly in your mailbox once a week.
Biden doesn’t have good visuals, but he does have strong numbers. His leadership in the polls is stable and in terms of donations he has left Trump far behind. Four days before the election, Washington is pretty sure it will win.
His message was constant from the beginning: he puts character and decency at the center. Play the comforter of the nation whenever you can and promise to take the virus seriously. But it’s only in the last few days that Biden has found his look – he’s now holding drive-in events, where the horn brings some life to events and everyone can still observe the crown’s rules.
Drive-in rally in Tampa, Florida: Finally some life in Biden’s election campaign. (Source: Luis Santana / Tampa Bay Times / AP / dpa)
Biden also eludes voters. Only a few are allowed to look directly at the man who wants to become president. They are loyal followers who are on certain lists. As a common citizen, you have no chance. You don’t even know where exactly the events will be. Not even as a correspondent. Access is only granted to a small group of US media. The last time I saw him was in March. A campaign is isolated. She thinks she can afford it.
Trump’s events are accessible, Biden’s are not. But they are also a health risk, not Bidens.
Risk versus caution. Self-determination against consideration. An anti-politician against a politician. Fire and water. That was the campaign, this is the United States election. The end is in sight.
