With Donald Trump in the hospital, uncertainty reigns and is unlikely to end anytime soon

OPINION: As the 2020 U.S. presidential election approaches, about 209,000 Americans have died from Covid-19 and more than 7.3 million have tested positive for the virus, including President Donald Trump.

The announcement of Trump’s positive diagnosis has resulted in possibly the most extensive case of schadenfreude in human history. Enjoying someone else’s discomfort is often a sign that one has lost one’s moral orientation.

In this case, Trump’s own arrogant behavior and attempts to criticize not only his own nation but the entire world about the dangers posed by Covid-19 (in addition to a host of other lies and cruel policies) has led to a fault. widespread sympathy. .

In the United States, Trump opponents and critics have gone out of their way to publicly wish Trump a speedy recovery.

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But globally, the story is more complicated. Trump is not everyone’s president, of course, and many see him as a singular threat to humanity and the global environment.

Recent Pew polls show how deeply unpopular Trump is globally. Normally optimistic commentators have been talking about the death of democracy in America if Trump steals victory from the jaws of defeat.

Our view is that the most preferable way for him to end Trump’s presidency is for him to recover quickly and be clearly defeated on November 3. recover quickly. There is uncertainty on several fronts.

Much will depend on how sick Trump is

Although he receives the best medical care, at age 74, Trump is in a high-risk category. We know that for many people, symptoms seem flu-like, often fairly mild to begin with, but with the potential for things to go downhill quickly, especially if those who contract the illness develop respiratory complications.

There are conflicting reports from Washington on how sick Trump really is, and much will depend on what happens in the days ahead.

So what happens if the president becomes incapacitated in the next few weeks or even dies from Covid-19?

First, if the president dies in office, there is a long succession that begins with the vice president, in this case, Mike Pence. This is unprecedented, as eight American presidents have died in office. The first of them, William Harrison, died of pneumonia after serving just over 30 days in office in 1841.

After the vice president, there are a host of congressional leaders and cabinet secretaries identified as next in line. This begins with the Speaker of the House, who in this case would be Nancy Pelosi, the Californian Democrat whose relationship with Trump, to put it mildly, is not good. In other words, if Trump dies, there is a succession plan.

However, what complicates things is that every day more people within Trump’s circle test positive.

Even if Trump doesn’t die, what if he has a prolonged illness? What if Pence, who initially tested negative, also contracts the virus in the next few days? If none of these men is in a position to run for the upcoming elections, now less than a month away, how will the process unfold?

If Trump and Pence couldn’t campaign as a result of contracting the virus, this would really be unprecedented. Americans have had controversial elections in the past: elections in which neither candidate received the required number of votes from the electoral college, leading to the election to the House of Representatives; those in which the winner of the popular vote did not win the presidency.

So if both Trump and Pence were incapacitated, the Republican National Committee would have to make some tough decisions, and they would have to make them quickly.

The election will likely be held on November 3.

At this stage, the election is highly unlikely to be delayed. This would require authorization from Congress and the Constitution requires, through the 20th Amendment, that a president must begin his new term on January 20. Time is the enemy and Biden’s advantages. Democrats in the House, where they have a majority, would not tolerate changing the date of the elections.

Yet even if Trump only develops a mild version of the disease, he has shaken up the campaign. The information about Trump’s condition is contradictory. Some reports suggest that he is on the mend and in good spirits, others suggest that he has already required a dose of supplemental oxygen.

Presidential debates are unlikely to move forward and Trump will not campaign anytime soon. In the short term, Trump’s presence in his campaign will be virtual. If any Republican is going to spend time in key states, it will be Pence.

If Trump recovers, he will want to project an image of strength: the “warrior” president who fought and defeated Covid-19. This may sound far-fetched, but creating an image of manly vigor has been central to the Trump presidency. Trump doesn’t like images of weakness.

In Geoffrey Goldberg’s controversial article, he argues that Trump does not understand the notion of heroism, concluding that the president, although “obsessed with organizing military parades,” does not like to include wounded veterans in such parades.

Uncomfortable with the deformity, incessantly mocking those he considers weak and inferior, the president, if he recovers, could reappear at the end of the election cycle with renewed arrogance, boasting of his personal exploits against what he calls the “plague of China.” . Your base would enjoy such images.

And Joe Biden?

However, it is difficult to see how this situation will not benefit Biden.

As long as the 77-year-old Biden stays healthy, he has quite a bit of freedom in terms of how and where he campaigns. He will continue to express his superficial good wishes to the President and First Lady, but since Biden has spoken incessantly about the President’s failures to combat Covid-19, the disease will be the dominant theme of this election, and it should be.

With more than 200,000 Americans dead, most of whom, unlike the president, never had personal doctors, were not rushed to Walter Reed Medical Center, and were not given drugs like anti-viral remdesivir to shorten their hospital stays. It’s hard to resist the idea that Biden won’t consolidate his leadership.

Without the debates, Biden can avoid tough questions about what he will do to the Supreme Court if Republicans insist on voting for Trump’s nominee Amy Coney Barrett.

Republicans, led by Mitch McConnell in the Senate, will do everything in their power to ensure that this vote moves forward to consolidate the conservative majority on the Supreme Court. However, with three Republican senators recently contracting the virus, a pre-election vote is not guaranteed. Again, the longer the uncertainty lasts and the more senators become infected, Biden can secure the advantage of a delayed vote, if the vote does take place.

But as Trump recently told journalist Bob Woodward in Rage, the controversial book in which the president admitted knowing the seriousness of this virus despite having publicly downplayed its threat to the American people, when “you are leading a country that is full of surprises. There is dynamite behind every door ”.

The same can be said for the 2020 presidential elections.

Daniel Cooper is a professor at Griffith University and Brendon O’Connor is an associate professor of American Politics at the Center for American Studies at the University of Sydney.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.