Race for the White House: Trump and Biden run very different pandemic campaigns

North Carolina limits outdoor gatherings to 50 people to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus, but don’t tell President Donald Trump. He reveled in a largely unmasked crowd of several thousand supporters during a rally Tuesday on this critical battlefield.

“As far as the eye can see,” Trump said, delighting in seeing people disobey public health guidelines. “I really think these crowds are bigger than four years ago.”

A day earlier in Pennsylvania, Trump’s Democratic challenger Joe Biden held a socially estranged gathering in a backyard. His team has been so attentive to local regulations that some staff members have left the room if they risked breaking the rules on crowd limits.

“I really miss being able to, you know, hold hands and shake hands,” Biden recently told fans. “You can’t do that now.”

With less than eight weeks to go until Election Day, Trump and Biden are taking diametrically opposite approaches to campaigning during a pandemic, and the differences are more than political theater. The candidates are effectively defending different visions for the country, with Biden emphasizing guidelines endorsed by local health officials, while Trump criticizes restrictions that he says, without evidence, are politically motivated.

“By the way, your state should be open,” Trump said in North Carolina, a state in which he has clashed with Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, over his abandoned plans to hold the Republican National Convention in Charlotte. “It’s you, it’s Michigan, it’s a couple of others,” Trump added, seeing a potent line of attack in the Democratic-led battle states.

Trump’s advisers and allies suggest that the president views his rallies as a manifestation of the reopening he is preaching, and that he believes it is vital to the nation’s economic recovery and what the voters want. In an investigation against those who warn against reopening too quickly, Trump suggested that these states would suddenly reopen the day after the election, when opponents who advocate for caution can no longer harm his re-election.

Outdoor events used to be few and far between for Trump, who prefers the deafening echo and air conditioning of indoor stadiums. But in the wake of a June rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, when the president headed into a half-empty stadium and a promised five-figure crowd never materialized, his campaign decided to move to the hangars and tarmacs of minor airports.

The only thing that has stayed the same: bragging about the size of his audience compared to Biden’s.

“If I had 200 people, I think it would be a lot,” Trump said Tuesday of his opponent. “Have you ever seen gyms with circles? That’s their crowd. If I had 200 people.”

Biden’s crowds, in fact, have been much smaller. The former vice president has appeared in public only in moderation since the pandemic struck, and with the strictest adherence to state guidelines: 25 people in Pennsylvania, 50 in Michigan, and mandatory face covering. Biden’s approach reflects the reluctance of many of his supporters to attend large gatherings.

For someone who has never been natural in an arena, smaller events allow Biden to have more personal interactions with representatives of key voting blocs, such as labor and community leaders.

But they also allow him to largely avoid any controversy created by a critical interrogator or protester, whom he was forced to deal with several times in the election campaign before the pandemic broke out.

Even when Biden faces organic crowds of fans, he is rarely given the opportunity to interact unscripted with them.

When Biden delivered a speech last week focusing on the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus at a university building in Pittsburgh, a crowd of more than 100 gathered and kept coming even as his event concluded.

They chanted “We want Joe!” and waved posters of Biden, some of them homemade. But, after his speech, Biden remained inside the building to attend a virtual fundraiser, then abruptly left to deliver pizza at a nearby fire station without approaching supporters.

Three days later, after Biden visited Kenosha, Wisconsin, he and his wife, Jill, stopped at the home of a supporter in Wauwatosa, a leafy Milwaukee suburb.

With so many people confined to their homes, the presence of Biden’s caravan on a small street drew more than 200 people to their porches or the street. The Bidens spent more than half an hour gathered in a quiet backyard with two teachers and a parent concerned about how to resume in-person learning during the pandemic.

The crowd cheered and chanted “Come on Joe!” But the private meeting lasted so long that Biden only interacted with them for less than a minute. As he was leaving, he walked to the middle of the street and then, surrounded by Secret Service agents, yelled, “Don’t forget to vote!”

Earlier this week, however, Biden took a moment after an event focused on union leaders at a supporter’s home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to greet a crowd of some two dozen supporters who had gathered at the across the street. Flanked by Secret Service agents, Biden spoke to the crowd about his belief that Americans can do anything when united and the need to vote, then spoke briefly with reporters and left.

Later that day, Biden greeted a crowd of about 100 from the window of the AFL-CIO headquarters in Pennsylvania, but refused to approach after exiting the building.

– AP