The Coronavirus Is Upending Trump’s Base
But that may not be enough to keep him from being reelected.
President Trump ran for office on three simple platforms: deregulation, promoting small business and returning America to its former greatness. He was elected in 2016 largely because of a promise he made to protect the working poor from what he described as a government that only worked for the elite.
After his first 12 months of being in office, nearly 71 of the US’s top CEOs told INC. Magazine that President Trump’s deregulation platform combined with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act created a promising opportunity for corporations and entrepreneurs alike. And, numbers from the Census Bureau seemed to corroborate this story. In 2016, the agency received over 750,000 small business applications, the highest in over a decade.
President Trump also promoted a plan to help new small businesses flourish in this environment. He tried to gut the Affordable Care Act because he viewed it as burdensome on the little guys, signed an executive order seeking to raise wages of domestic workers by asking businesses to Buy American, Hire American, and fought tooth and nail to remove the US from the international trade order. All of which were supposed to solidify his base for the following elections (and any afterward if given the opportunity).
This plan worked well for most of President Trump’s first term in office. He survived impeachment on the backs of pundits like Sean Hannity who make a living carrying the president’s water on Fox News. The president also managed to grow his social media presence to a whopping 30 million in three years.
At the end of 2019, President Trump’s approval rating was at 42 percent, the highest it had been since April 2017, placing him in the same group as Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford in first-term averages.
Then, along came the novel coronavirus, which subsequently upended President Trump’s base in a single month. Since the virus made landfall in the US, over 62.5 million service workers suddenly find themselves in jeopardy of losing their jobs because cities are shuttering bars, restaurants, event venues, and other social gathering places to thwart the spread of the virus. Big businesses are also letting go of non-essential personnel — sometimes called “administrative assistants” — in order to save costs because of the unpredictable nature of the virus. A recent report by Politico found unemployment offices across the country are overwhelmed by the layoffs.
Service workers account for 71 percent of those classified as workers below the poverty level, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They are also the labor class most likely to work two or more jobs because of low pay, even though the number of service jobs available is growing. BLS expects a decline in service jobs throughout the next decade as automation and artificial intelligence obsolete many jobs in customer service.
In many ways, service workers are the very people President Trump promised he would protect during his campaign. A study by CityLab found that service workers often vote slightly Democratic, but can be safely considered the swing votes in any district. Many service workers also comprise the “disaffected” voter class who hold the same anti-government view as many Trump loyalists. Disaffected voters can be found in states with high concentrations of service workers that have not seen significant wage increases compared to cost of living expenses. In fact, Trump won Florida by winning districts with high service sector employment.
This is why Democrats have been vying for the support of labor unions throughout the 2020 primary season. Recently the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) agreed to spend over $150 million on ads attacking Trump while the nation’s largest union, the National Education Association, endorsed Joe Biden for president.
Yet, while this seems to indicate President Trump may lose in the November 2020 elections, the opposite could still be true. 47 percent of voters currently approve of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus. And, if the economy recovers well afterward, it could save Trump’s reelection chances.
Currently, many polls currently show Biden beating Trump in November, some by as many as 11 points. But, states such as Ohio and Georgia are suspending their primary elections until the virus is contained. So, it’s impossible to know whether Biden’s current lead will sustain him through the fall.
The coronavirus has also given Trump a unique opportunity to show off his authoritarian side, which plays well with his base. Surgeon General Jerome Adams on Monday lauded the Trump administration’s handling of the virus but warned that the US won’t be able to fully contain it through authoritarian tactics.
“We are not an authoritarian nation, so we have to be careful when we say, ‘Let’s do what China did. Let’s do what South Korea did,’” Adams said during an interview on Fox & Friends.
There is no secret about President Trump’s penchant for authoritarianism. He’s worked to erode our system of checks and balances, concocted a story about national interest equating to his personal gain, and views patriotism as unflinching loyalty to him and his family.
And it’s not hard to imagine President Trump “doing what China did” and restricting the flow of information regarding the spread of the coronavirus. The more he can control the perception of the virus, the better it plays for the stock market, which in turn fuels his reelection efforts by creating the mirage of a strong economy.
However, as the American people learned in 2016, simply calling a spade by its name isn’t enough to keep it out of the dirt. Ending the Trump presidency after one term may not be as easy as ending a global pandemic.
