Why the campaign is frozen: Trump, Biden and industrial-strength Teflon

https://www.foxnews.com/media/why-the-campaign-is-frozen-trump-biden-and-industrial-strength-teflon

 

If I had told you three months ago that a terrifying virus would invade America, infecting a million and a half people, killing 90,000 and throwing 35 million folks out of work, what would you have thought about President Trump’s reelection chances?

My first thought would have been that he’d be on the ropes, that any president would find it nearly impossible to win a second term in the face of such a devastating calamity.

My second thought would have been that Trump might be soaring in popularity if he was seen as leading the country in crisis--just as war can boost a commander-in-chief’s fortunes as people rally behind the leader.

And yet neither of those things has happened.

My view is that politics in this country have become almost completely tribal. Most people are so locked into their viewpoints, pro-Trump or anti-Trump, that they rationalize and excuse behavior that they would find intolerable in a figure on the other side.

“Americans feel more strongly about Trump, either for or against, than about any other candidate since polling began,” Continetti writes. “His supporters give his approval ratings a floor, and his detractors give his ratings a ceiling. There is not a lot of room in between.

So are both candidates so thoroughly coated in Teflon that they can’t be seriously scratched?

I liked this Continetti line: “Watching the numbers hardly budge over these past months, I have sometimes wondered what could move them. War? Spiritual revival? Space aliens?”

Barring an interplanetary invasion, the candidates are competing for a strikingly small number of persuadable voters. The election is likely to be a referendum on Trump’s handling of the coronavirus and the reopening; his team wants it to be a verdict on Biden’s fitness for office.

And the press, which was wrong about Trump four years ago and wrong about Biden three months ago, is left covering a virtual race that just doesn’t seem to budge.