The Campaign Finally Begins
By: By Kimberley A. Strassel
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Memo to the Washington press corps: This presidential election isn’t over. Quite the opposite—this week it began.
The headlines of late proceed from the premise that Joe Biden is on a glide path to the White House. Stories highlight polls showing President Trump losing key swing states, even GOP strongholds. Texas is in play! Georgia is at risk! Journalists explain that Mr. Biden is banking money, while the Trump campaign’s leadership team is in chaos. They feature congressional race trackers, who rate more Republicans as vulnerable. All that’s left is for Jill Biden to pick the curtains.
There is no doubt Mr. Trump is at risk of losing. This is in part the result of the president’s uneven response to 2020’s two big crises—the coronavirus and racial unrest. Yet as big a part is the weirdness of a campaign cycle that has so far been dominated by only two stories. The press has doggedly and daily blamed Mr. Trump for a novel pandemic and for violence in liberal cities, and to ensure that the election boils down to a referendum on only those questions. The president has too often aided the media in that sabotage.
But this isn’t the way of elections, and there’s no reason to think this dynamic will reign through November. Surprising though it may be to CNN, Americans have concerns far beyond Arizona’s hospital capacity or Seattle’s East Precinct. Polls show they remain focused on the issues that traditionally define elections—jobs, taxes, health care, energy prices, trade, Supreme Court nominees. To date, they have heard almost nothing about the candidates’ differences on these topics.
Yet that began to change this week, with a contrast of the sort that could redefine this race. On Tuesday Mr. Biden released his $2 trillion climate-change plan—one of the few times he’s produced a detail on anything. It is radical—no surprise, since it is the product of a task force co-chaired by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Mr. Biden vows to outlaw all use of coal and natural gas to generate electricity within 15 years. He’d ban oil and gas production on federal land and offshore. He’d drive to “zero emissions” cars. He’d apply “aggressive” new “appliance- and building-efficiency standards.” He’d create a new “Environmental and Climate Justice Division” of the Justice Department to mete out “jail time” to corporate officials whose businesses “continue to pollute” communities.
Mr. Biden is promising to delete the jobs of millions of Americans—at a time of soaring unemployment. A study by the National Ocean Industries Association finds that a ban on offshore drilling alone would cost 200,000 jobs, damaging regional economies. Mr. Biden would overrun the nation with solar panels, wind turbines and charging stations. Basic consumer choice would disappear for vehicles, dishwashers, even homes. The Justice Department would become a weapon against businessmen who run afoul of fast-changing progressive standards.
To make this happen, Mr. Biden endorsed a plan to kill the Senate filibuster, which requires 60 votes to move most legislation forward and has long served as a guardrail against drastic partisan proposals. He joined progressives this week in calling on a prospective Democratic majority to abolish it if Republicans don’t go along with his plans.
The Trump White House used the week to lay out a competing vision. At a UPS facility in Georgia Wednesday, the president announced a “top-to-bottom overhaul” of the federal environmental review process, which stands in the way of nearly every infrastructure project in the country. Transformation of that permitting regime would clear the way for new highways, ports, bridges, pipelines and tunnels. That would create millions of jobs, attract more business to America and make the country more competitive. “Biden wants to massively re-regulate the energy economy,” Mr. Trump said, drawing the contrast. “We want to get things built.”
Try as the press did to stay on virus topic, even the New York Times was forced to admit: “With Dueling Environmental Events, Trump and Biden Define the Race.” The president made news with an additional contrast this week, highlighting his endorsement by the National Association of Police Organizations, a union-backed group that in 2008 and 2012 endorsed the Obama-Biden ticket. The Trump team is meanwhile dramatically ramping up its outreach; it’s placed more than $140 million on bookings for future broadcast and cable TV ads. In the past week alone it has spent $4 million on Facebook campaigns to begin putting real issues in front of voters.
The media will attempt to deep-six as much of the substance as it can and to ignore Mr. Biden’s radical agenda. Mr. Trump’s job is to make that evasion impossible—by using his pulpit to focus relentlessly on the choices in this election, as well as a second-term agenda centered on opportunity, jobs and economic growth. This week offered voters their first view of the normal campaign dynamic. If Mr. Trump wants to win, every week until November needs to provide more.
Kimberley A. Strassel
Columnist, The Wall Street Journal
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