US economy

On Politics: ‘A Major War’



Good morning and welcome to On Politics, a daily political analysis of the 2020 elections based on reporting by New York Times journalists.

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  • There’s a new No. 1 issue on Democratic voters’ minds — and the minds of all Americans, it’s fair to say: the coronavirus.

  • President Trump’s response to the crisis — including an address to the nation on Wednesday night in which he praised his own response and announced a partial ban on travel from continental Europe — has failed to quell concerns from many commentators, including some conservative pundits, about whether the federal government is up to the task.

  • By Thursday afternoon, both Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders had delivered speeches of their own, auditioning for the role of president and seeking to one-up Trump in a single swoop. Sanders declared that the crisis “is on a scale of a major war” and argued that “we must act accordingly.”

  • Biden faulted the president’s “adversarial relationship with the truth” and outlined his own multipronged plan for confronting the crisis. He proposed expanding access to free virus testing, helping to increase hospital capacity and speeding up the push for a vaccine.

  • The pandemic has the potential to damage Trump in more than one way. First of all, even as his approval ratings have remained underwater, perceptions that Trump is a strong leader have offered him some safe harbor. Gallup regularly asks Americans for their opinions of the president on a range of personal qualities; the strength of his leadership is the only one on which he consistently receives positive marks.

  • And with the virus sending the stock market into free fall, the country’s thriving economy could soon find itself in a recession. Trump generally gets a positive review from most Americans for his handling of the economy; if the economic picture were to go dark, he could be deprived of one of his major talking points as the 2020 campaign revs up.

  • Trump is working with Congress to craft legislation that will confront both the virus’s economic fallout and national health concerns. As of Thursday night, those negotiations hadn’t yet been resolved. For more on where things stand, scroll down for a dispatch from our Washington correspondent Emily Cochrane.

  • The Democratic presidential debate scheduled for this Sunday has been moved from Arizona to Washington amid concerns over — you guessed it — the coronavirus. The debate, which will be hosted by CNN, will take place without a live audience.

  • For the president, the coronavirus is starting to hit close to home. A Brazilian official tested positive soon after meeting last week at Mar-a-Lago with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. That official was part of a delegation led by Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, who was subsequently tested and is awaiting his results. Stephanie Grisham, the White House press secretary, said Trump and Pence had no plans to get tested, adding that they “had almost no interactions with the individual who tested positive.”

  • Biden needs to scale up his operation, and to do so, he has hired a new campaign manager: Jennifer O’Malley Dillon. She was the manager of Beto O’Rourke’s short-lived presidential campaign last year; before that, she was a senior aide on Barack Obama’s re-election team in 2012.

Bernie Sanders spoke in Burlington, Vt., on Thursday about how he would handle a crisis like the coronavirus if he were president.


The House is expected to vote on Friday on a package intended to help people affected by the coronavirus: free testing, expanded unemployment insurance, new funds to help food assistance programs and Medicaid, and paid sick leave for 14 days.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, traded phone calls all day about the measure, and just before 9 p.m., she came out of her office to tell reporters who had waited there for about four hours that they were close to a deal. (We were not practicing social distancing — that’s an occupational hazard on Capitol Hill.)

Staff members are expected to work through the night on the final language of the bill and provisions related to family and medical leave. And while Mr. Mnuchin’s support is expected to bolster the vote tally in the House, the Senate won’t take it up until next week: On Thursday, Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, announced that he would send his members home for the weekend, but cancel their scheduled recess next week and bring them back on Monday.


No state serves as a better metaphor for the 2016 election than Michigan.

Long considered a safe Democratic stronghold, it broke for Trump by just 10,000 votes, contributing to Hillary Clinton’s Electoral College defeat. Clinton underperformed in a range of crucial areas, including with rural voters — who broke for Trump — and African-Americans, who went heavily for Clinton, as expected, but turned out in relatively low numbers.

Biden’s win in the Michigan primary this week suggests that something quite different could be in store come November.

In what ended up being a warning sign of things to come, Clinton narrowly lost the 2016 Democratic primary there to Sanders. But on Tuesday, Biden trounced Sanders and drew strong support from a broad coalition of voters, including college-educated white women, moderates and those over 45.

Just as significant, the primary crushed past Democratic turnout records in the state by more than 30 percent.

In a new article, our reporters Trip Gabriel and Stephanie Saul examined what the results could mean for the general election if Biden were to become the nominee.

“In a state like Michigan, when you have a record turnout coming — and I think we do in November — that is a huge benefit to the Democratic nominee,” Richard Czuba, a nonpartisan Michigan pollster, told Trip and Stephanie. “There just aren’t enough Republicans in Michigan.”

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Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.



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