Lori Walsh: Welcome to In the Moment. I'm Lori Walsh. South Dakota Public Broadcasting brings you the latest on the coronavirus pandemic and how it is impacting South Dakota public health, supply chains, and the economy. We're also talking about the politics of the pandemic. For instance, how is COVID-19 affecting Democratic primaries? Lisa Hager is an assistant professor of political science at South Dakota State University. She joins us on the phone. Professor Hager, welcome. Thanks for being here.
Lisa Hager: Yeah, thank you. Good morning.
Lori Walsh: David Wiltse is an associate professor of political science at SDSU as well. Professor Wiltse, thanks for being here as well.
David Wiltse: Good morning.
Lori Walsh: All right. Let's talk about just the challenges of getting out the vote in a time like this. Getting out the vote is so vital to campaigns and then yet social distancing and staying at home is the order of the day. Lisa, let's start with you. Give us sort of a big picture look at how to process that dilemma.
Lisa Hager: Yeah. Right now, what we're seeing, especially with the Democratic primary, is you have both of the campaigns from Sanders and Biden trying to kind of figure out what they can do in terms of reaching voters. They're not holding those rallies that they typically hold. You have Biden, for instance, doing more kind of like online sort of streaming videos for his supporters and whatnot. Then obviously, they're just not really quite sure what's going to happen with some of these primaries. States are looking to move them to a time when hopefully we won't be in the situation of social distancing and whatnot.
Lori Walsh: What are some of the challenges of moving a primary?
Lisa Hager: The biggest thing is just again like uncertainty. What we're seeing here is should Sanders continue to even stay in the race in the first place. For the most part, he's been mathematically eliminated, but what some are talking about is that he can continue to stay in the race and start to try to force Biden and the Democratic party to adopt more progressive platforms as they move into the general election and whatnot. It just makes it more difficult to actually campaign when you don't know when these different primaries are going to be, if that could potentially impact the order in which different States are going, things like that.
Lori Walsh: David, talk a little bit about how this idea of the pandemic and really the administration's response has also changed everything from messaging to getting out the vote and figuring out how to run a campaign, but also what they're talking about.
David Wiltse: I think the most important thing when it comes to kind of the change in rhetoric that I'm seeing is we're really beginning to see the candidates' focus on competence. Up to this point, there's been plenty for Democrats to complain about in terms of Trump's character and all the issues with the impeachment, but now this is really his first crisis that he's had to deal with. We've not seen the kind of response, the kind of reaction, that we are in other countries with coordination of state resources and these sorts of things. It really is giving Democrats an issue to talk about, but it's one they have to be very careful about, the way they cast it, and not try to overtly politicize it. They're in a tricky position when it comes to their rhetoric, and not just the logistics of the campaign that Lisa was talking about.
Lori Walsh: Okay. Let's talk about that a little more, David. What is over-politicizing and what is pointing out flaws in the administration's response, which clearly the administration has ... Maybe not the president hasn't admitted any fault or blame or problems. He says it's been perfect, but we've certainly heard from other people on the task force saying, "Yes, we didn't do this quickly enough." What does over-politicizing look like? How delicate is that walk for people like Joe Biden?
David Wiltse: I don't know if I can give you a real sense of what over-politicization is. I think it's going to be one of these things that we kind of know it when we see it. We might not be able to put a definition on it. This is brand new for us. We've never done a campaign with this kind of a pandemic in place. They are going to have to be very careful about the way they approach any kind of criticism of the president and the administration. I think if they stick to the more technical things, we have diminished certain state capacities, we've diminished the epidemic response team connected with EMS, the idea, or not the idea, but the shortage of certain parts for the test.
I know these swabs that are used in the testing process, there's a huge shortage on them right now because they come from Italy. These are the sorts of things they have to focus on if they want to use this as a point in their campaigns, but not attach blame to the president for the pandemic in general or to be in that very uncomfortable position of being accused of taking advantage of human suffering for their own political gain.
Lori Walsh: Lisa, the president has called this a war against an invisible enemy. Certainly, as we see the response from the American people, there's been a ... Not since September 11th has an entire country been asked to take certain actions in America that I can remember. Back then, it was go, keep the economy going and band together. Now, it's everybody stay home and flatten the curve. How hard is it to campaign against a president who is at war in many ways? Much of the language is about being at war and we'll get through this together. Even though we're socially distanced, we'll get through it together apart. Lisa, it's got to be tough to unseat a president during what Americans might see as wartime.
Lisa Hager: For right now, we're obviously fairly used to hearing that war rhetoric. That's commonly used when a presidential administration does want to respond to some sort of issue, so things like the war on crime, the war on terrorism. Here we have yet another war. That primes people to be more supportive of the president, to recognize that this is really an issue. We're taking it very seriously because we're calling it a war.
I think one of the difficulties that we're seeing here is that the public's response to the coronavirus and social distancing has been somewhat slow. We're still seeing the various articles coming out where young people are not really maybe taking this as seriously as they should. Not obviously all of them, but there are some, and I think sometimes those stories are sensationalizing some of the things that are happening. The fact that the president is being criticized at times for not having started efforts to flatten the curve sooner is something that could actually make it easier for the president to not be reelected in November.
Lori Walsh: And Lisa-
David Wiltse: Yeah. If I could just slide in on one thing on the war analogy.
What we need to look at here if we want to test this analogy is, what is the public response to the president in terms of his approval? One thing that we've seen with honest to goodness national security crises is this rally around the flag effect, where all of a sudden people just kind of set aside their partisanship and then move to a position of support for the administration. We see this in almost every large scale international intervention that we've undertaken, but we haven't seen this kind of movement towards presidential support here. It might go up a little bit, but it's not going to be the same kind of rally effect that we had after either the Gulf Wars, the Vietnam War, and several others. September 11th, for example. That's what I'd be looking at as kind of a measure of whether this is a reasonable analogy to make in the first instance.
Lori Walsh: Have we seen polls on that yet, David?
David Wiltse: Not yet.
Lori Walsh: Not recently. Yeah. In the last-
David Wiltse: I've not seen ... What I'm saying is we need to look at the president's overall approval as a proxy for this kind of a rally effect. We've not seen a big rebound there. He's still kind of in that same range that he's been throughout most of his administration. The response to this has been very conditioned on partisanship. Whether it's the perception that people take on the gravity of the situation to how people are reacting in their personal lives, it's all been conditioned on partisanship. Democrats see it as a much deeper threat. They are taking steps within their lives with social isolation, self-quarantining, these sorts of things, whereas we've not seen the same kinds of reaction for people who identify as Republicans.
Lori Walsh: Yeah. I want to go back to something Lisa said about young people because yesterday's press conference with Deborah Birx, who is the leader of the task force, she really kind of called out that millennial generation and said we need you to be healthy. The data is coming in that this might be riskier for young people than we thought before. There has been a sense from the administration, sort of classic ... There's been a lot written about okay, boomer. Everybody can agree on one thing and that's to gang up on the millennials, but I'm wondering, Lisa, what impact that has on young voters because as more and more people stand up and say, "You need to do the right thing", those are the voters that Democrats really need to show up in November for the election.
Lisa Hager: Right. I know just even from personal experience that the fact that millennials are getting called out has actually caused some contention with the people who happen to be my age because I am a millennial. Millennials are in their late twenties, early thirties, and who actually tend to be shown a lot of times in those various articles are that Gen Z, that younger college, just out of college population who maybe aren't necessarily taking this threat as seriously. I think even some of that rhetoric is alienating some of those who are into their careers and have young families and maybe are taking the distancing and whatnot serious.
I do think that it has an impact in just trying to get those voters out, if they feel like they're being targeted. In one sense, if they are already politically engaged and they're not necessarily feeling that social distancing is as important as the CDC and others are telling us it is, that may not hinder them from going to the polls.
They may be, "Why are we really moving primaries or whatnot?" I suspect that people who aren't necessarily taking this social distancing and the threat of coronavirus seriously probably aren't your most politically engaged individuals in the first place. I'm wondering if they're even really those who could be persuaded to vote. We'll just have to kind of see.
The other thing when we're talking about moving elections or whatnot, one option would be not even just to move them, but to conduct elections by mail. Some states already do that. That's a definite option.
Lori Walsh: One of the questions I was going to ask you in that with that millennial and Gen Z generation, these are people who understand blockchain and online voting and how to vote with a thumbprint. Could it also be an opportunity for them to stand up and say, "Why are we doing this in an old-fashioned way? We think there's a better way to do that." Whether that's as simple as people might think is another topic, but could there be an increased demand in a different way to handle an election?
Lisa Hager: I think there possibly could be. I think what we might be able to see is an opportunity to use this as an experiment. We may be literally forced to conduct elections by mail. I'm not sure how easily various auditors' offices and whatnot are going to accept trying to put these online and whatnot, but I think just trying to make voting easier, if you just get a ballot in the mail, it could actually up your turnout rates. Whether that actually continues long-term is questionable. Most of the time when we see efforts to make voting easier, you get an initial blip in turnout, but then things really don't tend to stay at that increased level.
Lori Walsh: Let's talk a little bit about just the communication that's coming out of the White House, if you're willing. Then I want to go back to sort of the Joe Biden not having rallies and how that has changed his campaign and really how people see him.
But first, David, any comments on really how the president gets up and talks and then everybody sort of waits for ... Today, he spent probably a minute joking about the press and how they're so much nicer if they sit further apart. I didn't hear a lot of laughter from the press corps, but people are waiting for Dr. Birx. They're waiting for Anthony Fauchi. They're waiting for the FDA representatives to speak.
When the president says, "Hey, 15 days, everybody ... " What did he say? He was like 15 days to flatten the curve. I'm paraphrasing there. How important are those messages from the president? How closely are people listening to him and the things he says? Does that fall on party lines?
David Wiltse: Oh, it absolutely does. This is one of the biggest criticisms of this president that we're seeing right now because we've become so conditioned on our partisanship in terms of how we give him any credibility. This is not just him personally. This spills over into his entire administration. When you lose that degree of credibility with as large of a portion of the American public as he has, that is just ... It's going to have a huge impact on our response to government action. Trust in government is absolutely key when it comes to dealing with this kind of collective security issue. If we don't trust the government to any fair degree, as we don't anymore, our response is going to be hindered, if you're always questioning, "What's this person's motive? Is he serious? Is he credible?"
We've seen so many mixed messages from him over the past two months from the point where he was calling this a hoax to now where he has become very serious about it and does understand the impact and what this is going to look like in terms of a real public health emergency. It's very difficult for him to take center stage now. He is going to have to rely upon his technocrats, the people in the CDC and other federal agencies, to provide that weight and provide that credibility, where the credibility he's just lost.
Lori Walsh: David, speak for a moment to this idea of the president consistently calling this the Chinese Virus. I've heard from a lot of people in South Dakota who are upset by that and find it xenophobic. It might have impacts on actions against a Chinese Americans or any Asian Americans who people are assuming are Chinese.
But other people that I've talked to said, "Well, that's what it is and it's important to ... People can't remember coronavirus", or, "It's okay for us to ..." Do you think is this about trade to him? Is it about blame to him? Is it about xenophobia? Is it just about avoiding the blame and pointing out to people that this is a crisis he did not cause?
David Wiltse: Yeah. I don't really want to speak to what he's thinking when he says this, but it's pretty clear that this is a way to externalize the problem. This is not our issue. This was put upon us by an outside actor. The criticisms of this are very sound. Even early on before we had our first cases here, we began to see people taking a racialized reaction to this. Chinese restaurants virtually empty across the country. Anecdotes from across the country of Chinese Americans and other Asians who are facing drops in business, personal comments as they're just going about their daily lives.
This does kind of fall in line with other rhetoric that we've seen from this president when we're dealing with the Chinese and dealing with other countries. I think this kind of language really does matter in the end, not so much because of the accuracy of it, yeah, it came from China, but the way that we respond to it in how this is going to change the way that certain people are reacting to advice or instructions coming from the government. It's tinged by racial animosity.
Lori Walsh: Lisa, any thoughts you wanted to add to that? That sort of rhetoric of, "It's not my fault", which we've heard the president say specifically outside of calling it the Chinese Virus. He specifically said, "It's not my fault. There's nothing ... This has never happened before. Nobody could predict it." He's consistently making sure that people understand the stock market's very important to him. The country's economy was a campaign, something he really talked about at his rallies about how well everything was going. He really wants people to know it's not his fault. Are there consequences to that for him politically?
Lisa Hager: Right. Yeah. It's somewhat difficult to know the exact intentions behind what he's saying when he calls the coronavirus the Chinese Virus. Like Dave was saying, my gut reaction is that this is a way to make it very clear that this is not his fault. Since he did run on such a heavy economic agenda, the fact that we are going through this may be something that does cast a black mark on his campaign.
The economy is not in a good spot. Presidents are routinely judged based on the economic conditions. Their electoral hopes also hinge on that. It may just hurt him regardless of whether or not this is his fault.
The other thing with calling this the Chinese Virus, this is also just potentially a way for him to make what he's saying possibly more accessible to his audience. Oftentimes, he does not speak in a very technical manner. I don't know if this was possibly a way to make COVID-19 and coronavirus just easy for people to understand right off the bat. "This is where it came from and it's not my fault."
Lori Walsh: Right. We've also heard the talk about ... There's subtext here with closing borders and trade and the Chinese Virus and all kinds of things. There is still a campaign and it's not just Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders who are running. The president is still also thinking about 2020 in November of this year.
Lisa Hager, David Wiltse, I want to thank you so much for being here with us. We'll talk to you again soon.
Lisa Hager: All right. Sounds great.
David Wiltse: Thanks.
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