Trump appeals to Americans who have lost jobs, not lives. And it can work for your reelection campaign

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President Trump's plan to reopen the economy 4:22

(CNN) - With his crusade to reopen the United States, President Donald Trump is betting on the second consecutive election that he has a better idea of ​​the country's mood than his opponents.

Trump's calculation to reject science and push to rapidly accelerate an economy with the nation still devastated by covid-19 could kill many more of the 85,000 Americans who have already died.

That seems like a price Trump is willing to pay, as he directly appeals to the many millions of Americans who are also victims of the pandemic, but who have paid with their jobs, not their lives. That is a message that could resonate.

In states where the virus has not caused massive death rates, it may seem remote. But the economic plague is everywhere, and it can spark a political storm that could punish Democrats if Trump can portray them as stubborn enemies of a return to work or licensees that become long-term job losses.

• CDC guidelines filed by the Trump administration detail a much stricter roadmap for the economic reopening of the coronavirus

In 2016, Trump confused the political class by seizing the "forgotten Americans" who had seen their jobs disappear in the industrial heartland of low-wage economies in Asia and despised the promises of what they considered politically correct "globalist" politicians in both parties.

Four years later, the president, whose refusal to wear a mask sends a message of challenge and external authenticity to his followers, is again choosing a path that ignores the experts' warnings. Public health officials and many of Trump's critics argue that opening stores, restaurants, barber shops, movie theaters, and bars, even at reduced capacity, runs the risk of igniting new epidemics even before an expected resurgence of the virus in the fall.

• OPINION | Coronavirus: Trump's refusal to wear a mask is most revealing

Trump has acknowledged that lives will be lost, but says there is no alternative to revive the economy on which so many lives depend and on which his reelection depends.

"Will some people be seriously affected? Yes, ”said Trump earlier this month. But he added: "We have to open our country and we have to open it soon."

Or as Trump's economic adviser Peter Navarro put it in a CNN forum Thursday night: "If we don't open this economy again, we are not going to have an economy."

The virus and its unknown impact on politics

The success or failure of Trump's gamble will depend, at least in part, on a virus that is highly transmissible and does not have a current vaccine or proven therapy. If the pandemic subsides, and the opening states create a semblance of normal life, the president could get credit for his early call to restart the economy. If, in November, elections are primarily focused on economic issues, you may have maneuvered on a launch pad for a victory that seemed unlikely as the pandemic spread in recent weeks.

On the other hand, if state openings trigger a resurgence of the virus before a deadly winter, new questions will be raised about Trump's leadership and the waste of human life. After denying the virus in the first place and not having properly prepared, you will have spoiled the reopening, which could cause even more financial harm.

The conundrum reveals the most intriguing political questions in the months ahead: How will the trauma of the pandemic affect voter sentiment? Have enough of the undecided voters, especially the crucial block of suburban women, already pushed away Trump's repeated mistakes to make Joe Biden president?

Or are the Washington experts missing something? Does the relentless Beltway focus on Trump's lies, organizational disasters, and distractions obscuring the possibility that he has once again identified a latent political force with his reopening campaign that could rally his 2016 coalition and design a night of victory still most surprising in November? Or is there an unknown anti-Trump wave build fueled by dissatisfaction with his performance?

A political move from the intestine

Trump's instinctive call on the economy reflects how the country's deep ideological and cultural divide has exploited. He has strongly supported conservative protesters who have turned to Democratic governors who ordered quarantines, despite polls showing that the discontented are a minority.

He never shared former President Barack Obama's vision of a unified United States. Instead, Trump has worked to electrify the conservative half of the country. By supporting openings, he is lining up among the often blue-collar conservatives in the Midwest and south of the country who populate his political base. Suburban and middle-class voters on the coasts and in cities are more likely to vote for Democrats, and they can also work in office jobs and thus can log in to the laptop at home. But the economic crisis has disproportionately affected lower-paid workers who are more likely to be laid off and need to return to the workplace.

For example, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Wednesday that 40% of people laid off in March came from households earning less than $ 40,000 a year.

Still, workers in low-paid manual and service jobs, jobs that are disproportionately filled by minorities, are also among those most at risk of infection, so it does not follow that all workers agree with the president. . Trump, for example, has ordered the reopening of meat packing plants across the country. It ignored the pleas of workers who complained that their employers failed to provide protective equipment and physical distance to minimize the risk of infection.

In Pennsylvania, this Thursday, Trump pushed conservatives furious that Democratic Governor Tom Wolf will not allow some southeastern Republican counties to open.

"We have to get their governor in Pennsylvania to start opening," Trump said. The counties in question still do not meet the governor's standards of 50 cases per 100,000 people, which he says can allow a safe reopening.

It is still too early to say how openings will affect the virus

Trump's hunch of opening the country explains why he now turned to experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci, who warned on Wednesday that opening too fast could cause unnecessary suffering and death.

In recent days, there is evidence that, overall, the trend for national infections may be on a downward trend. New cases have been on the decline in Georgia and Florida, for example, two of the most aggressive states in the reopening. Still, in Texas, another state that opened, cases are increasing dramatically, and many major population centers in Florida and Georgia are still closed. It will probably be at least another two weeks, given the incubation period for covid-19, before the impact of state openings on infections can be properly assessed.

But with 36 million people unemployed in the most dire collapse in the everyday economy since the 1930s, public tolerance for confinements is sure to be short-lived, one of the reasons the president can be so aggressive in pressing for the reopening of the economy.

Biden seems aware that flatly opposing an economic opening in such extreme times is a political responsibility.

“The problem is not whether to reopen or not. We all want to reopen. It's how to reopen safely and effectively, ”the former vice president said in a statement about Trump's visit to Pennsylvania.

"The Trump administration has simply not done the work to make that happen, except take care of yourself in the White House," Biden said, referring to the comprehensive diagnostic tests at the White House that Trump has not offered to all Americans.

Democrats have a strong argument to show that Trump's erratic leadership has made the pandemic in the United States far worse than necessary. The President spent months arguing that the coronavirus would never be a problem in the United States and has consistently spread misinformation about its scale and the threat of the virus. It did nothing to prepare America's businesses, school systems, or transportation infrastructure for the impact of the closings.

Their inability to establish a robust regime of testing, tracing, and isolation, except in the White House, means that most Americans lack sufficient guarantees to return to work, a factor that could delay Trump's expected partial economic recovery for November. . And Trump also sided with the interests of big business by refusing to fully use the Defense Production Act to mass-produce protective equipment for medical workers on the front lines, a factor that undermines his claims to be a defender of the working class.

Democrats can also argue that Trump's aggressive push for openness will cost tens of thousands of lives. A new model often used by the White House calculated the probability that deaths by August 4 will be 140,000 due to state openings. Hopefully it doesn't get that bad. But if he does, Biden will be in a position to claim that Trump let people die to win a second term and benefit his friends in big business.

So far, Democratic governors who have faced a fierce challenge from the pandemic have won strong voter support in the polls. However, they will face a delicate task in turning to an economic message when the pain of quarantine begins to deepen.

Still, in the new political age of compromised truth, basing a campaign message against Trump on facts and details and science is a risk in itself. The truth has not yet brought him down.

2020 Elections United States