Whatever happened to the 2020 presidential campaign? Remember that? You know, for the election that's just six months away?
Well, you'd think it was in limbo with all the lock down and stay-at-home and social-distancing orders stemming from the novel coronavirus. But campaigns are not stopped. They've just become pretty much invisible thanks to the frenzy of anxiety over COVID-19. All but one campaign, anyway.
Joe Biden, the former vice president and longtime senator who has chaired powerful committees and brokered national deals with foreign leaders, is learning a new and solo skill - hosting a podcast from his home in Wilmington, Delaware, according to The Washington Post.
Bernie Sanders, who ran the largest city in Vermont before serving in the U.S. Senate for three decades, also is trying something new - staging a livestreamed talk show from his home in Burlington.
"Welcome to campaigning in the age of pandemic," The Post writes. "For Americans accustomed to candidates delivering lofty speeches before crowds of thousands ... this new era of campaigning is yet another example of traditions upended and expectations disrupted."
Senate Television via AP/In this image from video provided by BernieSanders.com, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks from Washington on March 17, 2020.These candidates who spent years honing a sense of spectacle and rhetoric are reduced to amateur-style programs in their homes, The Post continues. "Without studios or large event staffs, the programs do not so much resemble political events as they do, at best, local-access cable shows."
Not so for the incumbent. Donald Trump campaigns every day using as his bully pulpit a platform that is supposed to be for updates on the pandemic. But when Trump is at the podium, nine times out of 10, he's either misrepresenting what the real experts have said or are about to tell the public. Or the president is saying Democratic state governors don't really know what they need - like ventilators. Or he is calling the media "nasty" and saying he takes no responsibility for stalled tests, stockpiled ventilators that are helping no one or the pandemic division of the government that his administration scuttled immediately upon taking office.
To a nation trapped at home and starved to see something happen, it seems not to matter that this is the same man who not so long ago called the virus a hoax designed alternately by Democrats or the media to damage him. It is always all about him, of course. And not until this past week did Trump reverse his assertion of days before that he'd reopen the country and put American back to work on Easter.
(READ MORE: Democrats postpone convention until August because of coronavirus)
Then last Sunday, he said the social distancing "campaign" would be extended until April 30. Finally on Tuesday, he began to sound like a president should. For about 13 minutes, he held it together well, warning the virus is a matter of life and death.
"You know, I'm a cheerleader for the country," he said. "We're going through the worst thing that the country's probably ever seen ... but I want to give people in this country hope."
Unfortunately by time you read this, he'll likely have reversed himself yet again - and probably on more than one front.
Erin Schaff, The New York Times/President Donald Trump speaks at a news conference with members of the coronavirus task force at the White House on Tuesday.Despite all that, Trump's virus briefings have become a ratings hit, according to The New York Times. While Biden and Sanders are relegated to media interviews, grainy virtual events and conference calls with experts from their homes, "Trump's backers have relished seeing him take a leadership role in the crisis," both in the White House press room and in the Rose Garden.
But most voters are simply starting to pay less attention to the election entirely, as the campaign has entered what The Times called "a kind of coronavirus deep freeze."
For this, we in the media are partly to blame. Just as cable news outlets helped Trump in 2016 by airing his outrageous rally speeches to help raise station ratings, this year giving him 90 minutes or two hours of free airtime everyday instead of the 13 minutes he may on some days deserve is also a matter of life or death for our country.
Veteran news anchor Ted Koppel said on Wednesday that television news executives had forgotten a crucial distinction of their profession.
"Training a camera on a live event, and just letting it play out, is technology, not journalism; journalism requires editing and context," Koppel wrote in an email to The Times. "I recognize that presidential utterances occupy a unique category. Within that category, however, President Trump has created a special compartment all his own. The question, clearly, is whether his status as president of the United States obliges us to broadcast his every briefing live. No. No more so than you at The Times should be obliged to provide your readers with a daily, verbatim account."
Wow. We so miss Ted Koppel.
And we urge America not to forget that Election Day is around the corner - with or without coronavirus. Americans do not think COVID-19 is a hoax cooked up by anyone, let alone by Trump's rival political party or the media. And voters won't forget this president's consistent bungling of what he finally may have realized is a life-or-death public health crisis.