The Media Has Missed that Biden Just Handed Trump a Potential Lifeline, But Can He Grab It?

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Due to a series of unimaginable circumstances, I am currently one of the only media commentators who is legitimately conservative, truly loathes President Donald Trump, likes Joe Biden personally, but who also believes that giving Democrats total control in this era of the coronavirus would be extremely dangerous. While this makes me politically homeless, it also allows me to, perhaps, see more clearly both sides of this presidential campaign, without the prism of partisanship blurring my vision.

While I am hardly in the business of giving Trump political advice, I believe that there is a path he could take at this week’s GOP “convention” that would, if the breaks went his way, get him right back into this race, and maybe even win it. This is because, while Trump is currently a very heavy and possibly doomed underdog, over the last few days, while the news media is far too biased to see it, Joe Biden has sowed the seeds of own potential destruction, but only if Trump is able to defy his own personality and ego in order to immediately take advantage of this critical mistake.

The basis for this theory is that the state of coronavirus pandemic, and where Americans want us to go from here, is going to dominate where nonpartisan voters finally end up. If the virus is still not seen as under control in late October (football and Halloween will be key indicators), it is impossible to see, rationally, how Trump can win.

Therefore, Trump needs to accept this reality and, like a poker player with only one option to salvage a terrible night, go ALL IN in his last/best bet. This big wager would be against the virus, a gambit to which Biden just opened the door as widely as a street-side restaurant desperately trying to qualify as outside dining.

In his convention speech Biden, to great media acclaim, made a massive tactical error by dramatically declaring that “no miracle is coming!” with regard to the virus. Even aside from the extreme pessimism inherent in that statement (not to mention the implied insult to both vaccine workers and religious people who believe in actual miracles), this made absolutely no sense politically.

This declaration did not add any votes for Biden as anyone to whom it appealed was already firmly in his corner. However, should a “miracle” occur, it would make Biden EXTREMELY vulnerable to being seen as completely out of touch with the current reality, and invested in an antiquated narrative which is destructive to where we go from here. He then doubled down on this unforced error by telling ABC that he would shut down the country if advised to by scientists (which, it should be noted, given the politics and incentives of those scientists he would be listening to, would be extremely likely to actually happen, regardless of the reality on the ground).

So, if I was running the GOP convention (yes, these are strange times, indeed!), Republicans would be focused like a laser this week on creating a crystal-clear contrast between Trump and Biden on the only issue that will really matter in this election. In effect, Trump would be predicting a “miracle” under the presumption that if one doesn’t happen he is not going to win anyway, so there is really not much to lose.

There is also a pretty decent chance that, if done properly, this seemingly risky bet could end up hitting the jackpot. The biggest problem for Trump here is that his own ego is hindering him from embracing the only remaining, politically potent virus narrative for his campaign.

Trump is now almost obsessed with the idea that his locking down of the country in March helped saved “millions” of lives. While it is obviously a personally enticing narrative, it may not be accurate, and it isn’t politically effective. It also makes it much more difficult to attack Biden on wanting to shut down the country further when he is accepting the idea, which may no longer backed by the data or basic logic, that government lockdowns “saved” that many lives.

Instead, the key to Trump using this issue to his advantage is for him to shock all of the news media and most of the voters by doing something that it appears he is incapable of doing. He needs to admit that he made a mistake.

Imagine if Trump said something like this at his convention:

“When this pandemic began, hoping for the best, I was dismissive of it. That was wrong, and I apologize.

Then, I was told by our experts that, if we didn’t take unprecedented actions, over two million Americans would soon die. This result was totally unacceptable to me, so I dramatically shifted course.

While I did the best I could to mitigate the damage that the entire world has suffered from this horrible illness, and we did a lot of good things, we could have done better, and I take responsibility for that reality.

However, we now know, partly thanks to the brave people of Sweden, that those experts may have been wrong. This virus, while a horrible fact of life, would not have caused the catastrophic medical damage on which our national lockdown was based. Consequently, following sound science, data, and logic, we need to shift our course once again.

Joe Biden says, if he wins, he wants to act in January of 2021 as if it is still March of 2020. He says he will shut life down again if the same experts who were wrong before tell him to do so.

I promise you, if I am re-elected, that will not happen.

Joe Biden has told you that “No miracle is coming,” but that is not true, and that statement has him now effectively invested in rooting politically FOR the virus. I am rooting against the virus, and I believe that we are very close to winning this battle. New advancements in treatment, the growing evidence that herd immunity is far more easily obtainable than previously thought, and a vaccine which is coming at a record pace, are going to soon prove Joe Biden and his followers very wrong.

When that happens, remember who the pessimist is, and who the optimist is. Remember who is charting the path forward based on where we are today, and who is pretending that time stopped in March. Remember who wants you to be able to live your life as a free American and get our economy moving again, and who wants to be able to force you to wear a mask into perpetuity. Remember who called for our schools to be opened and football to be played, and who gutlessly stayed silent while his political allies largely sabotaged both efforts.

Remember who was right, and who was wrong. And finally, when the media tells you that things got better because the mask mandates finally worked months later, remember that it’s possible nature finally took its course.”

If Trump gave this speech (I fully understand that doing so would require a magical reboot of his entire hard drive), it would be so dramatic that even many people who have tuned him out and believe him to lack any real credibility would at least start listening again.

If it turns out that the virus is not actually about to significantly recede (which is obviously very possible), then Trump will lose, just as he was already going to.

But if it turns out the other way, Trump could still pull off a real “miracle,” one made possible only by Democrats, once again, badly overplaying their hand.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.