The closing minutes of the second and final presidential debate seemed to pack the entirety of the campaign into two minutes.
The setup came in a question from moderator Kristen Welker, who asked both President Trump and his rival Joe Biden what they would say in their inaugural address to Americans who did not vote for them.
Trump, who went first, did not answer the question. Instead he predicted that if the former vice president were elected, “you will have a depression the likes of which you’ve never seen, your 401(k)s will go to hell, and it will be a very sad day for this country.”
When his turn came, Biden said he’d choose “science over fiction,” “hope over fear,” “deal with systemic racism,” ensure that “everyone has an even chance,” and create “millions” of new jobs in clean energy. The former vice president said he would represent all Americans “whether you voted for me or against me.”
The moment marked the last chance for each candidate to deliver a closing message to a national audience; the campaign equivalent of the final minutes of a soccer match when the sides scramble furiously to score.
Trump’s argument may be one of necessity: His concealing, dismissing, mismanaging and ultimately losing control of the pandemic has left him pointing to the stock market, which in the closing days of the campaign hovers at pre-pandemic levels, as a proxy for his performance.
That someone who played a successful businessperson on TV now clings to a financial market as a political life preserver brings its own irony. To the extent stocks have held their ground, they’ve done so thanks in part to a pandemic-induced lowering of interest rates by the Federal Reserve. In another twist, the central bank’s chairman was, at least until COVID-19 arrived, a regular Trump target.
Though stocks might hold sway with some of the roughly one-third of Americans who have a 401(k) plan, there aren’t enough of them to reelect a president. Even in normal times, share prices are hardly a proxy for prosperity. And the times are anything but normal. More Americans lost their jobs in two months last spring than during the Great Depression and the recession of 2008 combined.
For his part, Biden, if you untangle the syntax, sought to unite. The economy matters there, too. The fault lines laid bare by the pandemic include widening inequality, which the pandemic threatens to accelerate without a Biden administration and its allies in Congress finding a way to rebuild a safety net that has frayed beyond repair.
In a New York Times/Siena College poll earlier this month, 91% of likely Democratic voters said they support a new $2 trillion stimulus package to extend unemployment insurance, send stimulus checks to most Americans, and provide financial support to state and local governments.
Predictably by now, the survey divided sharply on partisan lines. With one exception: The proposed stimulus also commanded support from a majority (56%) of likely Republican voters.
Whether measured in lives ended or upended, the pandemic’s toll grows by the day. The coming together that Biden is offering may be taking shape already.