Coronavirus’s first political fatality: Sanders — too soon to tell for Trump

Anyone remember Chandra Levy? The murder and subsequent scandal involving then-Congressman Gary Condit sparked a months-long media feeding frenzy — which ended abruptly on Sept. 11, 2001. National crises quickly sweep away the tabloid and the trivial — and the coronavirus crisis is doing just that to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Sanders is caught in a supply and demand problem. While the demand for news is constant on cable and via social media, the supply of news is uneven. In fact, normally there is a lack of significant news to interest the public — that’s why so much cable news and social media is dominated by the trivial, the sensational and the made-up sensational. But when the supply of serious news suddenly goes up — as it has with a nationwide pandemic, for example — all other news is swept away.

If Sanders was still a plausible contender for the Democratic nomination, he would still be news and his statements would be taken seriously. But Sanders is not a serious contender and has slipped into the category of trivialities for which people just don’t have time.

It should be understood that the possibility that Sanders would be the Democratic nominee was mortally wounded on the March 3 “Super Tuesday” election and finished off on March 10.

But Sanders was still game to fire away at former Vice President Joe Biden and promote his revolution — in spite of Democratic voters definitively rejecting him. For that reason, Sanders was good entertainment, and the cable news shows and political podcasts were more than happy to give him a platform.

But Sanders was never really running to be president. He was running to be Che Guevara, promoting his revolution. His interest in winning the Democratic nomination or defeating Trump was always incidental to promoting his own personality cult and socialist agenda. Sanders absolutely refused to make concessions that would build a winning coalition. His attitude was — and remains — “It’s my way or no way.”

Consider that he was the only Democratic candidate to be absent from the commemoration of the march on Selma, Ala. He had a big celebrity-studded rally in Los Angeles to headline. Even in the CNN/Univision debate, where much of the punditocracy expected Sanders to run roughshod over an expected-to-be ill-prepared Biden, Sanders could not make the necessary adjustments to be a viable alternative. The closing statement said it all — when Sanders was determined to pivot to his anti-billionaire hobbyhorse even in the face of a public health crisis not seen in over 100 years.

Absent the coronavirus, Sanders would almost certainly have campaigned all the way up to the Democratic convention, regardless of the results along the way. After all, the most heroic revolutionaries are the martyrs. But the virus has taken away all the media opportunities and eliminated the rallies, trivializing Sanders and allowing Biden to begin running fully against Trump without having to cut a deal with Sanders.

For Trump, the jury is still out.

By re-election time, all presidents are unfairly stuck shouldering the blame for every problem and controversy in the country. But let’s not pity incumbent presidents too much — they also take credit for everything too.

How things play out for Trump is fairly complicated. On the debit side, he was dismissive of the virus threat early, and it is clear that the country did not have a proper testing protocol in place. On the credit side, he did stop travel from China early and has been taking much bolder action in recent days — and the public likes bold action.

While Trump might be able to escape blame for the inevitable recession that is coming, Election Day is nearly eight months away, and voters may not be willing to excuse the president by then. In the end — for Trump — it all comes down to how effective the policy response is and how long the contagion disrupts the country.

For the past two years, it looked like the presidential election would come down to whether the Democrats, with all their advantages, could not screw things up. It turns out that the election will more likely turn on the competency of the Trump administration over the next 90 days.

Keith Naughton, Ph.D., co-founder of Silent Majority Strategies, is a public affairs consultant who specialized in Pennsylvania judicial elections. Follow him on Twitter @KNaughton711