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Monday night, former vice president Joe Biden will formally accept the Democratic Party’s nomination for presidential candidate. Biden, who recently unveiled his running mate, has been leading the incumbent, Donald Trump, in recent polls. However, the run-up to the November election has been fraught in recent weeks with a political firestorm.
It’s not a secret that American politics are currently highly polarized and partisan. This is partly due to decades of escalating conflicts between the executive branch and the legislative branch. Some pundits blame Fox News, while others point to social media and echo chambers online. Of course, no one argues that Donald Trump has helped to heal these divisions: chaos and division are central strategies of his presidency.
So, what does the path to November look like?
The incumbent Trump has been laser-focused on the USPS in recent weeks. The president claims that mail-in voting is more prone to fraud. He has vehemently opposed calls from many on the left to enact a universal mail-in voting initiative to address the challenges of the pandemic. However, the president himself mails his own vote in, and has done so for decades. In spite of this hypocrisy, Trump has made moves to undercut the USPS.
Speaking to Fox News, Trump confirmed that he would block any funding bill for the USPS. However, Republican strategists have noted that this could backfire. Trump’s own supporters tend to be older, and live in more rural areas with poorer cellular service and less polling places. This means they are more likely to stay home on election day. However, the president’s rhetoric has made them hesitant to cast their ballots by mail, which could seriously cost the Trump campaign.
Meanwhile, Biden is in a similar position to Franklin Roosevelt in the 1932 election. Despite being more of a moderate himself, Biden faces more pressure from his left than from the center. Progressive voices are ascendent in the Democratic party, and calls for sweeping government aid to address the COVID-19 crisis are myriad.
This means that Biden might need to adjust his personal style to account for this. His rhetoric has shifted in recent months, with his focus moving to rebuilding the economy. His new campaign slogan, “Build Back Better,” has been evidence of this. The campaign has unveiled sweeping economic policy that the candidate would enact if elected. The question of how exactly these policies will get past Republicans in the Senate, however, remains.
