America's twin crises highlight Trump's biggest weaknesses

For political leaders, the coronavirus crisis requires attention to detail, patience, trust in experts and a willingness to learn

America's twin crises highlight Trump's biggest weaknesses

For political leaders, the coronavirus crisis requires attention to detail, patience, trust in experts and a willingness to learn. Protests against systemic racism shout out the voices of understanding, unity and reconciliation.

Both call for stability and sympathy.

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None of these attributes are usually associated with President Donald Trump - and the result has reduced his chances of being re-elected to the lowest levels of his presidency.

With two crises erupting in the country, and millions of unemployed, a series of polls show that Americans do not trust Trump to lead the way. He is now lagging behind presumed Democratic nominee Joe Biden with huge margins nationwide, and with smaller but larger deficits in critical swing states, including Pennsylvania.

The numerous, consistent surveys show the president's toll, whose personality has proven uniquely inappropriate for the events that upset the country months before Election Day.

Biden Trump led by 14 percentage points in a New York Times / Siena College poll published this week. It's an amazing margin, and people in both parties believe it will get tougher. But it was not strange. A Reuters / Ipsos poll showed Trump trailing 13 percentage points behind. Fox News? Biden before 12.

The movement has also rushed to swing swing states. The Times Biden was found before 10 in Pennsylvania and 11 in Michigan and Wisconsin. A poll conducted by Quinnipiac University in Ohio found almost parity in a state that Trump won by beating 8. Fox News Biden was narrowly ahead in Georgia and Texas, two states that comfortably fit in the Republican column.

In Erie County, a rocking county that helped deliver Pennsylvania to Trump in 2016, a smaller but deeper focus group on June 16 illustrated how the president's actions repelled even some one-time supporters. On a committee of nine swing voters, seven said they would support Biden if the elections were held now, according to the Public Opinion Company that conducted swing polls across the country.

The focus group included six people who supported President Barack Obama and Trump, and three voted for Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton. Four of Trump's six electors favor Biden now.

When asking for one word to describe life between now and elections, the nine people offered: unbearable crisis, turmoil, parade, chaos, exhausted, financial crisis, cautious, exhausting, anxious.

Biden hardly runs an innovative or exciting campaign, but his sober promises of stability, seriousness and kindness may match the moment.

"With every passing day there is more negativity and we need to change," one of the women from Erie who supported Trump told Engagious.

Jennifer Mercica, a professor of communications at Texas A&M University, says that crises usually play a "priestly role" during crises. They seek healing, monotheism, calmness and sympathy.

"Until now, in the presidency of Trump, he has not been able to fulfill the priestly role," said Mercica, author of Demagog's book on the president. "He does not seem to know how to speak the language of societal values. He is much better at talking about division and polarization than what we do not share rather than what we have in common."

Instead, Trump responded to the tormented protests by threatening a violent response and gathering protesters with pillaging and thugs.

The Washington Monument and the White House can be seen behind the bright black letters Lives Matter on 16th Street in Washington near the White House.

While the country sets new records for confirmed coronavirus cases daily, victory has almost been declared and focused on reopening the economy. He recently referred to the virus as "Hong Kong flu", in one sentence that reinforces racism, as many denounce and alleviate the disease that has killed more than 120,000 Americans.

The Times poll found that 62% of Americans refuse Trump to deal with the protests that followed the killing of George Floyd's Minneapolis police, and 58% reject how he deals with the coronavirus.

Jonathan Tamari Jonathan Tamari