Pandemic creates electoral uncertainty for Trump, democrats

President Donald Trump’s reelection is facing growing headwinds less than six months before Election Day.

Coronavirus has breached the White House walls.

The US unemployment rate is at a 90-year high.

And the death toll in the US has surged past 80,000, far more than the Republican president’s projections.

Meanwhile, medical experts are warning of a major second wave of infections as states begin to reopen portions of their economies with Trump’s blessing.

Democrat Joe Biden has political challenges of his own, but no incumbent president has faced anything like this in almost a century.

Just a few short months ago, Trump planned to campaign for reelection on the back of a robust economy.

That’s a distant memory after more than 20 million jobs were lost in April, leading to an unemployment rate of 14.7%, the highest since the Great Depression.

Economists suggest the genuine unemployment number is much higher.

Trump is encouraging states to reopen their economies to help reverse the slide, even as health experts warn that reopening too soon could lead to a second wave that would wreak greater economic devastation.

Biden is the presumptive Democratic nominee. But the process of making it official is anything but settled.

First, it’s far from clear whether host site Milwaukee will be open for even a scaled-down convention, said Melissa Baldauff, a spokeswoman for Democratic Governor Tony Evers.

“We are really just in a place where the disease sets the timeline,” Baldauff said. “Everyone would love to have the convention here in Milwaukee, even if it’s in a limited capacity. But from our perspective, it’s too soon to tell.”

A month ago, the state Supreme Court overruled Evers’ order to reschedule the primary election, despite a shortage of election workers in Milwaukee that forced officials to slash the city’s 180 polling places to just five.

At least 67 Wisconsin residents were diagnosed with COVID-19 after voting in person or working at the polls April 7, though it wasn’t clear how many of the infections were direct results of the election, state officials said.

An important next step in the altered nominating process comes Tuesday, when the Democratic National Committee’s powerful Rules and Bylaws Committee meets — virtually, of course — to discuss granting waivers to states that missed deadlines by postponing their primaries due to the pandemic.

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