Chris Stirewalt: No blueprint for COVID-19's 'scale of disruption'
Chris Stirewalt weighs in on the potential for a global recession and compares the coronavirus 'scale of disruption' to past events
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Fox News digital politics editor Chris Stirewalt joined the "Fox News Rundown" podcast Monday to discuss the effect of the coronavirus pandemic on the presidential race.
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Stirewalt explained to host Jacqui Heinrich why he thought the outbreak, which has shut down most campaign events, represented a "good news-bad news situation" for Democrats hoping to take back the White House in November.
"The good news was the outbreak basically ended their nominating contest," said Stirewalt, referencing former Vice President Joe Biden's victories in the March 17 primaries in Illinois, Florida and Arizona.
"He [Biden] was a decisive winner, the sentiment against [Sen.] Bernie Sanders [I-Vt.] in all quarters of the Democratic Party has been robustly in opposition, Sanders had more than worn out his welcome, and with this [outbreak] going on, Democrats were quite content to say, 'This is done.'"
However, Stirewalt added that the focus on the coronavirus and the Trump administration's response to the pandemic has left Biden "adrift" for several weeks.
"That's a long time to leave Joe Biden on the shelf," said Stirewalt, who described Biden as a "weak presumptive nominee."
"Biden just looks dreadful, right?" Stirewalt added. "He's coming to you from his basement. Biden isn't a good interview. He can do pretty well on a speech ... He's good on one-on-one interaction, retail politics. But for what's called for here, he is just not suited for it."
Stirewalt also discussed the impact of the pandemic on Trump's reelection chances.
"Donald Trump has been extraordinarily lucky, or had been extraordinarily lucky, through the more than three years of his term," he said. "There were no major international crises or incidents. The economy grew at a pretty steady pace. He was presiding over what had been the single longest economic expansion in American history. And things were pretty placid ...
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"Now, Trump is not so lucky. His luck ran out. We have a global pandemic that has started a massive recessionary trend," added Stirewalt, who added that any effect on Trump's polling could be "mitigated" by a couple of factors.
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"Number one, we don't know what to make of this," he said. "This is different than previous American experiences ... Number two, he [Trump] is the most polarizing figure in, certainly modern American political history, but maybe ever. People had very hard feelings, positive and negative, about Trump. And that just sort of tends to mean that nothing much shakes or changes his overall trajectory in terms of public support."
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