Clermont, Florida Correspondent — Finish the acute phase and get a vaccine distributed, assuming one works, without leaving permanent emergency rules behind. Restore economic activity and employment. Re-establish order in the cities that had sustained unrest. Set a coherent course on China and critical supply chains.
Trump’s instincts on reopening, on order, and on strategic competition line up more closely with that list. Biden is better on alliance coordination and on the administrative side of a vaccine rollout, which is not a small thing given what that rollout will require.
The overall mix favors Trump’s positioning. The rollout is the part where I’d want him to hire somebody dull and listen to them.
Owatonna, MN Correspondent — Pandemic recovery and reopening, jobs, urban order, and China strategy.
Trump aligns better with the reopening, order, and China pieces, which is three of four.
I’d add a fifth that neither campaign has mentioned and both will inherit: the state and local fiscal hole. Budgets are going to come apart next year in places that have already cut everything easy, and whoever wins will be handling it in the first six months whether it’s on the list or not.
Novi, Michigan Correspondent — Get the economy moving, finish the health emergency, restore basic order, and set a realistic China policy. That’s the standard list and I’d sign it.
What I’d put on it that isn’t there: the automotive transition. Both campaigns are promising an electric future on timelines that assume battery supply and charging infrastructure nobody has built, and Michigan’s employment is the thing being wagered.
On the standard list Trump is the stronger match. On the one I added, neither of them has a plan and both have a slogan, and my state will find out which was which.
Gastonia, NC Correspondent — Reopening, jobs, order, and China. Trump is better positioned on those four.
The one I’d add is that the winner has to govern a country where roughly half the voters will believe the result was illegitimate, and the two men are differently positioned on that. One of them has spent months telling his supporters in advance that a loss would mean fraud. That’s a first-year problem he’d be creating for himself.
Tyler, Texas Correspondent — First year: schools open and staying open, a border that’s a line, energy that’s allowed to work, and a vaccine that’s a product rather than a sacrament.
Better positioned: Trump, because he’s already fought the padlock and the supply chain and filled the Court. He’ll also be fighting his own chaos, and that’s a real cost I’m accepting rather than denying.
The other ticket’s first year looks like a restoration of the desk that closed the school. I’ll take the chaos over the restoration, and I’d want a chief of staff who can keep a memo from becoming a war before lunch.
Jacksonville, Florida Correspondent — Open the dock and the classroom. Keep whatever vaccine exists moving. China as a rival. Cities that can still prosecute a night.
Trump is positioned on the first three. Biden is positioned on sounding like a memorandum.
I need the dock, so I’m voting Trump, and I want him to hire people who can run a logistics operation, because that’s what year one is going to be and it isn’t a rally.
Cheyenne, Wyoming Correspondent — A line at the border. A school door. Diesel. A Court that stays a limit.
Trump. The other man will describe a process, and process is how we got the year.
Long Island, New York Correspondent — First year: vaccine logistics that aren’t delivered through a culture war, schools with a plan rather than a dare, a fiscal stop to the carnival, and a temperature that lets a city finish a case without a federal opera.
Better positioned on temperature and logistics: Biden, if his health holds and if his own left flank doesn’t own the desk. Better positioned on the padlock and the supply chain: Trump. I’d rather say that than pretend the choice is obvious.
I’m marking Biden because I think the country needs a dull year more than it needs another year of naming things. Dull is a first-year job. If he can’t be dull, I’ll have been wrong in public and I’m prepared for that.
