Fundraising, voter outreach, endorsements and advertising each play a role in determining the outcome of any election. But no element is nearly as powerful as the way a candidate’s message and narrative align with the zeitgeist of the moment. In 2016, frustration with the nation’s elite fueled a middle-class revolt. Many voters seethed at the way the Washington establishment had bailed out bankers while leaving homeowners underwater. They resented those who had chosen to go to war in search of phantom weapons of mass destruction, and who had embraced Beijing without appreciating China’s true intentions. Donald Trump won by personifying the electorate’s rage. He has since made anger and divisiveness the animating features of his presidency.

But 2020 is not 2016, and the underlying zeitgeist is dramatically different. Americans of all stripes have tired of the president’s penchant for sowing constant chaos and conflict. Middle-class resentment might once have led them to look past his sneering self-aggrandizement, or to dismiss his misogyny. But many of those who appreciated the Trump Show in 2016 are now fed up—particularly women. Trump’s lead among white working-class female voters, which came in at a whopping 27 points four years ago, has now been whittled down to a mere 8. Simultaneously, the percent of college-educated women voting for Democrats in House elections grew from 46 percent in 2012 to 59 percent in 2018—a 13-point jump. That shift is tangible on the ground. The wealthy white Detroit suburb of Livingston County—a place where Trump prevailed by 30 points in 2016—saw more than a 50 percent jump in Democratic primary ballots cast this year. Why? Because the most consistent trend since Trump’s election is the steady march of women out of the GOP.


Voters were marching away from Trump’s venom before the coronavirus crisis; soon they’ll be running for the exits. Why? Amid a pandemic, Trump’s antics have become his own worst enemy. As people around the country bang pots to cheer nurses filing in for their shift at hospitals, they aren’t looking for the nation’s leader to hack away endlessly at the institutions of American life. At a moment when our hearts bleed for the single mothers who show up without fail to clean hospital wards overflowing with intubated patients, what voters want isn’t vitriol—it’s a new depth of understanding.

I realize that may sound strange coming from someone with my public profile. I’m rarely described as a fount of compassion—at home or in public. But there’s just no denying that people want the next president to help carry the nation’s pain. This will be a big boost for Joe Biden in November. As a working-class patriot who made good despite enduring a litany of personal tragedies, he has proved himself uniquely capable of connecting to voters where and how they live their lives. The story of his life—the grit and perseverance he displayed taking the train home from D.C. after the last Senate vote each night to care for his two young sons, bereft of their mother—is a testament to the very type of leadership no narcissist could ever provide.

To be clear, it’s not just Trump’s personality that voters increasingly detest. His cratering support among both college and noncollege educated women is driven by his policy agenda: his gleeful decision to cage children at the border; his efforts to upend the Affordable Care Act, imperiling their families’ health care coverage; his failure to address the epidemic of school shootings and the growing scourge of vaping. The nation’s reaction to Trump has fueled a nearly uninterrupted string of Democratic victories across the country for local elected offices, for congressional seats and for statehouses.

Just look at the evidence. In 2017, Democrats won both a suburban district outside Pittsburgh and a statewide senatorial election in Alabama. Despite facing an electoral map Republicans had drafted to protect their majority, the Democratic Party decimated the GOP in the 2018 midterm elections. Last year, Democratic candidates won governorships in Kentucky and Louisiana, not to mention both houses of Virginia’s state Legislature. Trump has both whipped up the Democratic base and pulled moderate suburban voters into the Democratic tent. The party’s big win in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election—a margin fueled largely by the Milwaukee suburbs—demonstrates that the momentum continues today.


If the electorate’s aversion to Trump’s hostility—in personality and in policy—had ramped up before the crisis, their hunger for empathy is now sharper than ever. Reports of death tolls, overflowing morgues and efforts to contain the virus dominate the front pages. Once the economy reopens, Americans will still be mourning the tens of thousands who have lost their lives and the opportunities lost in the ensuing economic wreckage. Biden’s experience and competence will stand in stark relief to Trump’s penchant for playing the role of national carnival barker. But if that’s the obvious contrast, here’s what will make the biggest difference this November: “Uncle Joe” has carried the burden of grief like few others in public life.

The vast difference between the two candidates would have been highlighted more explicitly on the campaign trail, where split screens would have shown Trump preening on stage while Biden took time to talk privately with a grieving widow on a rope line. But even from his home, Biden’s humanity shines through. You need not look past his recent appearance on James Corden’s show—an interview in which he choked up while holding a picture of his two sons but turned that experience back to his awe for the American peoples’ perseverance in the face of struggle—to understand why his candidacy is resonating at this moment.

Republican strategists seem to want to steer the president away from the abrasiveness that propelled him to victory four years ago. His gauzy Super Bowl ad about criminal justice reform was evidence that some insiders realize animosity won’t work again. But at the end of the day, Trump is going to be Trump. The dismissive way he treated female reporters asking about reopening the economy reflected the character flaw that drove his appeal four years ago. But it’s lost its shine. In the political environment shaped by a pandemic, Americans don’t want venom, they want compassion. If anger animated the 2016 election, empathy will define 2020.