Trump, Biden campaigning differs amid pandemic

With less than eight weeks until the Nov. 3 election, Trump and Biden are taking diametrically opposite approaches to campaigning during a pandemic — and the differences amount to more than political theater.

The candidates are effectively staking out different visions for the country. Biden emphasizes guidelines supported by local health officials while Trump rails against restrictions that he argues, without evidence, are politically motivated.

"The circumstances of the virus really have not changed. We're still in a period where you have hot spots that pop up. Maybe an overall decline, but that death toll is still going up. Essentially, we've just gotten into the final stretch," said Bill Barrow, a national political reporter for the Associated Press.

North Carolina caps outdoor gatherings at 50 people to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus, but don't tell that to President Donald Trump. He basked in a largely maskless crowd of several thousand supporters during a campaign rally in this critical state.

Barrow believes that local coronavirus restrictions put in by a state or a governor is not going to prevent "a Donald Trump rally of any size or scope."

"President Trump is traveling more and more. His rallies are getting bigger and bigger, and it's no secret that the president didn't like being restricted in the first place," Barrow said. "He's sort of throwing off any shackles and getting back to his form of those big rallies. They're at airport hangars now, not in arenas, but that's the Donald Trump brand. And I think we'll see that between now and November."

A day earlier in Pennsylvania, Trump's Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, held a socially distanced meeting in a backyard. His team has been so attentive to local regulations that some staffers have left the room if they risked breaking the rules on crowd limits.

"The Biden campaign has indicated that it will continue to honor local and state guidelines," Barrow said. "And they have talked about the idea of maybe some drive-in crowds that would allow for bigger numbers, but it still follows social distancing guidelines. So that's a possibility."

Biden's crowds, in fact, have been far smaller than Trump's. The former vice president has appeared in public sparingly since the pandemic, and with the strictest adherence to state guidelines: 25 people in Pennsylvania, 10 people indoors in Michigan, and mandatory face-coverings all around. Biden's approach reflects the reluctance of many of his supporters to attend large gatherings.

For someone who has never been a natural in an arena, the smaller events allow Biden to have more personal interactions with representatives from important voting blocs, including labor and community leaders.