America's 'Suburban Housewives' on the New Battlefront Between Trump and Biden

Wildfires raging across the West have opened a new front in the fierce suburban battle between President Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden, amid mounting evidence that climate change is a major concern for many Americans, especially women, as images of the devastation flood the media.

President Trump has sought to counter his declining support among suburban voters by asserting that a Democratic White House would be a threat to the safety of the suburbs.

But Mr Biden, the Democratic presidential candidate, is seeking to “redefine” the concept of “safety” for a voting bloc affected by pandemic fears, social unrest in the streets and now deadly wildfires.

Real and immediate threat

Mr. Biden has cast climate change as a more real and immediate threat to the suburbs than the violence portrayed in Mr. Trump’s ads and public statements, emphasizing in a speech on September 14 that the devastating fires are ravaging forests, destroying homes and taking lives.

“That’s especially clear to people right now,” said Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager.

Biden’s remarks came as Trump made a last-minute visit to California to meet with local officials battling wildfires, during which he declared that “it’s going to cool down, you’ll see.”

The developments suggest that an issue that has long been on the sidelines of presidential campaigns — and this time, it seems to have been overshadowed by the pandemic and social unrest — could become a new front with just seven weeks to go until Election Day.

For suburban voters, especially those living in the West, the threat of losing their homes to wildfires and the health risks to their families from the thick smoke seem more immediate than the social unrest that Mr. Trump has emphasized in his speeches and campaign ads.

“The fires in the West are blue states, and the majority of the country is not experiencing that. But it is a reminder to a lot of people — especially educated suburban voters — how anti-science he is,” said Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster.

Rob Stutzman, a California Republican strategist, said swing suburban voters were “discouraged by the way the president talks about climate change” in particular and science in general.

The importance of this front was underscored once again on September 15 when Senator Kamala Harris – Biden’s running mate – returned to her home state (California) to assess the damage and visit some of the areas devastated by the Creek Fire.

The wildfires have shown a dramatic difference between his White House andTrump with potential presidential candidate Biden. Wildfires in particular and climate change in general will be a core competitive front as the two candidates are about to enter three live debates.

“Donald Trump warns that integration is threatening the suburbs. That’s ridiculous. But do you know what’s really threatening our suburbs? The wildfires that are burning in the western suburbs. The floods that are ravaging the suburbs in the Midwest. The hurricanes that are affecting the coastal suburbs,” Biden said on September 14.

Winning the support of “suburban housewives”

In an election where the gender gap is already a serious issue for the President — with polls showing women supporting Mr Biden in far greater numbers than men — climate change could become a front to appeal to the voters Mr Trump once dismissed as “suburban housewives”.

“Women are generally more concerned than men. The group that is not concerned about climate change is conservative white men,” said Edward Maibach, director of the Climate Change Information Center at George Mason University.

In a survey earlier this year, the Pew Research Center found that Republican women are more supportive of addressing climate change than Republican men. For example, 47% of Republican women say the government is doing too little to protect air quality, compared with just 32% of Republican men. Similar divisions exist on water quality, power plant emissions limits, and fuel efficiency standards.

“Among the swing votes in this election, there will be a lot of women who are Republican, a lot of them are suburbanites. And this is an issue they care about,” said John D. Podesta, former President Barack Obama’s top adviser on climate change and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman.

Another Pew survey released last month found that 69% of suburbanites said climate change would be at least an important factor in their 2020 voting decision, and 41% rated it as a very important issue.

The wildfires and the hazardous air they generate have long been concentrated in Democratic-leaning areas, with the exception of Arizona, which is not prominent on maps of battleground states between Mr Biden and Mr Trump.

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Biden’s advisers, however, believe the sheer devastation of the wildfires has become a significant issue. This is especially true during a season of unpredictable rain, erratic temperatures, and extreme weather conditions in many parts of the country. As the fires burned, the Gulf Coast was bracing for Hurricane Sally and the heavy rains and flooding it would bring.

Climate change is a crisis

Mr. Biden specifically considered climate change as one of four crises facing the United States, along with the pandemic, economic downturn and protests against police violence.

“For the first time, the average American sees climate change as a ‘here, now, and our’ problem. Before, they saw it as a distant problem. Distant in time: maybe 2100, not now. Distant in space: maybe Bangladesh, not Boston. And distant in species: for polar bears, not humans,” said Maibach, who studies public opinion on the environment.

Katie Porter, a Democrat from California, said she has seen a big change in the political environment since Trump became president.

“You know we need to address climate change clearly and that's a significant change from four years ago,” she said./.