WASHINGTON — The coronavirus pandemic was supposed to be the issue that doomed the Republican Party in the 2020 election, with President Donald Trump's poorly received response to the crisis leading to decisive and widespread losses up and down the ballot.
Now that the dust has mostly settled — with Trump defeated but Democrats holding fewer seats in the House and the Senate than expected — the president's opponents realize it wasn't that simple.
Democrats and Republicans alike are reconsidering what they thought they knew about the public's view of the viral outbreak and Trump's handling of it, convinced the issue wasn't as helpful politically for Democrats as they once expected.
