Achi news desk-
So while his opponent Donald Trump set up camp in Manhattan Criminal Court earlier this week, Biden hit the road, spending three days campaigning in the swing state of Pennsylvania. It was a bit of a split screen, with the current holder of the White House on the left, speaking to audiences of blue-collar workers about traditional Democratic themes of prosperity and economic fairness, and his predecessor on the right, channeling so much charm persuasive from corners. raccoon as he rattled on himself and the trouble he is in.
Read more from Lawrence Donegan on the campaign trail: Donald Trump’s trial – Dismissals, denials and the real truth
“Donald Trump looks at the world differently than you and I,” Mr Biden told a crowd in his hometown of Scranton. “He wakes up in the morning at Mar-a-Lago thinking about himself. How can he help his billionaire friends gain power and control, and force their extremist agenda on the rest of us?”
“It’s a scam trial. If you read all the legal scholars they will tell you the same thing. It’s a scam, a political witch hunt that continues, and we’re not going to get a fair trial,” Trump told the bank of television cameras and reporters waiting for him at the end of his first day in court on charges of financial record irregularities involving a hush money payment to former adult film actress Stephanie Clifford.
Political messaging is an inexact science but, even so, you won’t need a podcast by Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart to understand why in principle voters should respond more positively to the promise of economic improvement for themselves than to the plea self-obsession. a criminal defendant staring at the brink of a guilty verdict.
The issue for Biden is that political theory and reality at this point in American political history are on diverging paths.
Meanwhile, the problem for Trump is that the aforementioned split screen has at least six more weeks to run, precious time that will find him rooted to the same spot outside the courtroom , introducing his so familiar ode to legal persecution. Expect the Democratic campaign machine to seize the space this leaves and define the former President as a criminal narcissist, an existential threat to 250 years of American democracy, an electoral loser and a terrible businessman.
To that end, Biden cracked a few decent jokes at Trump’s expense this week, referring to the catastrophic fall in the share price of the former president’s social media company, Truth Social (down more than 50% in the three weeks last). “If his (Trump’s) stock in the company goes lower, he might do better under my tax plan than his,” the President said with a smirk – not Dave Chapelle but not bad at all.
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Less amusing from Biden’s perspective, however, is the current state of the race.
Trump likes to claim that he “leads in all the polls, and by a lot”. He is exaggerating, of course, but it is true that he is ahead in some of the opinion polls. The New York Times/Sienna poll is the most respected in the country and last weekend had the former President leading by one point, 46%-45% – well within the margin of error and tightening from last month’s poll, which with Trump leading by four.
The consensus among the other national polls is that support for Biden has increased since he gave his fiery State of the Union address to Congress in February.
“On average, he is running about 1.4 points better in the post-State of the Union polls than in earlier polls by the same pollsters,” according to the times’ resident analyst, Nate Cohn. “But despite these favorable trends, his (Biden’s) approval rating is stuck in the high 30s, and only 41 percent say they have a favorable opinion of the president — far lower than four years ago, and lower than the opinion of voters about Mr. Trump now. Voters still believe the economy is bad, and disapprove of Mr. Biden’s handling of the economy by almost two to one.”
That’s the economy, stupid(an invention of the 1992 Clinton campaign team) remains unrivaled in the vocabulary of catchy political slogans but in this more tribal era of American discourse, where everyone has chosen their “team” and persuasive swing voters are few and far between, it also about the quirks of the Electoral College.
Biden won the popular vote nationwide in 2020 by more than seven million votes but this is the method by which the President is chosen (with each state assigning their electoral college votes to the candidate who wins the popular vote in her state) the incumbent’s actual margin Victory came down to 45,000 votes in the three swing states of Arizona, Georgia and Nevada.
In short, state voting is where the real story is told.
Here, the numbers are undeniable, unrelenting and disturbing for Biden. A recent survey given in the field by the Wall Street Journal Trump was ahead in six of the most important swing states. Meanwhile, reliable neutral polling aggregators have him leading in Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina, with Biden edging him in Pennsylvania. If those voting boundaries were repeated on November 5th the challenger would return to power in a landslide.
What is contrary to this prognosis is that voting months before a Presidential election is not worth the time and money spent doing it. After all, Mike Dukakis was 10 points ahead of George HW Bush in April 1988, Walter Mondale was an early favorite to beat Reagan in 1984, and on this very day (April 16) in 2016 Hillary Clinton was 10.9 % ahead of Trump in national polling average.
Read more political writing and analysis from the Herald team
Three days is a lifetime in the context of a Presidency and for the current occupant of the White House to spend so much time in one state makes it clear that the Biden campaign has no time for this kind of fictional overview, even though it is comforting for turn
Vanity fair The magazine recently profiled Trump’s 2024 campaign, describing the operation as “frighteningly competent” compared to his previous campaigns. That is almost certainly true but so what VF failing to identify is the behemoth he faces.
Eighty-one-year-old Biden is easy to portray as old and feeble but his 2024 campaign bears little resemblance to a young, muscular Schwarzenegger, fresh off the plane from Austria and ready to kick sand in the face of whoever stands in his way.
Writing in his sub-stock newsletter, Message Boxthis week former Obama communications director Dan Pfeiffer provided a detailed breakdown of the tools the Biden campaign has at its disposal – the benefits of incumbency (historically, incumbents usually win re-election), a vast organizational advantage (Biden already has a full 300 – time staff in the swing states, Trump’s campaign has, at best, a handful), a discernible campaign plan (compared to Trump’s off-script extemporizing on the courthouse steps and occasional rally), much better fundraising (which helps expand the advantage in campaign infrastructure).
Team Biden releases campaign ads bashing his opponent on abortion, economics and democracy almost every day. Team Trump cannot afford to respond, relying instead on the support of “free media” like Fox News, which continues to preach to the long-converted with sycophancy that would make TV North Korean blush.
“Elections are most often decided by structural factors — the mood of the nation, the unemployment rate, the cost of gas and groceries, etc.,” Pfeiffer said. “However, there are important campaigns on the margins, and this is an election that is likely to be won on the margins. If 2024 is as close as the last two elections, a better Biden campaign could be the difference between victory and defeat.”
