By Rick Manning
It’s not a surprise that Biden’s polling numbers are abysmally low, with a majority of polls showing him trailing former President Trump by several points and losing double-digits with core coalitions of voters compared to 2020.
This severe erosion of support even among Democrats has prompted the Biden Campaign to spin up a new tactic for reinstalling Biden in the White House. Instead of addressing what voters want to hear about – which is solutions to crippling inflation, stagnant wages, and a housing crisis – Biden is abandoning “Bidenomics” and plans to run not on his own record but against Trump seizing power.
While this isn’t particularly surprising – Biden has a catastrophic record on the economy, immigration, foreign policy, and most other metrics Americans care about – it is a palpable shift from earlier in the year.
This summer, Biden was paraded across the country to espouse the virtues of “Bidenomics” and apparently advised to lean heavily into what his presidency had done for Americans. When it became clear that “Bidenomics” was agitating voters and confusing even Biden himself, who declared he didn’t “know what the hell that is” in a Philadelphia speech, campaign officials scrambled to move forward with the new strategy.
Gone, almost entirely, is a focus on Biden’s own record, and replacing it is a tried-and-true Democratic favorite – attack Trump and terrorize the public with doomful scenarios Democrats claim will engulf the nation if Trump is reelected. And of course, lean heavily on the press to paint that picture. But in this case the Biden campaign is actually calling the press out for not painting that picture clearly enough to distract from Biden’s economic record.
According to a press release from the Biden Campaign, his advisors are planning to combat widespread discontentment with his record with an attack launched at Trump, focusing on the GOP’s impact on abortion if Trump wins again. Biden’s team also took critical aim at the press, and is apparently embroiled in a battle with the New York Times over a piece The Times published that didn’t attack Trump’s anti-abortion record to the campaign’s satisfaction.
The Biden press release called on the mainstream media to, “meet the moment and responsibly inform the electorate of what their lives might look like if the leading GOP candidate for president is allowed back in the White House.” While Trump faced a constant four-year hailstorm of bad press when he was in office, the Biden campaign is angry the press isn’t doing enough to distract from Biden’s economic record with fearmongering on abortion.
Even The Atlantic, which reported on the press release, admitted as much, saying, “the campaign made clear that it wants Americans to focus as much on what Trump would do with power if he’s reelected as on what Biden has done in office.”
Certainly, no campaign strategist can fault Biden for not running on his record – it is quite literally the only option at this point for Biden to abandon running on his record and resort to an offensive attack on Trump. While it is Biden’s only option, it isn’t a very good one.
Trump’s ideology and growing support still send certain leftists into states of panic, and there is a significant share of the country who would do anything to keep him out of office. However, data shows that swing voters who were key to pushing Biden over the finish line last time are not only abandoning him, but overtly moving into Trump’s camp due to economic issues.
A recent YouGov poll found Americans say by a 27-percentage point margin (45% to 18%) their financial situation would be better under Trump compared to Biden with Independents saying so by a 33-percentage-point margin (43% to 10%).
Hispanics said their financial situation would be better under Trump by a 28-percentage point margin (47% to 19%), women said so by a 23-percentage point margin (41% to 18%), and voters under 30 said so by a five-percentage point margin (44% to 39%).
Recent YouGov surveys show that among issues important to Americans, abortion falls significantly lower on the list than economic issues like inflation, jobs, and healthcare. While 45% of voters say abortion is “very important”, only 4% say abortion is “the most important” issue they’ll vote on. Americans say inflation (20%), healthcare (11%), jobs (10%), climate change (9%), and immigration (7%) are all much more important than abortion. Even for women, only 6% cite abortion as their number one issue. For Democrats, that number is still just 5%.
Democrats employed an “anyone but Trump” strategy combined with a reliance on COVID induced mail-in voting to squeak Biden over the finish line in 2020. Much of the Biden campaign focused on removing Trump at any cost and a significant share of Biden voters admitted they voted against Trump, not for Biden.
However, that was when Biden’s record as Vice President under Obama was slightly more shrouded, and Biden hadn’t just spent four years at the helm of the country steering it straight into multiple disasters. Biden’s only means of attack now will be repeated attacks on Trump and further weaponizing the press to ensure the media stays a propaganda machine.
Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government.
