Biden’s biting character attacks on Trump could say something about the difficulties of his own campaign

CNN
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Joe Biden is throwing everything at Donald Trump.

The president and his campaign team are denouncing the likely Republican nominee as a criminal and racist who was found guilty of sexual assault and whose defeat in 2020 has now made him so “crazy” that he has “gone crazy.”

It is one of the harshest portrayals of his challenger by a sitting president in modern times and aims to portray the 45th president as blatantly unfit to return to the office he left in disgrace in 2021. With his two impeachments, a criminal conviction and an attempt to overturn the last election, Trump has given Biden plenty of room to maneuver.

But Biden’s strategy could also tell the story of a re-election campaign that is not going nearly as well as the president must have hoped, as he struggles with declining vote counts across much of the electorate and faces a frighteningly narrow path to reaching the 270 electoral votes he needs to win in November.

Biden’s team has argued for months that if voters realize they must choose between the president and his predecessor, the balance of political power will shift in his favor when the election is decided. The theory was that voters were slow to engage in the campaign and that they might need to be reminded of the chaos and discord of Trump’s first term, which ended in the worst attack on democracy in generations.

Yet it is mid-summer, with the election less than five months away, and there are signs that the race is still unfolding, both in terms of a referendum on Biden – and the lost feeling of a weary population that has lost its economic security – and the threat to the rule of law that Trump’s second term makes clear. The president’s campaign is therefore stepping up its efforts to highlight the perceived consequences of a new term in the White House for Trump, who has vowed to use his presidential power to exact personal retribution, while conservative groups are making plans to overhaul the bureaucracy, energy and economic policies.

Biden’s best chance to reset the race comes in his first debate with Trump on CNN in six days – a confrontation that the Biden team is trying to shape with daily attacks on Trump to appeal to the demographics the president hopes will return him to the White House. Since Trump’s criminal conviction for his hush money last month in New York, some polls have shown slight shifts in the president’s favor. But the race has been largely stable for months with no clear frontrunner, which should worry a president who wants his voters to reward him with a new term.

Thursday’s debate is also an opportunity for the president to confront the gloomy image of his character that Trump paints of him in front of tens of millions of television viewers. The former president portrays his rival as a doddering failure who can’t finish a sentence. This image is exaggerated. But polls show that most Americans are worried about the age and performance of a president who has noticeably declined physically in recent years and would be 86 years old at the end of a second term. Trump is not much younger, and if he wins, at 78 he would be the oldest president to serve a second term.

Biden has been rehearsing his character attacks on Trump at fundraisers for weeks, and now they are being parroted with increasing frequency by campaign staff. At a fundraiser in Northern Virginia on Tuesday, also attended by former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Biden laid out a stark scenario that included a warning that his rival was leading an all-out assault on the legal system.

“The threat Trump poses would be greater in a second term than in his first. You know … I think he went crazy when he lost in 2020. He can’t accept that he lost. (It) is literally driving him crazy. … He’s not just obsessed with losing in 2020, he’s obviously a little bit crazy right now.”

Biden’s campaign has been taking the initiative all week, laying the groundwork for the message he wants Americans to take away from the debate. A new, hard-hitting ad debuted on Monday. “This election is about a convicted criminal who is only out for himself,” the announcer says as the former president’s mugshot flashes across the screen. “And a president who will fight for your family.”

This move removed any doubt about how Biden will exploit a guilty verdict against Trump and his three other charges to which he has pleaded not guilty. The ex-president’s campaign will respond by claiming that Biden’s strategy is evidence of an attempt to weaponize the justice system against him. But with Trump’s campaign already spinning this story, Biden may have little to lose.

The ad, part of a $50 million campaign in June on the internet, on TV channels in swing states and on national cable, references the hush money trial and Trump’s defeats in a defamation case against writer E. Jean Carroll and in a civil fraud case. Captions over dark, monochrome photos of Trump in court read: “Convicted – 34 felony counts,” “Committed sexual abuse” and “Committed financial fraud.” Then the video switches to color, showing a beaming Biden surrounded by workers as he touts his efforts to cut health care costs and take on corporations. The contrast couldn’t be greater, and the Biden campaign must be hoping he’s finally gaining traction in voters’ minds.

“The American people are going to have a choice very soon between Donald Trump, who wakes up every day and thinks about himself, thinks about his billionaire friends, and then thinks about how he’s going to hurt people he thinks have hurt him,” Biden campaign co-chair Mitch Landrieu said Thursday on CNN’s “Inside Politics.” “Joe Biden wakes up every day and fights for the American people, making sure we protect people’s freedoms, preserve democracy and keep costs down,” Landrieu told Manu Raju.

The Biden team is now reaching out daily to a significant portion of its coalition that is showing signs of stress. On Wednesday, the Juneteenth holiday, which commemorates the end of slavery in the United States, there was a sharp attack on Trump aimed at thwarting his attempt to gain a foothold with black voters, a key Democratic voting bloc.

“After a lifetime of racism, and in honor of the holiday, the least Trump could do is give Black people in America a day’s respite from his campaign’s racist, empty pandering,” said Jasmine Harris, the campaign’s director of black media, in a statement. “Black voters have had enough – and they’re ready to end Trump’s candidacy.”

The campaign also sent out a list of the numerous racial controversies Trump has sparked over the course of his life, including his call for the execution of five black teenagers for sexually assaulting a woman in New York’s Central Park, a conviction later found to be wrongful, and his long-standing racist conspiracy theory about former President Barack Obama’s birthplace.

In the 2020 election, CNN polls showed Trump receiving around 12% of the vote from black Americans. However, some recent polls suggest he is currently receiving around 20%. Such a result in 2024 could narrow Biden’s lead in key swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, where he needs high black turnout in cities like Philadelphia, Detroit and Milwaukee to offset Trump’s strong lead in more rural areas.

On Thursday, Biden’s campaign turned its attention to Hispanic voters – another key voting bloc where polls show he is underperforming – by betting a seven-figure sum on the Copa América – the international soccer tournament featuring men’s teams from the Western Hemisphere that Lionel Messi and his World Cup-winning Argentina team opened in Atlanta on Thursday night.

A new commercial featuring the president harshly criticizing Trump will air during games over the next few weeks. Biden’s campaign is using it to remind Latino voters of Trump’s chaotic leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic. “Four years ago, we were closed. The stadiums were empty. Trump failed us,” a spokesperson says over images of empty stadiums, arguing that Biden has reopened the country and created 15.6 million jobs. The commercial then cuts to a shot of Biden in some sort of sports bar, while the soundtrack features the “Goalllllllllllllll!” cry used by Latino commentators when the ball goes into the net.

According to a February NBC News poll, Biden and Trump are tied among Latinos, a group of voters who have traditionally voted Democratic. But Biden won that crucial demographic in 2020, 65% to 32%, according to post-election polls. If he can’t get close to that percentage again, key swing states in the West like Arizona and Nevada could become out of his reach. And even battleground states further east that he also won four years ago, like Georgia and Pennsylvania, where there are smaller Hispanic populations, could be at risk.

Biden’s personal attacks on Trump are his best attempt to remind Americans of the fateful nature of the decision they will make in November. These attacks would be notable enough if the presumptive Republican nominee were a newcomer who could easily be defined by negative advertising. But most voters already know exactly who Trump is.

This election campaign raises a question that Democrats may prefer not to face: What if enough persuadable voters are very familiar with Trump’s past and remember the chaos and division during his tenure in the White House, but are still unwilling to support Biden?