President Biden’s best chance of a second term may lie in presenting himself as the “Stop Trump” candidate – at least according to a new poll.
A CBS News/YouGov poll released Sunday found that among likely Biden voters, twice as many were motivated by opposition to former President Trump as by sympathy for the president, 54% to 27%.
Another 19 percent of likely Biden voters said they were motivated to support the president simply because he is the Democratic nominee.
But Biden’s team is convinced that the campaign will not just focus on attacking Trump – although it insists that the 45th president represents a clear and present danger to American democracy.
Biden’s argument is that the campaign doesn’t need to be an “either/or” choice between attacking Trump and defending the president’s record. This will do both, aides say.
Many polls show that American voters are dissatisfied with the two major party nominees this year, but Biden could still succeed by turning the election into a referendum on Trump, at least in part.
The same CBS poll showed the election was essentially tied. In it, Biden had a 1-point lead in the seven key battleground states, but Trump was up 1 point nationwide.
These results are a slight improvement over recent polling averages that showed Trump with a small lead. The CBS poll also showed that the number of Biden supporters who were likely to vote for him out of dislike for Trump had increased.
The share of Biden voters who said anti-Trump sentiment was their main motivation has increased 7 points since March. The former president’s recent conviction on 34 criminal counts of falsifying business records – and the widespread publicity his trial received – could have helped change those numbers.
The Biden campaign is certainly making a lot of efforts to warn voters about the perceived threats that Trump poses if he wins a second term.
But advisers say the campaign is also placing special emphasis on first-term accomplishments that have had a concrete effect on the daily lives of Americans, such as the $35-a-month cap on the price of insulin for seniors and a higher limit. Ample for people outside the home. out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs, also for seniors.
Biden’s team is also emphasizing infrastructure investments, support for minority-owned businesses and other measures.
Simultaneously, Biden’s team recently criticized Trump in ads for reports of comments that were disrespectful to veterans — some of which Trump denies making — as well as for an odd aside during a rally in Nevada on Sunday.
At one point in Las Vegas, Trump appeared to gesture toward someone in the crowd and said, “I don’t care about you. I just want your vote. I don’t care.” The clip was repurposed into an ad posted to Biden’s X account. It racked up about 2.1 million views in its first six hours online.
Biden has also repeatedly claimed that Trump and “extremist MAGA Republicans” pose a unique danger to the nation.
Some Democrats say there is no tension between the two approaches. Democratic strategist Mark Longabaugh noted that any electoral coalition is likely to be “motivationally broad” — that is, encompassing people who vote for a candidate for a range of reasons.
“People who want to vote for Biden because they can’t stand Trump are perfectly fine,” Longabaugh added.
But he also acknowledged that Biden faces a range of challenges that could dampen enthusiasm, at least among some voters, from the economy to conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine.
“There are many issues for the Biden campaign that make this election difficult – prices, inflation, the economic issue, the housing issue and two conflicts abroad that are very difficult to deal with. These are much more important challenges.”
Other Democrats worry that the White House has failed to sell Biden’s record of domestic achievement during his years in office so far — a mistake that, they suggest, now leaves his campaign looking for recovery.
“The problem that Biden has — and he’s had it for a while — is that they haven’t done a very good job of letting the American people know exactly what his record is,” said Jerry Austin, a Democratic strategist with experience in politics. presidential since the 1980s.
“Now, with six months until the election, they are trying to remind people of what he did and it is falling on deaf ears.”
But Austin acknowledged that Trump’s entire approach requires confronting him head-on.
“All they have to do is take Trump at his own word,” Austin said. “They don’t need to enlarge, they don’t need to edit. He says things like, this is about revenge. I don’t remember anyone in my life running for president out of revenge.”
Republicans, however, argue that an anti-Trump campaign won’t work the same way it did in 2020 — for the basic reason that, after one Biden term, there are many voters frustrated with the incumbent.
Memories of Trump’s rages during his term in office – namely, his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic – are much less salient this time.
Republican strategist Ron Bonjean, asked about a Biden campaign with Trump at the center, demurred: “It worked last time, but it might not work this time because people are not happy with what they saw in the Biden presidency,” he said. .
In the average of polls maintained by The Hill and Decision Desk HQ, Biden’s job approval was at 41.1% as of Monday night, with 55.1% disapproving.
Those numbers have to be changed, or Trump’s reduced, before Democrats feel more confident of victory in November.
The Memo is a column reported by Niall Stanage.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
