The tension between Joe Biden and Donald Trump on sensitive issues, such as race and the future of the Supreme Court, as the two prepare for the most critical presidential debate in recent years.
The 2024 campaign took a rare turn, moving out of the courts over the weekend and toward more conventional battlegrounds: fundraising, vital voting blocs and the swing states that will decide the election.
The Biden and Trump campaigns fought for the votes of black Americans, a traditional Democratic power base where the former president is trying to make inroads despite his personal history tarnished on racial issues. This comes at a time when Republicans are embracing their presumptive nominee, despite his criminal conviction, and trying to overturn the results of the 2020 elections, betting everything on Trump as they seek to win back the White House and the Senate and keep the House.
President Biden, who flew directly from his second trip to Europe in a week to a Hollywood fundraiser in Los Angeles on Saturday, argued that one of the “scariest” parts of a second Trump term would be the possibility of his rival appointing more conservative and hard-line Supreme Court judges.
Former President Barack Obama, who joined his former vice president in fundraising, lamented the fact that Republicans were about to nominate a candidate who was “convicted by a jury of his peers on 34 counts.”
Candidates position themselves for 1st presidential debate
The campaign intensified ahead of the first presidential debate of 2024, which will be held by CNN on June 27, at a potentially decisive moment in a campaign that could see a former president defeat the incumbent president. The showdown in Atlanta will come with 81-year-old Biden under extreme pressure to show he is prepared for another four-year term, amid widespread voter concerns about his advanced age and following Trump’s incessant mocking of mental health and of the physical state of the visibly aged president.
The former president’s constant ridicule of Biden’s cognitive ability may, however, be lowering expectations for Biden’s performance, raising the prospect that a forceful display by the president could have a similar impact to his State of the State address. of the Union this year, which temporarily allayed concerns related to his age.
The former president’s volatile behavior in recent days is leading Biden’s campaign to argue that Trump’s state of mind – as well as his attempt to subjugate American democracy four years ago – means he is unsuitable for a return to democracy. office. Last week, the campaign described Trump as “more unhinged than ever” after he returned to the Capitol for the first time since the Jan. 6, 2021, mob attack, which was embraced by Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate.
The first presidential debate of this campaign is considered early, which means it could give the president the opportunity to shake up a tight race for the White House that has remained practically stable for months. Trump posts strong poll results in key swing states.
Apparently, Biden is clinging to an increasingly narrow path on the national electoral map to the 270 delegates needed to win the presidency. The president is being hurt by the pain felt by many Americans over soaring prices and high interest rates that have made it difficult to access new homes and auto loans — giving Trump an opportunity to evoke nostalgia about the pre-pandemic economy during his mandate.
A CNN announced on Saturday new details for the debate, agreed by both campaigns. The event will take place in a television studio rather than in front of a live audience. It will include two commercial breaks, during which the campaign team will be prevented from interacting with the candidate. The two men have agreed to appear on a uniform podium and their positions will be determined by lot. Microphones will be muted, except when it is the candidate’s turn to speak.
Biden is expected to go to Camp David later this week for an intense workout that will involve his former chief of staff, Ron Klain, who has taught Democratic candidates before debates for decades. Trump held a political forum with a group of advisers and senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Eric Schmitt of Missouri when he was in Washington last week. His advisers insisted that the former president would not necessarily be involved in traditional debate preparation, but rather in interviews and rallies to refine his approach. However, Trump’s interviews, particularly with conservative media outlets, are often full of white-collar questions. And he skipped all of the GOP primary debates, so he may not be fully prepared when Biden advances on him.
Trump seeks to break Biden’s support among black voters
In a race that will involve a handful of swing states that could be decided by mere thousands of votes, any piece one candidate can take away from the other’s core electorate could be crucial. That’s why Trump spent Saturday in Michigan, trying to capitalize on signs of waning enthusiasm for Biden among black voters.
The former president unveiled his “Black Americans for Trump” coalition, which has the support of prominent black Republicans, including South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and Florida Rep. Byron Donalds. In an interview on Friday (14) with Semafor, Trump declared: “I’m not racist.” He added: “I have so many black friends that if I was racist, they wouldn’t be friends, they would know better than anyone, and fast,” he said.
Speaking at a predominantly black church in Detroit on Saturday, Trump falsely claimed that black workers fared much better in his first term than under Biden, in an effort to leverage the cornerstone of his campaign – immigration – into an appeal to minorities he claims they are losing their jobs to migrants without formal documents.
He also highlights Biden’s role as a senator in passing a 1990s crime bill that resulted in high incarceration rates among black citizens. According to exit polls from the CNN in 2020, Trump won about 1 in 10 black voters. But a recent New York Times/Siena College poll found that the former president won more than 20% of black voters in swing states. If he can narrow Biden’s lead among key demographic groups in cities like Philadelphia, Detroit and Milwaukee, Trump could increase his chances of winning Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, states that constitute Biden’s best path to keeping the White House.
Biden’s campaign reacted to Trump’s appeal to a reliable core constituency that helped propel Biden to the presidency, highlighting controversies including Trump’s call for the death penalty against five young men who were wrongly convicted of assault and rape in Central Park in the 1990s. 1980 and his racist campaign about Obama’s birthplace.
“We certainly haven’t forgotten Trump repeatedly cozying up to white supremacists and demonizing communities of color for his political benefit — because that’s exactly what he will do if he wins a second term,” said Jasmine Harris, director of Black media for the Biden campaign. .
Obama also lashed out at the presumptive Republican nominee when asked by host Jimmy Kimmel at the Los Angeles fundraiser what he thought about Trump’s claims that he had done more for black people than any president in history. The former commander in chief responded: “One thing he did, for example, was make them feel even better about the first black president.”
Biden criticizes ‘unbalanced’ majority on Supreme Court
Political fundraisers are often closed. But Biden’s campaign seemed interested in showing the president in an informal setting with Obama and stars like Julia Roberts and George Clooney. The president stopped in Washington only to refuel his Air Force 1 on his way home from the G7 summit in Italy ahead of the event, which came days after his son, Hunter Biden, was found guilty of illegal gun possession following a trial in Delaware.
The president’s campaign released a video of the fundraiser on Sunday (16) in which Biden referenced the controversy surrounding the flags flown by Judge Samuel Alito’s wife, which critics warned were politically provocative. “If he is re-elected, he will name two more flags flown upside down,” Biden said.
Asked by Kimmel if he considered this the scariest part of a second Trump term, Biden responded: “It’s one of the scariest parts.” The president added: “The Supreme Court has never been as unbalanced as it is today, I mean, never.”
For years, before the conservative Supreme Court majority built by Trump struck down the constitutional right to abortion, Republicans placed the fate of the nation’s highest court at the center of their presidential election campaigns. Biden gave the clearest indication this weekend that Democrats are now desperate to play on even ground.
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