Joe Biden may have won the Democratic presidential nomination, but the Bernie Sanders wing of the party will prevail in the White House. That’s the message President Trump’s reelection campaign is honing in on in the homestretch.
It is the theme of two ads the Trump campaign launched in early-voting states on Monday. The first ad “exposes Joe Biden as a tool of the radical left for his pledges to raise taxes by trillions of dollars, grant amnesty for 11 million illegal aliens, and cut police funding,” according to the Trump campaign. The second “features a woman silently displaying cue cards that describe her fear that Biden is too weak to stand up to the extremists in control of his agenda: higher taxes, amnesty for illegal aliens, and trade deals that hurt Americans.”
“Joe Biden has embraced the policies of the radical Left,” said the narrator in one of the 30-second spots, as the presumptive Democratic nominee appears surrounded by Sanders and “Squad” members Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “Trillions in new taxes, crushing middle-class families.”
“The radical Left has taken over Joe Biden and the Democratic Party,” concludes the ad. “Don’t let them take over America.”
It’s a strategy Trump has flirted with for months, dating back to the competitive phase of the Democratic primaries. Speaking to the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, Trump said voters would have to ask whether Sanders was a “communist” but should also have questions about Biden. “With Joe, he’s sort of down the middle,” he said. “You know, the difference is Joe is not going to be running the government, he’s just going to be sitting in a home someplace, and people are going to be running it for him, and they will be radical-left socialists.”
In a Monday appearance on Fox and Friends, Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien ditched references to “Sleepy Joe” and “Beijing Biden” in favor of describing the former vice president as an “empty vessel of the radical Left.” He said, “I think we need to judge Joe Biden by the people he’s surrounding himself with.”
Biden is “a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” said Republican strategist Bryan Lanza, a former Trump 2016 campaign official. “He’s no longer working-class Joe, and people [in battleground states] are going to be shocked. It’s our job to fill in that shock with facts.”
A little over 90 days out from Election Day, the Trump campaign has struggled to define Biden. Even the president, who has excelled at detecting opponents’ weaknesses and branding them accordingly, has found it difficult to break through news cycles dominated by the coronavirus. The question remains whether the current strategy of depicting Biden as a tool of the Left, if not quite a convicted radical himself, after he defeated more liberal candidates in the primaries relying on an argument too nuanced to work in the heat of the presidential race.
“I feel that’s the best strategy right now because the one fear that most Republicans that would ever consider voting for Biden is the lean to the Left,” said Republican strategist Noelle Nikpour. “With more candidates like Bernie Sanders coming forward speaking out for Biden, it will scare some on-the-fence voters away. Biden was the candidate that some voters in the middle saw as a safe bet and would be a reasonable candidate in areas like taxes and the marketplace. But with him giving his center away and leaning more left, it will potentially hurt him with those voters, which is why it’s smart for the Trump campaign to focus on that.”
This line of attack also amplifies other Trump criticisms of his Democratic challenger, including whether Biden, at age 78 by Inauguration Day, has the stamina to check the most liberal wing of his party once in office — and whether it would only delay such a takeover by four years if so. The hope is also to drive up Biden’s negatives, as succeeded with Hillary Clinton four years ago.
“Joe Biden is held hostage by the activist base of the Democratic Party,” said Lanza. “It is not Barack Obama’s Democratic Party, it is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s.”
Biden has steadily moved to the left on a host of issues, from environmental policy to abortion to ending the filibuster if Democrats reclaim the Senate. He remains opposed to “Medicare for all,” but both he and Sanders are promising “the most progressive” administration in history.
“Many may be angry about Trump’s personality, but are they willing to pay higher taxes and watch a downturn, as predicted with a left-leaning presidency, in the marketplace? I think not,” Nikpour said. “So it’s a good strategy, and it’s also a great way to raise money. Fear works in votes and fundraising!”
“If Joe Biden is too scared to stand up to antifa, how will he take that 3 a.m. call?” asked Lanza. “You might as well call AOC directly because that’s who he’s going to go check with.”
