Republican insiders are sounding the alarm as President Trump struggles to land a punch on Joe Biden, warning that inconsistent attacks on the presumptive Democratic nominee are muddling his message and out of step with voters focused on the coronavirus.
On Tuesday, ahead of Night Two of the Democratic convention, the Trump campaign released a fresh digital advertisement casting Biden, 77, as a politician in cognitive decline, unable to handle the rigors of the presidency. The attack was another in a barrage of haymakers — his association with “radical” liberals, “socialist” plans to remake government, and positions on police funding and Black Lives Matter, among others — that are failing to connect with the former vice president.
Trump’s erratic attacks on Biden are diluting the potency of any specific hit, say frustrated Republican strategists. Worse, they complain, Trump is trying to rerun the outsider campaign he waged four years ago against Hillary Clinton, an ethically plagued Democrat far more vulnerable to the president’s asymmetrical targeting than Biden.
“What Trump campaign messaging? There’s no narrative building; no theme; no message progression, other than: ‘Joe Biden bad,’” a veteran Republican insider said. Said another GOP operative: “Trump is constantly on defense. He spends much more time talking about his own record than about Biden’s record. Part of that goes with being an incumbent with a record, especially during a pandemic and economic crisis.”
As the Democratic convention continues and Republicans prepare to celebrate Trump’s renomination next week, Biden is enjoying a substantial lead over the president in national polls and battleground state surveys. The margins have solidified since the pandemic upended life, and the economy, five months ago. But the Trump campaign defended the president’s messaging and said its internal data proves voters are responding favorably to the range of attacks.
“President Trump is proudly running on a record of success for the American people,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Samantha Zager said. “Joe Biden has had 50 years to deliver results, but because he is running on a newly adopted socialist agenda and a record of failure, he has taken to hiding in his basement.”
Biden is not an easy target for Trump, as it turns out, despite a four-decade political career littered with verbal miscues and other missteps.
The former vice president tacked left during the Democratic primary, indicating he opposed fracking, a form of fossil fuel energy exploration opposed by grassroots liberals. The move provided the Trump campaign with a momentary opportunity to describe him as a vessel for socialist Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator who finished second in the battle for the 2020 nomination. But Biden never adopted Sanders’s proposal for government-run healthcare and has since reaffirmed support for fracking.
Biden’s personal favorable ratings are underwater by 1.6 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics polling average. But he is far less polarizing than Clinton was in 2016 and exceedingly more well regarded by voters. Yet Trump, whose favorable rating is negative 15 points, insists on treating the folksy former vice president the same as he did the unlikable former secretary of state. This approach is a recipe for disaster, some Republicans contend.
John Couvillon, a Republican pollster in Louisiana, said President George H.W. Bush made the same mistake against Bill Clinton in 1992 when he tried to run for reelection using the same “liberal extremist” playbook that had worked against Michael Dukakis four years earlier. “The Trump campaign did well against Clinton because, over the years, she accumulated a lot of enemies and legal troubles,” he said. “The problem is, you can’t apply the rules of 2016 to 2020.”
To turn things around, Republican insiders are urging Trump to choose a consistent line of attack with the potential to cause damage.
Some party operatives say the president’s best bet is to stick to questioning Biden’s cognitive abilities, a concern that has arisen in focus groups with voters across the political spectrum. But others say people dissatisfied with Trump have built that into the price of admission with the former vice president, much like they did four years ago with the president’s unconventional behavior.
Still, other Republicans say Trump should spend more time talking about the coronavirus and his plans to quash the pandemic. That would also satisfy another latent concern of some in the party: the president’s lack of a forward-leaning agenda for his second term. That issue might be solved next week during a Republican convention that, like this week’s Democratic gathering, will be a mostly virtual affair.
“Unlike 2016, when Trump could play the media and the political environment like a puppet master, he doesn’t have the ability to do that anymore,” a Republican media consultant said.
