Republicans will formally renominate President Trump this week, providing him with his best opportunity to right his presidential campaign as it heads into the fall stretch.
Without recounting all of the poll numbers, the reality is that Trump’s position at this point in the campaign is considerably worse than it was four years ago. He spent much of 2016 within a few points of Hillary Clinton in the national polls, and there were even moments in which he was tied or slightly ahead of her. In contrast, Trump has never led Joe Biden in the RealClearPolitics average of polls, and since becoming the de facto nominee, Biden’s lead has been in the comfortable 6-10 point range.
Additionally, Biden has opened leads in key states that are likely to decide the election. Although the polls could be wrong, they would have to err by a much larger margin than they did in 2016 for Trump to win.
If the nation’s political sympathies continue on their current trajectory, in other words, Trump will lose. So he needs to use the convention to recalibrate and to improve his strategy for the fall.
It is absurd that Biden has been able to use the coronavirus as an excuse to campaign mostly from his basement, thereby avoiding the proper scrutiny that a docile, allied press wants to avoid anyway. While Trump fields questions regularly from hostile media, Biden avoided all interviews ahead of the Democratic National Convention, except for a lighthearted “conversation” with rapper Cardi B.
But a big part of the reason Biden has been able to get away with this run-and-hide strategy is that Trump keeps drawing attention away from him. The president is his own worst enemy — a far more potent one than his official challenger. Incumbency can be an advantage, because the president can always make news and get a message out and command the news cycle. But that only works if he is bringing positive attention to himself.
In Trump’s case, he has used the presidency to command unfavorable attention. By spreading conspiracy theories about Joe Scarborough, needlessly floating the idea of delaying the election, getting distracted by daily personal feuds, and dozens of other pointless, self-generated controversies, Trump has failed to make the case for his reelection.
As long as Trump is being so self-destructive, Biden has little incentive to seek the limelight. The longer he remains in hiding, avoiding the gaffes he commits every time he opens his mouth, the better he does against Trump. No matter how many jokes Trump tells about Biden hiding in his basement, it isn’t going to get Biden out in the open. The best way to draw Biden out is for Trump to use his platform effectively. If he were out giving people reason to reelect him, Biden couldn’t sit idly in subterranean seclusion.
Through most of this year, we have urged Trump to knock off his Twitter feuds and focus on fighting the coronavirus pandemic, which he has taken seriously only intermittently. We have urged him also to outline an agenda that he would like to pursue if given a second term more clearly. He now has only about 10 weeks to do so, and he must ensure the focus is not on his daily behavior but, rather, on presenting a choice to voters.
Democrats didn’t spend much time during their convention making the case for their policy agenda. Part of this had to do with the realities of conducting a virtual convention. If most speakers are limited to a few minutes, or even shorter cameos, they aren’t going to spend that time talking in detail about policy.
But it is also because Biden wants the election to be simply a referendum on Trump and Trumpism. If there is one phrase to sum up Biden’s pitch to voters, it’s “Make America Normal Again.” Keeping the lowest possible profile for a presidential candidate fits this strategy; many members of the public would like to go back to a time when politics was more boring.
In reality, however, the Democratic convention featured constant reminders of the coalition Biden would bring to Washington with him. He and his party don’t simply want to go back. They intend to transform America radically so it looks more like socialist Europe. Biden can make noises about being a centrist, but he chose a vice presidential running mate who is one of the most left-wing members of the Senate. His campaign and his convention have provided a forum for the radical wing of the party, led by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Since clinching the nomination, Biden has moved decidedly to the left, embracing trillions of dollars in new taxes and spending and moving closer to the extreme Green New Deal. Despite rhetoric about crossing party lines, Biden has signaled his openness to killing the filibuster to ram through his liberal agenda without having to work with Republicans.
Trump is not widely popular among voters. But in many swing states, the extreme ideas of Biden’s coalition on taxes, spending, abortion, guns, the gig economy, energy, and other issues are not popular either.
There is no way to sugarcoat it; Trump is on track to lose. If he’s going to turn his campaign around, he must get voters to understand that the election is a choice not just between two leaders, but between two coalitions that represent drastically different visions for the country. That process needs to begin this week.
