For the better part of a year, pundits declared that Joe Biden was on a cusp of collapse. Yet the former vice president dominated the Democratic presidential primary. Now he’s won it, far more handily and decisively than Hillary Clinton did in 2016, but the coronavirus has prematurely ended his victory lap. He is pivoting to a general election brought to an effective standstill.
Biden’s campaign strategy has now become to lock himself in his Wilmington, Delaware, basement, tempering his critiques of President Trump and posting feel-good videos with his family. Once again, the pundit class has declared this a losing strategy, and once again, the polls indicate that it’s actually working.
In a new Fox News poll, Biden has accrued 49% of support in Michigan to Trump’s 41%, and 50% of Pennsylvanian support to Trump’s 42%. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found similar margins, with Biden earning 46% of Michigan support to Trump’s 38%, 46% of support in Pennsylvania to Trump’s 40%, and 43% of support in Wisconsin to Trump’s 40%.
Wisconsin has remained a tight race, but thanks to a boom in his polling with senior citizens, Biden has seen his lead in Pennsylvania and Michigan grow decisively. Mind you, this is before the Trump campaign plasters the Keystone State with ads of Democrats’ recent remarks on fracking, but the point still stands — despite all the left-wing hysterics mourning Bernie Sanders, and all the Republican trolling about, “Where’s Joe?”, Biden’s campaign strategy is working.
Outside of the online world of pundits who have never been right about anything, it’s not hard to see why.
Whereas cable news anchors are frothing at the mouth blaming Trump for creating the coronavirus, Biden has sanely said that Trump is not the source of the problem. While the rest of his party went apoplectic over Trump calling it the “Chinese virus,” Biden barely entertained the sham controversy, instead slamming Trump for his own sycophancy toward the Chinese Communist Party. And despite every Democrat from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Hillary Clinton using the coronavirus crisis to dunk on Trump, Biden’s actually been measured, spewing the same hokey, kumbaya messaging that won him the primary.
Right now, that’s what Americans want. They don’t want breathless fulmination about Trump when Trump already makes an example of himself. They don’t want a country divided when we most need it united, and they certainly don’t want to hear the nation’s ruling class continue to carry water for China’s communists.
