TRUMP’S QUESTIONABLE PERFORMANCE CONTINUES TO SUPPORT THE DEMOCRATS?

…Joe Biden and his wife Jill in Philadelphia, PA.

Biden requested of the president: ”Stop overpromising, buck-passing, and start delivering protection to our people.”

It is unbelievable that our president has been trying to rewrite history.  He did this in insisting that he was focused on the pandemic very early on.  This is even as he downplayed the pandemic publicly, and he ignored the dire warnings about its potential to our American public.  He has instead been working with his Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, on a large stimulus package that he and his aides hope will have political benefits.

It is amazing that as bad a president as Trump has been, his advisers have been cheered by the recent public polling that apparently finds more than half of the country approves of Trump’s response to the crisis….?  This support is far better than his usual approval numbers in the polls. Some of his advisers say they believe the country will rally around any US president during a crisis, regardless of his party.  That is very frightening regarding our President, Donald J. Trump.

“Americans want to see their president out front and leading in a time of national crisis and that’s exactly what President Trump is doing,” Tim Murtaugh, the Trump 2020 campaign communications director, said in a recent statement. “At the same time, Joe Biden and the Democrats offer nothing but ineffective partisan sniping from the sidelines.”

Fortunately for us, Mr. Murtaugh is wrong about Biden.

Biden himself has been pushing a different story line about Trump’s performance.

“The president has been behind the curve throughout his whole response,” Biden told reporters last week regarding the president.  “Stop saying false things that only make you sound like a hero . . . Stop, stop, stop swerving between over-promising, buck-passing, and start delivering protection for our people.”

Biden has been talking at length with his advisers for developing a real economic plan.  Although he stays largely in the background, he has been in frequent contact with House and Senate Democratic leaders to keep tabs on the legislation that they are crafting while offering his own feedback.  Even though Trump has been holding calls with governors, Biden has as well.  He has been in contact with New York’s Cuomo, Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee (D), and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D), among others.

But Biden has been frustrated that he’s confined to his home in Wilmington, Del.  The virus has a higher mortality rate among older Americans like Biden, who is 77 years old, and that limitation has been placed on his campaign.

On top of all this, our president has the gall to call himself a “wartime president” while the former vice president says the nation must “put politics aside.”  (President Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, are both turning in their graves on Trump’s statement about being a “wartime president”.)  But both current political leaders have allowed their campaigns to launch deeply personal offensive statements against the other as they confront a likely general election clash before a nation grappling with the viral pandemic.

This face-off comes as much of the presidential campaign has been either put on hold or shifted to an online campaign, as both contenders retool for an new era of economic crisis and social distancing.  Fundraisers have been postponed, Trump’s loud and raucous rallies have been canceled, and new technologies are under consideration in both camps.

General election strategists have allowed for new polls in the field and they have shuffled plans for spring advertising campaigns.  This is even as Biden’s sole challenger for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), remains in the race.

Anita Dunn, a senior adviser to Joe Biden, said that the American people were seeing in the pandemic response, the dire consequences of “the chaos around President Trump.”

“There is a price that this nation pays for that behavior,” Dunn said. “As we move forward that is going to be the case we prosecute.”

Republicans, on the outer hand, are hopeful that Trump’s role as head of the federal response to the coronavirus will help him against the coming Democratic critiques about his poor leadership. Trump believes that his daily news conferences are helping him because they show him involved, and his advisers are hoping to utilize the video footage of Democratic, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo praising the president in their Trump ads.

It is obvious that having New York City as the focus of the pandemic, the states governor would have praised any US president, such as Trump, who is easily made a supporter by Cuomo’s compliments.

However, from Trump’s White House counselor, Kellyanne Conway in a news interview:  “Anybody who attempts to politicize and weaponize a public health crisis is revealed to be petty and peevish,” to criticize Trump now is to criticize public health officials, FEMA, first responders, private sector businesses that are all coming forward to help.”

Nobody politicizes almost everything more than Donald Trump.

It must be noted that, Kellyanne’s husband, the successful attorney, George Conway, he has 180 degree views from his wife about the president, who he has called, “America’s worst president, ever.”

Biden, has refrained from criticizing Trump while he had been abroad.  But that is only out of respect for ”the office of the US President”.  However, he told reporters last week that Trump “is falsely telling us he’s taking action that he has NOT taken, he promises results he’s NOT delivering and he announces actions that he has yet to order.”

Biden released a statement over last weekend calling on Democrats in the Senate to reject the stimulus bill that is being promoted by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), which they have done....twice.

“President Trump and Mitch McConnell are trying to put corporate bailouts ahead of families,” Biden said, after the Senate rejected a procedural motion for the bill. “And it’s simply wrong.”

Even Majority Leader McConnel knows that he needs the Senate’s Democrats in order to pass a major stimulus bill.

The attack against Trump builds upon a broader argument that the pandemic “confirms concerns that many potential swing voters have about Trump”.   And swing voters could easily defeat the president in November.

“What the coronavirus response has done in very short order is demonstrated an immediate, tangible, significant impact of the president’s impulsiveness and the chaos he has sowed,” said Guy Cecil, the Chairman of Priorities USA, a SuperPAC that plans to spend $150 million to defeat Trump this year.

The biggest change in Biden’s digital strategy is in fundraising. Over the weekend he held two high-dollar virtual fundraisers, but he appeared only in a video.  At the same time Biden was hoping to escalate his online fundraising appeals among those willing to give smaller amounts, aides said.  The economic crisis has made the aides wary of hammering his supporters by asking for money. Instead, they are trying softer approaches, by sending emails that try to draw people into the campaign in other ways.

An aide said Biden’s vast army of high-profile endorsers, many of them former presidential candidates, will likely be featured in digital events, perhaps even holding their own events. Former Olympic figure skater Michelle Kwan, who has campaigned for Biden in several states, has volunteered to host yoga online during the time of quarantine.

Volunteers from Trump Victory, the RNC’s field effort, are still calling supporters.  This was from a Republican official with knowledge of the matter.  The official said they have made 1.4 million calls, just on that Saturday.  Other officials working in battleground states across the country are holding webinars with field organizers and volunteers to strategize on reaching voters. (Trump’s headquarters staff, as well as Biden’s, are working from home to lower their risk of catching the virus.)

The Trump campaign, plans to lean on its significant data operation in the coming months to communicate digitally with supporters.

“The campaign and RNC have built up a massive, unparalleled database containing the contact information of tens of millions of voters and we are putting that information to work to maintain contact with voters and spread the President’s message,” Tim Murtaugh said. “We continue to consider new, creative ways to interact with voters, provide them with information, and let them know how they can help.”

The question is: “How much of what that communication is, is “truthful communication”? 

Based on the presidents comment to date, very many of the president’s statements have been false!

Bradley Beychok, president of American Bridge, said his group was going to conduct research over the coming weeks about how to best push a message in television ads that is truthful and would hurt Trump among white working class voters in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.  Like other Democrats, he was hopeful that the president’s support would take a hit.

“Trump’s superpower sometimes is his deflection,” Beychok said. “But it is a very hard thing for Trump to distract people from what is going on right now.”

The coronavirus, the stock market continuing to decline and the increased unemployment issues could drive the election to the former vice president.

We can only hope that's the outcome.

Copyright G. Ater 2020.