Biden fends off Trump’s onslaught
As fall nears, presidential campaign enters final stretch
A presidential campaign long mu±ed by the coronavirus pandemic will burst into a newly intense and public phase after Labor Day, as Joe Biden moves aggressively to defend his polling lead against a ferocious onslaught by President Donald Trump aimed chiefly at white voters in the Midwest.
Private polls conducted for both parties during and after their August conventions found the race largely stable but tightening slightly in some states, with Trump recovering some support from conservative-leaning rural voters who had drifted away over the summer amid the worsening pandemic. Yet Biden continues to enjoy advantages with nearly every other group, especially in populous areas where the virus remains at the forefront for voters, according to people briefed on the data.
No president has entered Labor Day weekend — the traditional kickoff of the fall campaign — as such a clear underdog since George H.W. Bush in 1992. Trump has not led in public polls in such must-win states as Florida since
Biden claimed the nomination in April, and there has been little fluctuation in the race. Still, the president’s surprise win in 2016 weighs heavily in the thinking of nervous Democrats and hopeful Republicans alike.
Trump’s effort to revive his candidacy by blaming Biden’s party for scenes of looting and arson in American cities has jolted Biden into a more proactive posture, one that some Democrats have long urged him to adopt. The former vice president spent last week pushing back forcefully on Trump’s often false attacks, after encouragement from allies including former Secretary of State John Kerry, whose 2004 presidential campaign faltered in the face of a concerted smear campaign about his Vietnam War service.
Both parties see Trump with a narrow path to reelection that runs through heavily white states like Wisconsin and Minnesota, where his strategy of racial division could help him catch Biden. Yet the president is also on defense in diverse Southern and Western states he carried in 2016, including Florida, North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia.
Two Republican former governors, Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and Scott Walker of Wisconsin, said that Biden had entered the fall with slight advantages in their states but that the race could easily turn.
“Can Trump win back some of those voters in the second and third ring of suburbs?” said Pawlenty, noting that those areas had trended toward Democrats. “They’re really unsettled by the violence, but the question is if it’s enough to reverse recent voting patterns.”
Walker said Trump’s hopes in Wisconsin increasingly hung on the three presidential debates, which will “have an impact if it worries voters about Biden.”
A consistent challenge for Trump has been his unwillingness, or inability, to drive a focused political message rather than becoming engulfed in less favorable debates, like his ongoing tirade against a report that he belittled American service members. His campaign also appears to be facing a significant financial crunch and has largely ceased advertising on television even as Biden begins to spend heavily from his war chest after raising about $365 million in August.
The former vice president is airing tens of millions of dollars in ads rebutting Trump’s law-andorder-themed attacks, though some in his campaign are hoping to quickly return the focus to the coronavirus and the economy.