‘Our president is the divider-in-chief’
Biden pushes unity, attacks Trump in campaign kickoff
Former Vice President Joe Biden is preaching unity as the backbone of his presidential bid, calling on the nation to “come together” while blasting President Trump as the country’s “divider-in-chief.”
During his kickoff rally Saturday in Philadelphia, Biden said he believes Democrats “want to unify this nation.” He accused Trump of “instilling fear, sowing division” and “undercutting every institution designed to check the power” of the president, all to “solidify his base and expand his power.”
“Politics today traffics in division, and our president is the divider-inchief,” Biden said.
Biden went light on policy and heavy on attacking Trump — a strategy that lends itself to cementing his status as the front-runner in the Democratic primary, according to strategist Tony Cignoli.
“What he’s doing is really trying to create the narrative and the message that right now, he’s engaging against the president — forget the rest,” Cignoli said. “This makes it look like that’s the main event, while there are 20-some-odd others who are jockeying for air time or whatever they can get.”
Amid a Democratic field of two dozen, Biden has maintained and even expanded his lead in the polls in the opening weeks of his 2020 campaign. The former vice president topped a Fox News poll released Friday with 35% support among likely Democratic primary voters, while U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont trailed with 17%. Biden also leapfrogged Sanders to reclaim the lead in the latest Emerson National Poll, garnering 33% support to Sanders’ 25%.
And Biden may have the best chance of beating Trump, according to a recent Quinnipiac University Poll of Pennsylvania voters, which showed Biden leading Trump by 11 points.
That dovetails nicely with “the subtext the Biden campaign has — that he’s the one who can beat Trump,” Cignoli said.
Biden leaned hard Saturday on the premise that he can unite both a fractured Democratic Party and a deeply divided nation.
“If the American people want a president to add to our division, to lead with a clenched fist, closed hand and a hard heart, to demonize the opponents and spew hatred — they don’t need me. They already have a president who does just that,” Biden said, adding that he’s running to offer the country “a different path.”
He has ideas about education, about clean energy, about building a green infrastructure. But, he said, “the single most important thing we have to accomplish is defeat Donald Trump.”
“It almost sounds like a speech from someone who’s a front-runner after winning four of five primaries,” Cignoli said. “It’s early for that speech.”
As Biden enjoys an early lead, one thing was clear Saturday — he’s still basking in the glow of former President Barack Obama. While his jabs at Trump roused the crowd, Biden’s multiple references to Obama drew the loudest applause of all.
“It’s almost as if he’s still the incumbent vice president,” Cignoli said.