ground game: get out the vote, endorsements, polling, etc
What do you think are the most effective ways for Biden to use his limited time and budget? If you were giving specific advice to him, what would it be?
I’ll post my thoughts later and think we can have some good discussions here. Please keep comments about his opponent to the minimum needed to explain Biden’s campaign strategies.
I’m not just saying this to knock Trump. This legitimately is the center of Biden’s campaign strategy; he’s the alternative to Donald Trump becoming President again.
The Biden campaign should be reminding people of what a terrible job Trump did as President. They should be talking about all the criminal charges that have been made against Trump. They should be reminding everyone of the million Americans who died of Covid. They should be playing tapes of Trump saying he wants a bloodbath or that he could shoot somebody in the street and get away with it or how he loves Kim Jung-un. They should be playing the tapes of Trump’s January 6 speech and the subsequent attack on the capital.
Campaign about abortion rights every chance he gets. Talk about how Trump ended Roe every time he is in front of a camera. Get as many stories of women who have been impacted as possible.
The problem with Biden and the D’s, IMHO, is that they don’t understand that the danger of being risk-averse can be just as great - or even greater - than being too risk-comfortable (for lack of a better term.)
If Biden were to take drastic action on taxing the rich, curbing inflation, bringing up wages, getting rents down, etc. I think his approval rating would skyrocket to something like 60-70%. Instead, one of the biggest dangers facing him this year is the perception that poor-to-middle-class America isn’t doing any better financially under him than under Trump. And the attitude of some Democrats that “It’s okay if people are suffering from inflation if the stock market makes the economy look good” isn’t helping.
By football analogy, throwing the ball too often can lose you a game, but so can running the ball nonstop.
For all their flaws, Republicans understand the benefit of being aggressive and playing risky ball.
No downside, maybe, but whose vote is it going to win over? Every Trump supporter long since ago decided they were going to ride the Trump ship no matter if it went down and their support is baked-in for Trump. This won’t change their mind.
Every centrist/independent voter has long since read 1,000 news articles and op-eds that blast Trump for corruption, scandal, etc. This would just be hearing more of the same song.
Every liberal voter, of course, was never going to vote for Trump in ten thousand years anyway.
I don’t think this is true. I think there is sadly a large number of voters ignoring a lot of this mess. So in the closing months before the election, in the more purple states, it might help.
Sure, but what would this actually look like? The federal reserve can topple inflation tomorrow: increase interests rates to double digits, and in exchange the economy tanks. Biden can’t increase the national minimum wage, raise taxes or do much of anything about rents without Congress. I think if he had any real power to do anything about either, he would have already.
What I wonder is if there’s a way to communicate “he wants himself to be a permanent dictator” in a succinct way without paradoxically exciting Trump voters too.
Direct - keep hounding Trump on abortion, interposed with clips repeating in his own words his attitude towards sexual assault and the phrase “convicted of sexual assault” - all of which are factual. Then intercut with him taking credit for the judges who overturned Roe, AND that one of those judges was also accused of sexual assault.
Over and over and over. Make the point that he’s a person who not only would assault you because he COULD but would deny you the right to have an abortion even when raped.
Second, and the less direct. I’d have him focus a great deal on the down-ticket races as well. The last decade + has proven that, yeah, not having a raving wanna-be autocrat is important in a president, but letting the other party control the local election boards, state legislatures and the House/Senate leads to nearly as bad circumstances.
I doubt he’d end up with anything like a full sweep, but holding onto as much of the legislature and denying super-majorities in the states is also going to be key to an actual working government and second Biden term.
Lastly, I have very much enjoyed watching the recent Biden cracks at Trump, the “very successful businessman” losing over 2/3 of his new media empire’s value in weeks.
Some more of that, perhaps with a few selected small scale Trump investors talking about how they’ve lost their life’s savings (the few that haven’t drunk the Kool-Aide to the point where it’s all the deep-state’s fault) would be nice, but should likely be directed at the more purple areas rather than deep red.
Ohio is going to be very tough for Biden. No Democratic presidential candidate not named Obama has gotten over 50% of the state’s vote since Lyndon Johnson. Thanks to Ross Perot, Bill Clinton carried Ohio twice in the 1990s – once with only 40% of the vote.
On top of that, Trump’s support (% of popular vote) in Ohio actually increased 2% between 2016 and 2020.
Now North Carolina, on the other hand, is ripe for the picking. The state’s been progressively ‘bluing’ for a good twenty years now. Trump was not able to get over 50% in either 2016 or 2020, while Biden gained a cool point-and-a-half over Hillary Clinton’s 2016 vote percentage to pull within 75,000 votes of his challenger.
EDIT: Plus North Carolina has gained an extra Electoral College vote for the 2024 general election. That helps make up for the one lost in each of Pennsylvania and Michigan. Ohio has lost one, also.
It’s not really about winning votes over. It’s about turnout, turnout, turnout. Also, turnout. You need to motivate the people who are on your side, but are reluctant voters who can’t usually be bothered to bestir themselves over something as mundane as another election. You need to motivate the people who are maybe more progressive than you and annoyed by your policies, but who should legitimately fear the opposition winning. You need to motivate the people who are maybe mildly more conservative than you and would rather not vote for another “tax and spend” Democrat, but still flinch with revulsion every time they see a Jan 6th video.
No. Because Trump has a base of supporters who want the bloodbaths. They want Trump to overthrow the American government, establish himself as dictator, and begin the purges. Biden is never going to win over these people.
What Biden needs to do is remind the voters in the middle that those people exist and that the danger of them gaining power is real.