Joe Biden made the same basic mistake Donald Trump made
And like Trump, that mistake will cost big time in the upcoming election
The big mistake Trump made in his presidency, from a getting reelected point of view1 was his response to COVID. Imagine if he had owned the response to COVID, constantly asked people to mask, talked up the warp speed vaccine discovery, asked people to get vaccinated, and talked us all through it, clearly doing the best to minimize deaths.
We would be presently “enjoying” his leadership under his second term.
Instead Trump constantly changed the subject, insisted it wasn’t a big deal, and hoped it would go away. And when he talked about everything else, anything else, most people did not hear what he was talking about, what they heard was “I’m not doing anything about COVID.”
And during all this the top issue for most voters, by far, was COVID. So Trump left himself open to be taken to task on the biggest issue for most voters. And he lost.
What is the biggest issue we face now according to the voters? Inflation. What has Biden’s response been to inflation all this year? To hope it levels off. Like Trump with COVID, Biden with inflation is using optimistic expectations as his plan.
And when Biden talks about saving Democracy, giving a woman the right to choose, etc., the voters don’t hear that message, they hear “I don’t care about inflation.” He’s not only not helping the Democratic vote, he’s hurting it with these speeches.
I think he’s also getting a lot of bad advice on his emphasis. First off, there are a lot of people telling him that the biggest issue is saving our Democracy. They’re right it’s the biggest issue. But they’re wrong that it’s something worth discussing. Those that are basing their vote on this will vote, and will vote Democratic. You’ve already closed them. Same for abortion.
Second, I get the feeling that a lot of Biden’s advisors, and a lot of the major Democratic players, find it important that people vote on the issue of saving our Democracy. That why people choose Democratic is really important.
Totally wrong. Who gives a fuck why someone votes Democratic. All that matters is that they do. If the most effective way to get votes would be for Biden to talk about the weather, then he should talk about the weather. It’s close the sale, not convince them what issue(s) they should care about.
Anyways, it’s too late now. We’re screwed. But my god the Democrats blew it. All they had to do was focus on discussing inflation & crime. After all, we Democrats are opposed to inflation & crime. That’s an easy sell. And then talk about everything we Democrats want to do to address both if the Republicans wouldn’t block it in Congress.
It would have been so easy. If only…
Pretty much everything he did was a mistake from a policy point of view