Will anyone do anything to stop Donald Trump from becoming president again? Journalists and commentators have been regurgitating the threat he poses to our democracy for months, but inevitably addressing the same limited audience and talking mostly to themselves, helpless in the face of impending disaster. When I say “anyone,” I’m referring to the Democrats and more specifically the “Biden campaign.” We’ve seen a few television ads attacking Trump, but when it comes to touting Biden’s accomplishments—of which there have been quite a few, including the “Inflation Reduction Act” and the “Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act”—they haven’t had much to say. Despite constant Republican obstruction, the president and his administration made significant strides on infrastructure, climate change, and “building the economy from the bottom up” (Bidenomics), but Biden and the Democrats would seemingly die a thousand deaths before sharing those achievements with voters.
The election is now less than six months away and most polls show Biden losing in the critical swing states, which is tantamount to losing the election, a.k.a. a disaster for the country. For months now, Democrats and left-leaning media pundits have been claiming that polls conducted so far in advance of the election are nothing but meaningless “snapshots in time.” But as the weeks and months pass, the snapshots aren’t getting any better and taken together amount to a tracking poll that’s tracking nowhere fast for the president. The Biden campaign has received endless advice from the regurgitators, but so far they haven’t done much of anything, despite having a considerable war chest to work with.
Even in his younger days the president wasn’t the best orator, and he can’t help it that he’s old, but with the exception of his State of the Union address, he’s been missing in action when it comes to making his case to the American people. He mumbles about the threat Trump poses to democracy, but too many people no longer value democracy and think they’d be better off under an authoritarian dictator who would be their champion. If you think democracy has failed you, why vote to save it?
People Don’t Understand that “Bidenomics” Means Building the Economy from the Bottom Up, Not Inflation
Don’t the Democrats and the “Biden campaign” do any opinion research? Don’t they have speech writers and communications people to offer the president guidance? Speech after speech, such as his commencement address at Moorehouse College, feel like lost opportunities. This humble spirit hates to sound insensitive, but how many times is the president going to tell us about his wife and daughter being killed in a car crash and losing his son Beau to cancer? Does the man not understand that young Black men, along with the rest of Americans, are more concerned about issues relevant to their own lives?
I’m not among the camp that thinks Biden is senile, but it’s all too evident that his frame of reference is the distant past, just as it is for many older people. No matter how experienced and well-intentioned he may be, one gets the impression that a part of him is still somewhere in the 1970s and 80s. Even though Donald Trump is less than five years younger, increasingly incoherent (including a recent reference to putting on his trousers every morning!), and can’t stop talking about the 2020 election and “retribution,” somehow he seems more in touch with voter’s immediate concerns (such as inflation and the southern border) than does President Biden. And that makes for a really scary prospect!