Splinters on 2020 Election Issues

• Trump and his billionaire cronies are using protests to reopen the government in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, re-creating the 2009 Tea Party movement (that led to Democrats losing the House in 2010), now labeled Liberation demonstrations. They are primarily targeting battleground states - WI, MI, PA, CO, MN, AZ, FL, AR - that could deliver Trump another victory in the Electoral College.

• Many of these Liberation and anti-shelter-in-place activists carry American, Nazi, and Confederate flags, handguns and AK-15s, and are more than 90 percent white and conservative as were their Tea Party predecessors. They also have the strong public support of President Trump.

• The hotspots for the coronavirus are largely in prisons and other densely populated areas (Baltimore, MD; Camden, NJ; Albany, GA, etc.) where citizens of color predominate. They are overwhelmingly testing positive for and dying from the coronavirus.

• To date, Trump has been the beneficiary of more than $3 billion in free political TV ads under the guise of his 2-3 hour daily briefings on COVID-19. The networks are not able to fact-check his continuous streaming of lies and half-truths, obfuscated responses, and his acrimonious and false attacks on the press quickly enough to have any substantial impact on public attitudes.

• The nation’s governors are routinely used as negative or positive props for his day-to-day political advertisements and posturing. And Trump’s urgency to reopen the economy is designed to plunge states into a death spiral for which he will blame Democrats and then use it to further suppress voting among America’s minority groups.

• With his executive order denying immigrants’ entry into the U.S., Trump is ginning up turnout from his 30-40 percent base of voters by catering to their racist and intolerant beliefs. Again, his focus is on 2020 battleground states.

• Many of the nation’s meatpacking and meat processing plants are repositories of the coronavirus disease and have been slow to shut down. Moreover, they disproportionately employ minority workers.

• After stating that the Trump administration would provide details of a plan to address COVID-19’s deadly devastation of minority communities last week, African American Surgeon General Jerome Adams has been sidelined from the coronavirus briefings, and no further specifics have been provided.

Joe Biden is at the crossroads of his presidential campaign. Now that he is in a one-on-one race with Donald Trump, he is flailing all over the place. His latest ill-timed comment is “… that he would have no hesitation picking former first lady Michelle Obama to be his running mate, but added that he doubts she is interested in the position.” This statement was condemned by an older white male voter, who supports Biden and who found it superficial and not useful as a campaign strategy.

Why is he engaging in this silliness? Biden needs to focus on his vice presidential selection process rather than throwing the former First Lady’s name around. The Obamas are solidly behind him, but neither can defeat Trump for Biden. In addition, last week’s column received feedback from a politically active African American female, a member of his core base of supporters, who said “I am not excited, nor hopeful about Biden’s Presidential candidacy: No fire; no excitement; no passion on critical issues!”

These are troubling signs of a campaign that lacks direction. Biden needs to prepare for an epic political battle against an opponent who will do anything to win. He does not seem to grasp the depths to which Trump will go to not only defeat but to also humiliate him. Biden needs to get his act together and revitalize his campaign. He is no longer running against Bernie Sanders.

Biden did offer one hopeful sign with the release of a slickly produced ad accusing Trump of being in China’s pocket and leaving America unprepared for the COVID-19 pandemic even after he had been warned of its impending transport to the U.S. Trump responded quickly turning the tables on Biden accusing him of being soft on China due to his son’s business ties. And Biden has not responded to the charge. He still trails Trump by $187 million in campaign cash on hand as of April 21st.

Biden cannot beat Trump unless he is able to quickly raise competitive sums of money. Unlike the South Carolina and Super Tuesday primaries and beyond, he will not be competitive or be able to out-fight Trump while politically and financially broke. Biden has much work to do in overcoming a variety of voter suppression tactics, the manipulation of voting rules and processes, and the upcoming vicious attacks on him and his family, and he needs money to do so.

He has to step into the arena against Trump with the understanding that he will be in hand-to-hand combat. Lofty statements will not save him from the pit bull behavior of his opponent. Biden has to fight, and he has yet to show that he has it in him. Being a nice guy and relying on the facts will not cut it. Biden has to get down into the political muck and contest Trump at every turn.

Biden and his advisors have to realize that he has only been in one adversarial political fight other than his first political race for a seat on the New Castle County Delaware City Council in 1970 against Republican Lawrence Messick which he won handily by a 55 to 43 percent margin at the age of 27.

His next race in 1972 was against two-term incumbent Delaware U.S. Sen. J. Caleb Boggs who had previously served two terms as Delaware’s Governor and as its three-term Congressman. Boggs had planned to retire at the end of his second term, but President Nixon encouraged him to run for a third term because Delaware’s Republican Party was in disarray. So Boggs was a reluctant candidate.

He was beaten by Biden by a narrow margin of 50.5 percent to 49.5 percent when Biden was 29 on the strength of his opposition to the Vietnam War, which drew a large number of voters in his age group to the polls. Since then, Biden has not won a contested race (his five reelections were political cakewalks) until the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries. After he got off to a lackluster start, black Congressman James Clyburn (D-SC), African American women, and the Democratic establishment propelled him to victory.

Biden’s only other electoral forays were the 1988 Democratic presidential primary, where Jesse Jackson forced him, Dick Gephardt, and Al Gore out of the race. Twenty years later, Barack Obama would do the same thing in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary. Thus, he has enjoyed no electoral successes other than his City Council and Senate elections.

So far, Biden has not demonstrated the political experience or moxie to dethrone an unprincipled, political gangster like Donald Trump. But he can still win if he significantly revises his political strategy, starts to take this race more seriously, moves away from his Uncle Joe persona, and out-fights Trump on the ground.

Likewise, Biden needs a running mate who has been through a similar political fire, has faced election malfeasance, and is a war-time consigliere. She should have been brought on board yesterday. Furthermore, Biden needs to quickly raise at least $200 million so that he can fund his ground game in the battleground states and respond to Trump’s negative TV and digital ads on a timely basis. November 3rd is not far away, and Biden has less than 200 days to close the deal.