Emily Larsen of the Washington Examiner highlights bad news for the president’s November re-election bid.
Buoyed by a continuing lead in the polls, Joe Biden’s campaign is gleefully characterizing failed attacks from President Trump in the way children on playgrounds use the “sticks and stones” taunt in response to ineffective name-calling.
Lines from the Trump campaign such as “Sleepy Joe” and “Bejing Biden” were “deployed unsuccessfully for over a year,” Biden’s deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said in a Sunday memo on the “false attacks.”
“This endless rotation of the same debunked smears isn’t the product of some strategic genius, it’s a sign of myopia and desperation as each successive attempt backfires, re-elevating a massive Trump liability while leaving his campaign scrambling to find something new.”
Biden leads the president by 8.7 points in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls and has significant leads in swing states such as Florida, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
It isn’t for lack of trying on the part of the Trump campaign. The campaign spent $24 million in a spring advertising blitz that Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale compared to the Star Wars “death star.” But as Trump slipped in the polls, the message appeared to not break through the coronavirus pandemic upending normal life and the economy or racial tensions bubbling into nationwide protests and riots throughout June.
Another challenge for Trump is that polls find that voters generally like the former vice president.
Trump’s last opponent, Hillary Clinton, was widely disliked and villainized, and he benefited, in part, by voters who either turned out to vote against her or stayed home rather than voting for her. …
… Biden’s team is content with the candidate having a low national profile this summer, explicitly saying that they hope to make the election a referendum on Trump and his record.