The impeached president does and says so many absurdly horrific, devastatingly harmful things that even just addressing one each day feels impossible. But taking a step back and looking at the big picture every once in a while can help. Comparing the Trump campaign’s tactics to those of Joe Biden, one overarching difference stands out in the way each addresses the other.
Trump has been trying to scare the bejesus out of just enough people to eke out another electoral college victory. But notice what he’s scaring them about. I won’t repeat his lies here—that’s a mistake too many Democrats make, as repeating Trump’s lies only reinforces them. But taken broadly, the things he’s trying to scare people about aren’t things Joe Biden has actually done, or actually believes.
The Orange Julius Caesar makes up all kinds of crap about economic issues, racial issues, crime, immigration, you name it, and then says that the people who believe those things, or who have taken such actions, are somehow, magically, tied to Joe Biden. He can’t point to things Biden has done or said, so he has to concoct these connections. For just one example, does Biden actually support Medicare for All? Hey, many of us progressives do, but Biden does not. Yet Trump claims that people who do will somehow be running health care policy. Rinse and repeat on countless other issues.
The Biden campaign and its progressive allies, on the other hand, can take a more direct approach. Democrats don’t have to make up or even point to real things that people other than Trump do or say and try to connect them to their opponent. There’s no need.
Trump is the one saying and doing the batshit crazy, racist, anti-science, anti-middle- and working-class things the Biden campaign wants to highlight for the American people. We have the receipts. We have the recordings of him telling Bob Woodward he knows COVID-19 is deadly serious, and then telling the American people it’s no big deal. Oh, and I love how Trump said he played down the virus because he didn’t want to scare people. That’s rich coming from a guy whose race-baiting and fear-mongering on crime would make George Wallace blush.
Will voters be able to see that only one campaign is actually comparing its candidate to their opponent, rather than phantom third-parties? We can all do our part to help make sure they do.
Ian Reifowitz is the author of The Tribalization of Politics: How Rush Limbaugh's Race-Baiting Rhetoric on the Obama Presidency Paved the Way for Trump (Foreword by Markos Moulitsas)