As I said in my prior column, the Biden campaign is panicking because of Biden’s electoral freefall, and making campaign mistakes galore. For Biden to have any chance of winning his race for re-election, he needs to stop doing this. His recent decision to stop supplying arms and ammunition to Israel strikes me, and others on this blog, as another example of him making another big political mistake. This decision is, of course, also immoral, and not based on a correct evaluation of U.S. national interests.
Biden also needs to run a better campaign, overall.
Regardless of whether his campaign improves, however, Biden will almost certainly be leveling the following attacks, or using the following tools to attack: (1) the Abortion Issue; (2) the Campaign Cash Disparity; (3) Election Rigging; (4) Election Fraud; (5) Government Action: Bribery, Lawfare, & Weaponization; and (6) Propaganda that Trump is the Devil & The Latest Trump “Scandal”.
Let’s evaluate each of these in turn.
Abortion Issue
I have already partly discussed abortion. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s decision, it is a big national issue, and it is unique as it is the only such issue where polling shows that Joe Biden has a clear lead over Donald Trump. CNN recently reported a poll that found:
About half of all registered voters in the United States say this year’s elections will have a “major impact” on access to abortion and about 1 in 8 voters says that abortion is the most important issue driving their vote. Abortion is a particularly motivating issue for Black women. It is also the driving issue for larger-than-average shares of Democratic women (22%), women who live in states with abortion bans (19%), and women of reproductive age OR adult women under 50 (17%). The majority of voters who named abortion as the most important issue to them say it should be legal in all or most cases. About half (48%) said they would vote for President Joe Biden if the election were held today, while 26% said they would back former President Donald Trump.
CNN then quoted Ashley Kirzinger, director of the poll, who said “One in eight isn’t a majority of voters, and it’s down from the midterms, but it is still a share that could be decisive in tight elections.” This is, in my view, correct. We can expect the Biden campaign to heavily advertise on this issue (and related ones, like IVF).
Although Trump seems to be doing what he can to defend himself on this issue, it still may just not be enough to fully neutralize this issue. Then again, it may be. The abortion issue was fully engaged during the 2022 elections, and while the GOP did not do as well as they were expected to – they barely won the U.S. House and lost one seat in the U.S. Senate – they still carried the national popular vote for the House. And now, for a swing voter, it should be clear that abortion is a state issue (which is what it should have been, all along). As a result, I doubt abortion will be enough to carry Biden to victory in 2024.
Campaign Cash Disparity
The Biden campaign, and affiliated leftwing organizations, will have a significant cash advantage over the Trump campaign and affiliated rightwing organizations. Since 2021, Joe Biden has raised $170,000,000; Donald Trump has raised $115,000,000. Across his fundraising vehicles and including the Democratic National Committee, Biden has $192.9 million in cash on hand as of March 30, 2024. Trump, meanwhile, has $93.1 million. In the 2024 cycle, the direct campaign numbers look closer – Biden has spent $72,774,401, while Trump has spent $65,521,245. But much of Trump’s money is going to legal services – in April of 2024, Trump spent as much on his legal bills as he did on campaigning, while Biden’s campaign outspent Trump’s campaign nearly eight-to-one.
Of course, Trump has been heavily outraised and outspent before, to mixed results. In 2016, Hillary Clinton spent $563,433,609, while Trump only spent $325,515,460, and in 2020, Biden spent $1,051,114,138, while Trump spent $735,019,991. Yet, Trump narrowly won the first race, and then narrowly lost the second. Also, in most political races in the U.S., the Democrat candidate and his affiliated organizations outraise and outspend the Republican candidate and his affiliated organizations.
So, the candidate who raises and spends the most doesn’t always win, when the other candidate runs a better campaign or the political climate is tilted in another direction. (Just ask Mike Bloomberg.) In political science, the saying is “smart dimes beat dumb dollars.” And, who seems to be benefiting from a better-run campaign and a better political climate so far – Joe Biden or Donald Trump?
Besides, the campaign is not yet over, and in some cases, the Trump organization seems to be having more success in raising money.
Election Rigging
As Molly Hemingway has documented in her book, “Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections”, “Big Tech, wielding unprecedented powers, vaporized dissent and erased damning reports about the Biden family’s corruption” in 2020, helping Biden to win that election. We also know this happened because Time Magazine bragged about this “informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans” to “protect the 2020 election from Donald Trump” (read as “to defeat Trump”), by, among other things, “successfully pressur(ing) social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation” (read as “Republican/conservative information”). The mainstream media, big tech, and the Democrats are continuing to do this, as has been detailed by my RedState colleague.
But cracks have developed in this potential election rigging. Twitter, now known as X, is no longer leading the charge, with Elon Musk at the helm. Jack Dorsey, the head of Twitter when it was strangling in the crib the Hunter Biden laptop story, is backing Musk. Trump has also been rebuilding his relationship with Jeff Yass, a GOP megadonor who reportedly has a major financial stake in TikTok. And the Rockbridge Group, a big-money tech-populist group, is gearing up to back Trump.
Still, there will be plenty of election rigging going on in 2024. In fact, there already is. Go to Google, and type in “Donald Trump” and “abortion.” Then count the number of conservative sites that come up on the first page, versus the number of liberal ones. You won’t find any of the former, and among the latter are CNN, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and the BBC. Needless to say, the information provided by these left-leaning sites is going to be tilted against Donald Trump.
But will this be enough? Once again, in 2020, Biden barely won in the battleground states. Now, he is behind in the polling, sometimes bigly. With a less united Big Tech helping Biden this time around, the election rigging seems a much-reduced threat.
To be Continued…
