Joe Biden’s U.S. presidential campaign and his Democratic Party allies have gone on an all-out offensive against President Donald Trump’s coronavirus response, betting it will be a winning issue with American voters in November, Reuters informs.
Just weeks ago, Democrats were treading carefully as Trump commanded the spotlight with his daily briefings on the virus, hesitant to avoid looking too partisan as the pandemic took its toll on jobs and health.
Now Democrats believe weeks of Trump’s unfiltered media performances have done more harm than good for the Republican president seeking re-election on Nov. 3, and their aggressive response aims to expose what they see as his faulty handling of the crisis.
Biden’s campaign team talking points accuse Trump of “one of the worst policy mistakes any president has made in our history.” New campaign ads in battleground states say Trump failed to act on the coronavirus, which has now infected more than 977,500 Americans and killed more than 55,000, and call him overly trusting of China during the pandemic.
“This has given us an issue that is unifying across all walks of life,” said Bradley Beychok, president of American Bridge 21st Century, a Democratic group funding some of the ads. “Trump’s superpower is distraction. You can’t distract from this.”
More registered voters say they would support Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, over Trump, favoring the Democrat 47% to Trump’s 39% in a Reuters/Ipsos poll released last week. Biden’s lead has widened even as the coronavirus has forced him to isolate himself from the virus in his Delaware home, holding little-noticed briefings.
But voters are more closely split when polled on the health crisis. Reuters/Ipsos polling found that 52% of Americans said Biden was better equipped to steer the coronavirus response, while 48% favored Trump. Trump, however, had an edge of 53% to Biden’s 47% as the better leader to manage the U.S. economy.
Trump saw only a brief uptick in his overall approval rating early in the crisis, and some of his advisers have been alarmed by his undisciplined televised briefings.
Internal polling by the pro-Biden outside political group Priorities USA showed that, while the country remains deeply divided along partisan lines, there are signs that more people find fault with Trump’s crisis management after earlier seeing his White House briefings as a show of his command of the issue.
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