Joe Biden Had Better Watch It; Don’t let Trump’s distractions bury his record

After Trump’s unconventional convention, there is danger for the former vice president all over the political landscape. 


By Gail Collins and Bret Stephens, The New York Times, Aug. 31, 2020

Ms. Collins and Mr. Stephens are Opinion columnists. They converse every week. 

Excerpt: 

Stephens:[T]he [Republican] convention helped Trump politically in a bunch of ways. It did what every demagogic party needs to do: create a far-enemy, China, and a near-enemy, the radical left. It painted Biden as an enabler of both. It gave voters something visceral to fear: a progressive mob coming for your suburb, your job and your right to speak your mind. It painted Trump as a straight shooter whose coarseness was courage and whose rudeness was honesty. It gave shy Trump voters moral cover with its long list of Black speakers. And it promised economic growth as opposed to moral restoration. ...

Bret: The Democratic convention succeeded in uniting the party behind Biden. The Bernie Folk aren’t going to be sitting this election out, much less voting third party. Now Biden has to counterpunch. He must say that the first order of business in restoring “law and order” is to get rid of the most lawless, disorderly and disordered president in American history. He has to give a stirring pro-police speech to some police union, akin to his speech this weekend to the National Guard, stressing the unity of every blue-collar worker. ... 

Bret: Biden has to take on the allegation that he’s mentally feeble by challenging Trump to additional debates. He has to say about Trump what Mary McCarthy once said about Lillian Hellman: that every word he says is a lie, including “and” and “the.” He has to mock a “people’s president” who stiffs his suppliers, scams his students and is currently swindling the American people. He needs to challenge Trump to a new kind of push-up contest: Do a push-up, show a year of tax returns. ...

***

Don’t let Trump’s distractions bury his record 

E.J. Dionne Jr., The Washington Post, August 30, 2020 at 5:34 p.m. EDT

Excerpt: 

The 2020 Trump looks like a man who knows his show is about to be canceled. He has to make a herculean effort to turn things around — and he is just too sick and tired of the whole thing to give it a real try. Perhaps he hoped the quantity of his words would offset the lack of forcefulness in his presentation. It backfired. A man whom even critics concede is “interesting” became ponderous and boring. ... 

The Biden camp needs to show persuadable Trump voters in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania just how little the president has achieved for them. (A good start: a Biden ad that aired during the last night of the GOP convention showing Trump in the gold-gilded cage of one of his properties.) There should be more focus on issues that appeal across racial lines: jobs, wages, mobility, education and dignity. 

But hand-wringing about Trump’s imagined political genius is counterproductive. It feeds the illusion on which Trump has built his entire career: that he is strong, tough and canny. In fact, he is weak, vacillating and, when it comes to running the country, clueless. He picks on the weak but cowers before the strong, whether Russia’s Vladimir Putin or China’s Xi Jinping. ...

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