2020 election: Biden in command position as Trump wastes precious days

In the eyes of observers, Biden’s running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris of California, edged out Vice President Mike Pence in her debate Wednesday night, according to a CNN poll after the debate. Trump then wasted a day Thursday calling on a Fox Business morning show and calling Harris a “monster,” blaming the Gold Star families for his infection with the coronavirus and saying he would not participate in his second debate against Biden, which it was scheduled for the next one. week but switched to a virtual format (then canceled on Friday).

On Friday, Trump called right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh’s show for a grievance-filled interview. Meanwhile, his Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was trying to negotiate an economic stimulus agreement with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a total change from Trump’s statement on Twitter earlier in the week that he was putting an end to those talks, which cost the negotiators days. With Trump already playing a weak hand, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, at his home in Kentucky, questioned the possibility of Republicans passing any deal in time for the election.

Recovering from the coronavirus, Trump repeatedly promised throughout the week that he would return to the election campaign this weekend. He is scheduled to host an event at the White House on Saturday, which could raise concerns that, like the event in which Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court, the virus could spread.

Trump’s actions during the week sparked a round of politically damaging headlines and left him without what could have been a valuable opportunity to improve on his first performance against Biden in a debate next week.

Guy Cecil, the head of the pro-Biden super PAC Priorities USA, told reporters on Friday that Trump “is struggling to attract new voters” and “is running out of time” to do so.

“The whole map has moved. Some states may move a little more than others,” he said after pointing to Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia, “but we’ve seen the whole map move toward Biden.”

Outside of Washington, the Trump campaign is shrinking, taking its ads off the air entirely in Ohio and Iowa, two states that Trump won by more than 9 percentage points in 2016 but where polls show he is now tied or behind Biden. , and cutting support costs on other battlefields in the Midwest.

However, the reality is bleaker for Trump: If he loses Ohio and Iowa, Biden will almost certainly have ruined him on the map.

As Trump retires, Biden, driven by what sources familiar with the matter said will be a record fundraising month in September, topping $ 365 million in August, is looking to expand the competitive map, with announcements in Texas and Iowa and a major statewide purchase in Ohio this week.

Polls in recent days have found Biden with a huge advantage nationally (he is ahead of 57% of Trump’s 41%, according to a CNN poll this week) and in the major battle states of Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and the United States. Wisconsin, where he would likely cross the 270 electoral vote threshold by winning three or four of the six. Quinnipiac showed Biden with a 13-point lead in Pennsylvania and 11 points ahead in Florida. He led by 5 points at Wisconsin, according to Marquette. The New York Times and Siena found that Biden was up 8 points in Arizona. And CBS and YouGov found him ahead by 2 points in North Carolina.

To date, Biden has spent more than Trump in the six major battlefield states, making them the central focus of his campaign even as he targets a broader playing field that includes Ohio, Iowa and potentially Texas and Georgia.

“There’s no additional credit here, right? We need to get to 270,” said Jenn Ridder, Biden’s national state director.

Trump’s campaign has been aimed squarely at his base of white men without college degrees, and the president insisted on Limbaugh’s program Friday that they will attend in large numbers on Election Day.

“I think there will be a huge voting explosion,” Trump said.

But in the negative votes, there were signs all over the map that the Republicans are in danger. Campaign finance reports show that Democratic Senate candidates overwhelmed their Republican rivals in fundraising in the third quarter, giving the party a huge advertising edge in the final days of the race.

The endangered Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina told Politico that a Senate led by the Republican Party would be “the best check for a Biden presidency,” a nod to Biden’s status as the clear front-runner.

Biden, meanwhile, is in a comfortable position. His campaign this week released a video of former first lady Michelle Obama making a “closing argument” against Trump, and touted the endorsement of singer Taylor Swift, which could give the former vice president cultural prestige among younger voters.

Biden and Harris were in Arizona on a joint bus tour Thursday, traveling separately to stay cautious as coronavirus cases rise across the country. His campaign said it had agreed to a town hall on ABC in lieu of the virtual debate the next week that Trump withdrew Thursday morning.

Biden was praised this week for a speech in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in which he recalled the famous words of Abraham Lincoln on the Civil War battlefield there and said he would seek to unite the country.

His message in the final weeks of the race hardly changes from how he began in April 2019, when he launched his campaign in Philadelphia: arguing that the “soul of the nation” is at stake.

Attendees said the message has allowed Biden to turn Republican-leaning states into battlegrounds. Polls show he leads Trump among voters 65 and older, a rare feat for a Democratic candidate, and he benefits from a huge gender gap, with women overwhelmingly supporting him and men splitting more evenly. . They said Biden is offering calm and assertiveness amid a pandemic that has claimed more than 210,000 American lives and the chaos created by Trump – qualities that appeal to a wide swath of voters.

“This message is not for Democratic primary voters; it is not for Republican swing voters. This has been constant, and it has always been for a wide swath. And that is why the map continues to be what it does,” he said Becca Siegel, Biden’s chief analyst. official. “We can do a lot of tests and polls and work on the best message, but it comes from our candidate.”