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WASHINGTON: Struggling to win over still-undecided voters who might tip the election against Donald Trump, Joe Biden is sparing no effort to spread one of his most powerful weapons: the backing of many of his former Republican opponents.
From giving staunch Republican primetime speeches at the Democratic National Convention to welcoming the endorsements of hundreds of former employees of George W Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney, the presidential hopeful is waving his bipartisan credentials high.
But will it work?
Kari Walker, a 50-year-old Wisconsin resident who has supported Republican candidates for two decades, plans to vote for Democrat Biden on November 3.
Walker, who two weeks ago told AFP that she could not bring herself to vote for Trump, “a president worse than I could have imagined,” felt reaffirmed by the position of former Republican employees.
“I found the support of the staunch Republicans persuasive,” said Walker, who with her husband owns a tavern in the small town of Reedsburg, in a county that backed Trump in 2016 after voting twice for Democrat Barack Obama.
“I would vote for Biden anyway, but I appreciate the influential Republicans who cross paths,” he said in an email Friday, referring to the Grand Old Party, a traditional nickname for Republicans.
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Walker is exactly the type of voter the former vice president’s campaign hopes to attract by welcoming those from across the aisle.
While Obama’s former No. 2 continues to lead Trump in national polls, the president has narrowed the gap in certain key states, those that regularly “swing” between Republicans and Democrats and therefore can decide a closed election.
US President Donald Trump (right) and former Vice President Joe Biden, rivals in the 2020 presidential election on November 3 AFP / SAUL LOEB, Ronda Churchill
The billionaire Republican has been openly courting them, warning against the “anarchy” he says the Biden presidency would bring, which he says could lead to the “destruction” of the nation’s leafy, mostly white, suburbs.
The Republican convention heard from some former Democrats, their presence designed to underscore Trump’s reach to those crucial states on the battlefield.
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“WE HAVE LOST OUR MORAL COMPASS”
But Trump appears to benefit from fewer party swings than Biden, who has worked to persuade disappointed, even disgruntled voters about the Trump administration and style, particularly over the coronavirus pandemic that has claimed more than 180,000 American lives. .
“This is not an easy decision for Republicans to make,” wrote former employees of McCain, the late Republican senator and 2008 presidential candidate who had a disdainful relationship with Trump.
“Given the acting president’s lack of competent leadership, his efforts to aggravate rather than bridge the divisions among Americans, and his inability to uphold American values, we believe the election of former Vice President Biden is clearly in the national interest,” they wrote. it’s a statement. open letter.
Former Bush staff members voiced a similar tone.
“The avalanche of insults and vulgarities that we have witnessed in recent years must stop,” they said. “We have lost our moral compass.”
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Glenn Kessler, a Washington Post reporter, expressed surprise at that message. “I personally know several of these people and how deeply conservative they are on many issues,” he wrote on Twitter. “I never imagined that they would publicly endorse a Democrat for president.”
Starting in the spring, various anti-Trump Republican groups, including the Lincoln Project, have announced their support for Biden.
“REPUBLICANS RETURNED”
But since the Democratic convention opened on August 17, the persuasion campaign has taken on a new intensity.
John Kasich, a former Republican governor of the swing state of Ohio, had a prime spot to speak that first night. The following night, Colin Powell, who was secretary of state to Republican President Bush and a controversial advocate for the war with Iraq, took the Democratic lead.
This video capture of former US Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Republican, was made on August 18, 2020 when his speech in favor of Democrat Joe Biden was broadcast on the second night of the Democratic national convention AFP / –
Both men had much more time to speak than one of the most prominent progressive members of Congress, young New Yorker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a decision many on the party’s left wing found offensive.
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And last Monday, the opening day of the Republican convention, Biden’s team announced the support of about 20 former Republican congressmen.
“These Republican laggards are emblematic of the many former Republican voters concentrated in wealthy, growing and highly educated suburban areas who have left the Republican Party in the Trump era,” said Kyle Kondik, a political analyst at the University of Virginia.
But he added a caveat: “That said, I don’t know if these endorsements really take new voters out of the Trump camp.”
