Several political advisers, including White House senior aide Kellyanne Conway, have warned his allies against relentlessly mocking the 77-year-old Biden’s mental acuity because the president has already lost ground with senior citizens, people familiar with the matter said.
Senior Democratic and Republican strategists, in private conversations, are in full agreement about the stakes of the discussions now taking place at the White House and in campaign conference calls. If President Trump and his political machine don’t find a way to drive up Biden’s unpopularity with voters, they argue, the president will have little shot at winning a second term.
“We have to introduce people to a different Joe Biden,” a Trump campaign adviser said. “One of the reasons we won in 2016 is because so many people hated Hillary Clinton. I’m not sure people hate Biden that much.”…
“Our expectation was always that Trump would go on offense early and we’d have to scramble to defend against his attacks,” said Josh Schwerin, an adviser to Priorities USA, a super PAC supporting Biden. “The reality has been we’ve been able to run millions of dollars of thoroughly researched and tested ads, largely unanswered, and Trump’s numbers in these states have been eroding badly.”
Join the conversation as a VIP Member