President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign event with former President Barack Obama hosted by Jimmy Kimmel at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, Saturday, June 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Biden's reelection campaign pulled no punches on Monday, releasing an attack ad slamming former President Donald Trump as a “convicted felon.”
The ad is Biden's most direct attack yet on his Republican opponent and marks a clear shift in strategy ahead of next week's key debates.
The video was a montage of photos of Trump's arrest in Georgia and a snapshot of the former president in court. advertisement It begins with, “In court, the true character of Donald Trump will be revealed: he has been convicted of 34 felonies, convicted of sexual assault, and committed financial fraud.”
The narrator then describes Biden as a president who has “worked hard to lower health care costs and get corporations to pay their fair share.”
That said, will Biden's new strategy actually be effective in reducing Trump's lead in all, or even most, of the battleground states that will decide the election?
Unfortunately for the president, the ad misses the mark badly and likely represents a huge missed opportunity.
While the ad attacks Trump's felony convictions, which voters are aware of, it says nothing about issues that voters, especially independents, actually care about in the election, such as the economy.
Recent Fox News vote makes this clear: The survey noting that Biden now leads Trump in the polls for the first time since October 2023 (50% to 48%), it also ties Biden's improving numbers to the highest level of favorable economic conditions under the Biden administration.
In fact, the number of voters who say their personal financial situation has improved over the past year has increased by 9 points, and Biden now has a 9-point lead among independents, up 11 points from May.
These changes in approval ratings are important if Biden wants a second term, especially considering that the same polls show little change in Trump's approval ratings following his felony convictions.
Taken together, it's clear that Biden's numbers are intrinsically linked to how Americans feel about the economy, not Trump's personal character or legal issues.
But the Biden campaign's signature ad – part of a $50 million ad buy in June alone – makes no mention of the president's plans to combat inflation or bolster the economy.
Biden also missed the opportunity to compare his economic policies to Trump's, including how they would help the American people more than the former president's.
The Fox News poll isn't a one-off: Surveys have repeatedly shown that convicting Trump will ultimately matter. a bit That's compared to issues like the economy, which is Biden's biggest obstacle.
A recent Yahoo News report put the president's approval rating on this issue at a dismal 38%. investigationAnother poll found that by a three-to-one margin (42% to 16%) voters believe the U.S. fiscal situation would be better under a Trump administration. vote This was conducted by CBS News.
As a result, Trump maintained his leads in battleground states and put himself in a favorable position to win the presidential election.
Recent Emerson College battleground states votePolls completed this week show Trump leading Biden in six of the seven battleground states and the two are tied in Minnesota, a state where about 20% of Democrats supported protest votes against Biden in the March primary.
Certainly, this all-out attack should be understood as an attempt by the Biden team to reframe the election as a referendum on his job performance, which according to YouGov is rated just 37%. vote rather, as a choice between the personalities of the two candidates.
But even from that perspective, the new ad could backfire on Biden in unexpected ways.
By publicly positioning Trump as a “convicted felon,” Biden opened himself up to potential attacks by Trump against Biden's son, Hunter, who was recently convicted of multiple felonies related to lying about drug use to buy a gun.
The problem with this ad, simply put, is that there are a lot of really close issues that are far more important to voters than the conviction of Trump in a case that many people have a hard time understanding.
But instead of focusing on what Biden has done and will do to address issues like the economy, inflation, immigration and even abortion, the Biden campaign is spending time and money telling voters what they already know and don't prioritize.
Even Democrats have misgivings about this strategy. POLITICO Some top strategists, such as David Axelrod, reportedly oppose Trump using his beliefs as a political weapon and would rather see Biden speak about what people actually care about.
Stating his belief, Axelrod said, “The most important thing he (Biden) can do is connect his work to people's lives by showing a Biden who is working to address voters' concerns and a president who avoids legal issues and is obsessed with personal vendettas.”
To be clear, this does not mean that some voters are uneasy about the idea of electing a felon to the presidency, but rather that it is a minor issue compared to other problems.
After all, for a president who has long struggled to communicate with voters, the core of Biden's messaging strategy should be his plan for the next four years and why his solutions to the challenges facing the country are better than those of Donald Trump.
In other words, the smart move for Biden would be to make voters feel good about the issues that really matter and contrast his own policies with Trump's, rather than angrily attacking the former president on issues that don't matter much to voters now and that will likely be less important by the time Americans head to the ballot box.
Douglas Shawn is a longtime Democratic political consultant.