Am I crazy, or does Trump have no idea how to run against Joe Biden?

[The Mikado]

Honestly, sometimes it feels like some of parts of his campaign/his supporter base still think he’s running against Hillary.

100%. A lot of Trump's people think that Biden isn't ACTUALLY gonna be the Dem nominee, at least by Election Day, and that someone will be subbed in for him, and a faction of THOSE people think it's gonna be HRC.

https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/4614/Will-Hillary-Clinton-run-for-president-in-2020

See how this is somehow still priced at 8. Part of that is that most people don't want to have money tied up until November for a rather paltry return at buying No for 91, 92, or 93, where it's been hovering for a while, but part of that is that people are legit still buying Yes and it'll occasionally rise up to 10 or so. There are still people betting on HRC entering the race, despite how idiotic it is.

[Battista Minola 1616]

Honestly, sometimes it feels like some of parts of his campaign/his supporter base still think he’s running against Hillary.

100%. A lot of Trump's people think that Biden isn't ACTUALLY gonna be the Dem nominee, at least by Election Day, and that someone will be subbed in for him, and a faction of THOSE people think it's gonna be HRC.

https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/4614/Will-Hillary-Clinton-run-for-president-in-2020

See how this is somehow still priced at 8. Part of that is that most people don't want to have money tied up until November for a rather paltry return at buying No for 91, 92, or 93, where it's been hovering for a while, but part of that is that people are legit still buying Yes and it'll occasionally rise up to 10 or so. There are still people betting on HRC entering the race, despite how idiotic it is.

Yeah, like, Kamala Harris has 50 times more chance to be the Democratic nominee on Nov 3rd than Hillary Clinton. Are people betting on her?

[Old Man Willow]

Trump's base getting nervous:  https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/1275138882858676224

[Fargobison]

Trump's issue is that Biden has the perfect strategy to run against Donnie..Smile, wave and watch his opponent self-destruct.

[wbrocks67]

Trump's base getting nervous:  https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/1275138882858676224

Trump's people still using the "Hiden Biden" thing is so transparent. They are clearly getting worried and  their excuses are getting more ridiculous by the day. They're so mad that Biden is being smart with public health and not out there every day trolling around like Trump is

[Old Man Willow]

Looking at MAGA Twitter they are all counting on the debates to expose Biden's senility and propel Trump to victory. They seem to have missed Cenk, Kulinski, and the rest of the Bernie or busters making the exact same prediction about March 15 and the consensus was Biden won that debate.

[Blackacre]

Looking at MAGA Twitter they are all counting on the debates to expose Biden's senility and propel Trump to victory. They seem to have missed Cenk, Kulinski, and the rest of the Bernie or busters making the exact same prediction about March 15 and the consensus was Biden won that debate.

Not only is Biden an excellent 1v1 debater, (just ask Paul Ryan) the challenger almost always wins the first debate. But I appreciate them setting the expectations for Biden so low!

[Progressive Pessimist]

One thing I don't understand is why I have never heard news about the USMCA since the time it was ratified. Donald Trump is the man who railed against free trade agreements and promised to renegotiate NAFTA in 2016, and this protectionism supposedly won him a lot of key votes. Now that he has actually renegotiated NAFTA, instead of shouting it from the rooftops, he seems completely silent about it - and so all the American political world. (by the way this probably applies to tariffs on China as well)

I don't know how impactful it would be, but campaigning on that is certainly better than campaigning on false claims about Biden and China or calling him a crazy socialist.

I think Trump really dropped the ball on this one. This was way before COVID and floyd when Trump dominated the news cycle every week. He could have heavily promoted this and later used its popularity to attack Biden on his continued support for NAFTA. As 2016 taught us, this is a winning issue for him

It was a winning issue for him because he ran against the trade deals of the time. He is apparently incapable of campaigning on affirmative inverses of issues like that. It's kind of surprising because as a raging narcissist you'd think otherwise.

It seems as if Trump cannot create, he can only destroy.

I completely agree. He is the perfect challenger because he can name every grievance people have with the status quo and throw them red meat solutions. On the other side, he is a terrible incumbent, he can never promote the successes he has. He's an electoral glass cannon.

Yeah, he is unable to recognize that airing grievances people with the status quo is not a great strategy when YOU represent the status quo. Another thing I would do if I could enter Trump's head would be touting the First Step Act (the criminal justice reform bill he signed in January 2019) as a big bipartisan achievement and then going hard after Biden for the 1994 crime bill. (I imagine that Trump will kind of do the latter, sooner or later, but will sound very clumsy)

Trump probably even screwed himself over if he attempts to run as some sort of icon of criminal justice reform. How he characterizes protesters and constantly defends the police are going to contradict that. His inconsistency is going to make that sort of criticism of Biden sound phony to those who actually care about reforming police and the greater justice system, try as he might.

Biden, as well as most Democrats from that era (including then-representative Bernie Sanders) all are unfortunately culpable for the crime bill. But those still relevant today, either through necessity or regret, have learned from it. Just look at all that Biden has done to earn credibility on the issue amidst this post-Floyd upheaval. That's not going to go unnoticed when the President stages photo-ops at the expense of peaceful protesters and ignores George Floyd and the concerns of the black community and their allies just to talk about himself instead.

[Battista Minola 1616]

One thing I don't understand is why I have never heard news about the USMCA since the time it was ratified. Donald Trump is the man who railed against free trade agreements and promised to renegotiate NAFTA in 2016, and this protectionism supposedly won him a lot of key votes. Now that he has actually renegotiated NAFTA, instead of shouting it from the rooftops, he seems completely silent about it - and so all the American political world. (by the way this probably applies to tariffs on China as well)

I don't know how impactful it would be, but campaigning on that is certainly better than campaigning on false claims about Biden and China or calling him a crazy socialist.

I think Trump really dropped the ball on this one. This was way before COVID and floyd when Trump dominated the news cycle every week. He could have heavily promoted this and later used its popularity to attack Biden on his continued support for NAFTA. As 2016 taught us, this is a winning issue for him

It was a winning issue for him because he ran against the trade deals of the time. He is apparently incapable of campaigning on affirmative inverses of issues like that. It's kind of surprising because as a raging narcissist you'd think otherwise.

It seems as if Trump cannot create, he can only destroy.

I completely agree. He is the perfect challenger because he can name every grievance people have with the status quo and throw them red meat solutions. On the other side, he is a terrible incumbent, he can never promote the successes he has. He's an electoral glass cannon.

Yeah, he is unable to recognize that airing grievances people with the status quo is not a great strategy when YOU represent the status quo. Another thing I would do if I could enter Trump's head would be touting the First Step Act (the criminal justice reform bill he signed in January 2019) as a big bipartisan achievement and then going hard after Biden for the 1994 crime bill. (I imagine that Trump will kind of do the latter, sooner or later, but will sound very clumsy)

Trump probably even screwed himself over if he attempts to run as some sort of icon of criminal justice reform. How he characterizes protesters and constantly defends the police are going to contradict that. His inconsistency is going to make that sort of criticism of Biden sound phony to those who actually care about reforming police and the greater justice system, try as he might.

Biden, as well as most Democrats from that era (including then-representative Bernie Sanders) all are unfortunately culpable for the crime bill. But those still relevant today, either through necessity or regret, have learned from it. Just look at all that Biden has done to earn credibility on the issue amidst this post-Floyd upheaval. That's not going to go unnoticed when the President stages photo-ops at the expense of peaceful protesters and ignores George Floyd and the concerns of the black community and their allies just to talk about himself instead.

Yeah, of course it will sound inconsistent and clumsy, but I said he'll probably kind of try to do it because I remember that in 2016 Trump once attacked Clinton for the comments about  "superpredators" she made in 1996.

[Progressive Pessimist]

One thing I don't understand is why I have never heard news about the USMCA since the time it was ratified. Donald Trump is the man who railed against free trade agreements and promised to renegotiate NAFTA in 2016, and this protectionism supposedly won him a lot of key votes. Now that he has actually renegotiated NAFTA, instead of shouting it from the rooftops, he seems completely silent about it - and so all the American political world. (by the way this probably applies to tariffs on China as well)

I don't know how impactful it would be, but campaigning on that is certainly better than campaigning on false claims about Biden and China or calling him a crazy socialist.

I think Trump really dropped the ball on this one. This was way before COVID and floyd when Trump dominated the news cycle every week. He could have heavily promoted this and later used its popularity to attack Biden on his continued support for NAFTA. As 2016 taught us, this is a winning issue for him

It was a winning issue for him because he ran against the trade deals of the time. He is apparently incapable of campaigning on affirmative inverses of issues like that. It's kind of surprising because as a raging narcissist you'd think otherwise.

It seems as if Trump cannot create, he can only destroy.

I completely agree. He is the perfect challenger because he can name every grievance people have with the status quo and throw them red meat solutions. On the other side, he is a terrible incumbent, he can never promote the successes he has. He's an electoral glass cannon.

Yeah, he is unable to recognize that airing grievances people with the status quo is not a great strategy when YOU represent the status quo. Another thing I would do if I could enter Trump's head would be touting the First Step Act (the criminal justice reform bill he signed in January 2019) as a big bipartisan achievement and then going hard after Biden for the 1994 crime bill. (I imagine that Trump will kind of do the latter, sooner or later, but will sound very clumsy)

Trump probably even screwed himself over if he attempts to run as some sort of icon of criminal justice reform. How he characterizes protesters and constantly defends the police are going to contradict that. His inconsistency is going to make that sort of criticism of Biden sound phony to those who actually care about reforming police and the greater justice system, try as he might.

Biden, as well as most Democrats from that era (including then-representative Bernie Sanders) all are unfortunately culpable for the crime bill. But those still relevant today, either through necessity or regret, have learned from it. Just look at all that Biden has done to earn credibility on the issue amidst this post-Floyd upheaval. That's not going to go unnoticed when the President stages photo-ops at the expense of peaceful protesters and ignores George Floyd and the concerns of the black community and their allies just to talk about himself instead.

Yeah, of course it will sound inconsistent and clumsy, but I said he'll probably kind of try to do it because I remember that in 2016 Trump once attacked Clinton for the comments about  "superpredators" she made in 1996.

Absolutely he'll try, but voters of color are smart enough to see through that. They may not have come through for Clinton in the ways she needed, but she still won 89% of them and honestly the whole "super-predators" thing was probably worse than Biden's association with the crime bill. Clinton got flack for it too and she was just First Lady at the time. I'm not saying it's right, but Biden somehow seems more resistant to these kinds of criticisms.

[Non Swing Voter]

You're not crazy.  Trump literally got himself impeached because he didn't want to run against Biden.

Biden does well among swing suburban voters and the Democratic base is larger than the GOP base.  Trump's in trouble and needs to get very lucky again, probably even luckier than last time.

[darklordoftech]

Every time I hear people say "HRC was the most unpopular Dem nominee, but after Trump's done with the 2020 nominee he'll be just as unpopular" I wonder if they have any memories of the 1990s. I remember a "honk if you want to impeach Bill" yardsign on the way of the carpool to school and every morning hearing all the surrounding cars just lay on the horns. People sold video tapes through ads talking about all the people Bill and Hill killed. Commerce Secretary and former DNC Chair Ron Brown flew into a mountain? That was no accident...Hillary wanted him out of the way for some reason. Etc. Growing up in TX I was surrounded by people willing to call the First Lady a dyke and a bitch right in front of me.

HRC hatred was deep-rooted. I think anyone who first became familiar with her as a Senator or Secretary of State can't understand how many of these people hated and reared HRC and what she represented for decades.

The “crooked Hillary” narrative has been around since a time when Kurt Cobain was alive.

[Yoda]

Also, let's keep in mind that the general election cycle hasn't even technically started yet. Trump basically paused his campaign for three months to deal with the Coronavirus. Associating Biden with some of the more unpopular things the left has done isn't a bad move, but he needs to focus more on Biden's record and convince people on the fence not to vote for him.

I......I don't even know where to begin here. If that was trump "dealing" with the coronavirus, I don't think any sane person can make that case that Biden's record is the one that needs focused on. I literally can't stop laughing.

[Yank2133]

This is what many of us have been saying for months.

The only reason it worked in 2016 is because the media actively hated Clinton. They were much more willing to buy into Trump's BS and act in bad faith. No one hates Biden (plus we are in a pandemic....), so Trump's usually tactics are just not sticking.

It also helps to be an old white guy that has been in public life for 50 years.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Hard for a crass yet confused old man who’s likely experiencing cognitive decline to have a coherent strategy against someone who also fits that description.

Biden is many things, a lot of them rather bad, but he’s not a good foil for Trump (unlike HRC). I suppose Trump could look into his opponent and his opponents’s son’s dealings in Ukra—