‘It’s the perfect cocktail of s**tstorm…’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Democrats are growing increasingly nervous about presidential candidate Joe Biden’s ability to compete with President Donald Trump as the nation turns its attention to the coronavirus pandemic and away from November’s general election.
Trump is the public face of the federal government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak, and though the country remains largely divided on how he’s handled COVID-19, Trump’s approval ratings are beginning to grown in key Midwestern states Biden depends upon.
Trump polled ahead of Biden in both Ohio and Pennsylvania, and he is now in a dead heat with Biden in Wisconsin, while he still trails slightly behind the former vice president in Michigan, according to researchers at Ohio Northern University.
Meanwhile, Biden has struggled to provide a coherent Democratic response to the coronavirus, and has been content to let Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dictate the party’s actions.
“It’s the perfect cocktail of s**tstorm,” one Democratic strategist told The Hill. “A pandemic no one expected, a horrible president at the helm, and a repeat of the 2016 primary with a candidate doing damage to his own party. No one wants to be the a**hole that sounds the alarm, but it’s pretty bad.”
A developing story likely to do further harm to Biden’s efforts emerged after Tara Reade, a former Biden staffer who had expressed support for Biden’s primary rival, Bernie Sanders, came forward with public rape accusations against him.
Given the front-runner’s additional history of making damaging flubs and concerns over his possible cognitive decline, Biden has little choice but to sit on the sidelines, according to Democratic strategist Joe Payne, who worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.
“In a normal campaign year and under normal circumstances, Joe Biden right now would be the spokesperson for the Democratic Party,” Payne said. “But this is no normal time, and the Democratic nomination process seems frozen in place.”
However, Biden has used this lack of normalcy to his advantage. He said this week that he will not be participating in the remaining Democratic debates against Sanders. “My focus is just dealing with this crisis right now,” Biden claimed.
“I think we’ve had enough debate,” Biden said. “I think we should get on with this.”