Giving People a Reason to Vote Trump

Mark Penn is making waves. The Clinton strategist and Harris Poll chief has a piece in the New York Times saying what everybody, including Joe Biden, knows is true. Biden is currently losing the race. Don’t take my word for this. Here is Biden in his own words:

While the press doesn’t want write about it, the momentum is clearly in our favor, with polls moving towards us and away from Trump. 

     As I left Wisconsin last week, the Wisconsin latest Quinnipiac Poll has us up six points among registered voters.  The IPSOS/ABC Poll has us up four nationwide.  All the rest are basically tied. 

     But I, quite frankly, don’t think the polls mean anything today.  It’s awful hard to get a read of a poll.  I don’t know how many — my pollsters tell me that you have to contact an enormon- — enormous number of people just to get a response.  And there’s — hardly anybody has cell pho- — anything other than cell phones.

     We know not everyone is feeling the enthusiasm, though, for real.  

That’s not the statement a winning candidate makes. That is a defensive statement and a tacit admission that polls are not in his favor. They can’t be if they are “moving towards” Biden.

As Penn notes, “If Mr. Biden wants to serve another four years, he has to stop being dragged to the left and chart a different course closer to the center that appeals to those voters who favor bipartisan compromises to our core issues, fiscal discipline and a strong America.”

Biden is guided by an even more progressive contingent of Democrats than Obama. Practical advice for presidential candidates since at least Richard Nixon has been to go to the base’s ideological core in the primary and then race to the center in the general election. Biden has refused to pivot to the center. If anything, he keeps moving further left.

It’s pretty obvious what Biden’s theory of the race is — Americans hate both sides. There are more people on the left than the right who will vote. So turn out the base and assume disaffected Americans stay home and Biden voters overwhelm Trump voters in early voting. It’s not a bad calculus when poll after poll after poll shows the people most likely to vote lean Biden by about six points.

But I’m with Penn on this.

Enough moderate and centrist voters vote that they’ll decide the race. Right now, they lean Trump.

All you have to be is a parent trying to get your kid into college to see the Biden Administration’s screw-up of FAFSA. That’s enough to make you want to throw Biden out.

Then there is crime, which the left insists is down. The problem is that the FBI has changed how it reports crimes and many local police departments have given up trying to comply with the reporting. You know your community is not safe, and the left demands you believe the statistics instead.

Then there is the economy. No amount of cheering on the macro-economy can compensate for the microeconomic household picture in the United States. Groceries are still too high. Biden’s refusal to acknowledge it and pass the inflation blame to Trump will alienate more voters.

Yes, it is true that this appears to be the race: Biden v Trump. But Democrats are heading to Chicago for their convention with a leftist mayor who’ll be on the side of the protestors, not the police. The optics will not stay censored if the inevitable happens.

The only thing Democrats can do right now to change the dynamic is change the candidate, but that is not going to happen.

By every measure of campaigns, Biden should be winning. He has the money. He has the better ground operation. He has incumbency. He should win in November. But he’s not right now, and he knows it. Deciding he needs the progressive left more than the Middle Class is a foolish strategy that gives Donald Trump a real advantage.

Likewise, being tied up in court has forced Trump to stay focused on the message. The media's obsession with him is only helping him. If Trump wins, the progressive left will burn down America and their path back to a majority for a very long time.

This is all fascinating to watch unfold.