How the Biden Campaign Can Turn Trump’s ‘Strength’ Into a Weakness

How the Biden Campaign Can Turn Trump’s ‘Strength’ Into a Weakness

How the Biden Campaign Can Turn Trump’s ‘Strength’ Into a Weakness

Too many Americans still give Trump unwarranted credit for the economy.

Katrina vanden Heuvel
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EDITOR’S NOTE: Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.

Political strategist Karl Rove famously advised attacking an opponent’s strength and turning it into a weakness. Joe Biden should take note.

Polls find President Trump leading Biden in one area. It isn’t character, competence or the coronavirus. It’s the economy.

Trump, of course, trumpets the pre-pandemic economy as the greatest ever. Facts show this isn’t true. And while Trump presents himself as a populist fighting for working Americans, his policies are largely drawn from the traditional conservative playbook and benefit the few. Let’s look at how his promises to forgotten workers have been broken.

Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.

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With the midterm elections now firmly upon us, the question is whether Democratic candidates will do more than merely occupy ballot lines as mild alternatives to the red-hot crisis that is Donald Trump.

As Trump spends over $1 billion a day on a globally destabilizing war on Iran and admits that he doesn’t “think about Americans’ financial situation,” millions across the country are struggling with the surging costs of essentials. Democrats must seize this moment and advance bold, small-“d” populist ideas—not settle for cynical caution that once again snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.

The Nation elevates progressive ideas, movements, and elected officials achieving real change across the country into the national conversation. At the same time, our journalists are exposing how crypto and AI-funded super PACs are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to knock out candidates they oppose, reporting on the devastating impact of the Supreme Court’s evisceration of the Voting Rights Act, and sounding the alarm on attempts by red states to quickly redraw electoral maps, disenfranchising Southern Black voters.

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Onward,

Katrina vanden Huevel
Editor and Publisher, The Nation

Katrina vanden Heuvel Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of The Nation, America’s leading source of progressive politics and culture. An expert on international affairs and US politics, she is an award-winning columnist and frequent contributor to The Guardian. Vanden Heuvel is the author of several books, including The Change I Believe In: Fighting for Progress in The Age of Obama, and co-author (with Stephen F. Cohen) of Voices of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev’s Reformers.


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