As much as things have changed since 2020, the campaign styles and strategies of Trump and Biden have mostly stayed the same.
On Tuesday, President Biden held a phone call with Xi Jinping, the president of China. The two were set to speak about a host of important issues for the first time since 2022. Keep in mind that the day before, Biden struggled to get through a softball interview with weatherman Al Roker at the White House Easter Egg Roll. But sure, let’s all pretend that Joe’s conversation with Xi about artificial intelligence went smoothly.
Often times Joe’s daily presidential duties — phone calls with world leaders, receiving the presidential daily briefing, attending various ceremonies — are the only things on his calendar.
Biden was criticized by Republicans in 2020 for running what many saw as a basement campaign. But you could argue the president is even less accessible now. In an effort to prevent anti-Israel protesters, Biden’s camp has been scaling back events — which weren’t exactly raucous to begin with — and carefully vetting attendees.
The highly choreographed events aren’t just for fear of lurking hecklers. Joe Biden’s staffers are also constantly trying to avoid the possibility of Joe having any interaction with the press, preferring instead to rely on social media posts and proclamations to get his point across.
Biden has often described the White House as a gilded cage. His team appears to be using the constraints of said cage to their advantage. It isn’t a basement, but it’ll do.
While the president’s schedule might be light, there is no rest for the spin doctors on his reelection campaign.
A memo from Biden’s campaign team made its way to the media early Tuesday morning. It detailed the team’s strategy to flip the Florida in November. The hopefulness regarding the Sunshine State’s supposed flippability was motivated by the Florida Supreme Court’s recent decision that upheld an existing law that banned abortion after fifteen weeks.
There is no denying abortion motivates voters and moves the needle for Democrats (most recently in the 2022 midterms when the much-anticipated “red wave” barely made a ripple thanks to the overturning of Roe v. Wade). But Biden winning Florida in November? Color me skeptical. Florida was one of the few states that left the Republicans feeling optimistic in the 2022 midterms. Ron DeSantis won his race for governor with a staggering 59.4 percent of the vote. Whether or not Biden’s team actually believes their own memo detailing Florida’s winnability is doubtful. But it is clear that Biden’s rapid response team wants to media attention back to the abortion debate.
Meanwhile, former president Donald Trump attended a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin on Tuesday. Per usual, he was met with hordes of supporters, some wearing T-shirts with his now infamous mugshot printed on the front, others in MAGA hats or waving large American flags.
Trump, like any seasoned performer, played the hits. He knows which lines will be met with boos or cheers or chants. At one point he stepped away from the podium to do an impression of Biden’s golf swing before exclaiming, “He said he was a six handicap… He’s not a thirty-six handicap!”
Beyond the animated one-liners, the former president spent a great deal of time on the more serious issues plaguing the country, including the border crisis.
Never one to let the mainstream media’s faux outrage go to waste, Trump doubled down on his use of the term “bloodbath.” Only this time instead of referring to the auto industry, he stood behind a podium adorned with a sign that read “Stop Biden’s Border Bloodbath.” He highlighted the murder of Laken Riley, a young nursing student who was killed by an illegal alien while out on a jog around a college campus.
In a Kamala Harris Venn diagram, there is some overlap between the two presumptive nominees’ strategies. Both of their rapid-response teams look for clips of the opposing candidate looking old and confused. Trump’s team seems to be fishing in more prosperous waters on that front. Both camps also focus on 2020. The former president warns his supporters that he is being unjustly persecuted by his political opponents for questioning the results of the 2020 election. The Biden team also constantly harkens back to January 6, Trump’s refusal to accept his election loss and how he poses a threat to democracy.
The country has drastically changed both economically and socially in the last four years. After one term of a Biden presidency, voters are going to get a chance to go with the gilded cage or the steel cage. Choose your fighter.
