How Should Biden Campaign Against an Ailing Trump?
With the president feeling low, Joe Biden is going high.
Spencer Bokat-Lindell
By Spencer Bokat-Lindell
Mr. Bokat-Lindell is a staff editor.
Things are not going as well for the Trump campaign as it might have wished. In the past 10 days alone, the president has seen his long-concealed tax returns leaked on the front page of The New York Times, turned in a thuggish debate performance that repelled voters in crucial swing states, and fell victim to his own mishandling of a pandemic disease that has killed more than 210,000 Americans and continues to spread across the highest level of government.
After hearing of Mr. Trump’s diagnosis, Joe Biden, wary of appearing to kick a man while he’s down — or while he’s up, waving from the White House balcony like a consumptive Evita, as the case may be — responded by wishing the first family a speedy recovery and moving to take down his campaign’s negative ads.
The president’s campaign, on the other hand, made clear it wasn’t interested in reciprocating such gestures of fellow feeling. As The Times editorial board wrote in its endorsement of Mr. Biden on Tuesday, his vow to “restore the soul of America” is core to his appeal. But in the final month of the presidential race, could his commitment to the rhetorical high road end up costing him? Here’s what people are saying.
‘A unilateral surrender to a fake civility’
Many political analysts have criticized the Biden campaign for forfeiting a political advantage over an opponent who would never return the favor. “Do a thought experiment: If Biden were sick, what would happen?” tweeted Anne Appelbaum, a staff writer at The Atlantic. “Here’s my guess: Trump would be openly gloating, Republicans would be loudly celebrating, their campaigns would put out ads trying to raise money on the back of his illness.”
The hypothetical is scarcely needed. By Monday, the president’s surrogates were trying their best to spin his coronavirus infection as a political liability not for himself but for Mr. Biden. “He has experience as commander in chief, he has experience as a businessman, he has experience — now — fighting the coronavirus as an individual,” Erin Perrine, the Trump campaign’s communications director, said on Fox. “Those firsthand experiences — Joe Biden, he doesn’t have those.”
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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/06/opinion...
Posted By: Dea. Ron Gray Sr.
Tuesday, October 6th 2020 at 9:25PM
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