Former Obama Adviser Expects 'Historical' Turnout for Trump, Says Biden Is in Trouble
Despite the prospects of a gloomy April as America hunkers down for its battle against the coronavirus, a former Obama adviser predicts that by November, voters will turn out in legendary numbers to re-elect President Donald Trump.
David Plouffe, who managed Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, said on Thursday’s “Fox News Rundown” podcast that there is little Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden can do about it, according to Fox News.
He said Trump’s likely victory turns logic on its head, given a superficial look at the current state of the nation.
“You look at the economic situation and say, ‘How can an incumbent win in that?’ But, you know, no one’s blaming Trump for the damage,” Plouffe said, suggesting a candidate might get traction against the president if the candidate could “lay his crisis response at his feet and connect that to the economy.”
“But almost no matter what happens, can Donald Trump win Wisconsin? Can he win Michigan? Can he win Pennsylvania? Can he win Florida?’ Sure, because his base is so solid. And I think he’s going to turn out voters almost at a historical level on his behalf, so that makes him very dangerous if you’re Joe Biden,” Plouffe said.
But mostly, he said, Biden is on the sidelines.
“There’s nothing he can do about it. He’s not in office. He’s not a governor. He’s not the president. And truthfully, [New York Gov.] Andrew Cuomo, [California Gov.] Gavin Newsom … Donald Trump, citizens want to hear from those folks because they’re the folks making decisions,” Plouffe said.
That leaves the former vice president trying to find ways to get attention.
“So all Biden can do is leverage interviews … leverage social media every day … to communicate how you would handle this crisis,” he said.
Conservative commentator and former presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan said in his column Tuesday that the virus has left Biden with few options.
“If Biden begins to mimic a hostile media, baiting Trump at every turn, pointing out conflicts in his views, Joe will invite the same fate the media seem to have brought upon themselves,” he wrote, referring to a recent survey in which Americans held the media in low esteem.
Buchanan said traditional political attacks could backfire in the current climate.
“But if Biden cannot gather crowds to hear him in a time of social distancing, how does he get his message out? How does he attack Trump without appearing to undermine the president in his role as a wartime commander in chief, where America wants Trump to succeed?” he wrote.
Biden “pops up infrequently in interviews out of the basement of his Delaware home where, sheltering in place, he reads short scripted speeches from a teleprompter,” Buchanan wrote, while Trump assumes the role of a wartime commander-in-chief.
“Moreover, when Biden appears on camera, he often seems confused and forgetful, loses his train of thought and doesn’t remember what he came to say. The sense that Biden is losing it is taking hold, and not only on the Republican right,” he wrote.
Buchanan said there is only one path to victory for Biden — and that would require a major blunder by the president.
“For Biden to win this election, Trump must lose it. And the one way Trump can lose it is the perception on the part of a majority of Americans that he has proven an ineffectual president in America’s worst pandemic since the Spanish flu of 1918,” Buchanan wrote.
“If Trump is seen as the victor over the virus, Biden is toast,” he said.
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