Polls are showing that many voters remember former President Donald Trump's time in the White House as being positive, leaving President Joe Biden with the dual challenge of bringing his favorable numbers up while pushing back at Trump's polling results.
Even before the Iowa caucuses, the first contest in the 2024 race, is held, the race appears likely to pit Biden and Trump for a rematch of the 2020 election, but Democrats are concerned with polls showing Trump would handle vital issues better than Biden has been, The Wall Street Journal reported.
In recent weeks, Biden has been speaking out against Trump returning to the White House, warning that Trump will stop Obamacare, bring a national abortion ban, and send jobs overseas.
"My predecessor has once again, God love him, called for cuts that could rip away health insurance for tens of millions of Americans in Medicaid. They just don't give up," Biden said recently at a White House event after Trump said he's looking at alternatives to the Affordable Care Act.
Democrats want Biden to go even more negative on Trump, saying efforts to promote the Biden economic agenda are not working to attract potential voters.
Trump has often shown he can bounce back from attacks on him, and many voters have already decided about him.
Trump's side is also dismissing Biden's attempts to discredit him, and the numbers appear to be backing up the former president.
According to a recent YouGov/Economist poll, 51% of those responding said Trump did a better job as president, compared to 41% for Biden.
Also, late last week, a new Messenger/Harris poll showed Trump continuing his poll lead against President Joe Biden, coming out eight points ahead in a four-way match-up including independent candidates Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Cornel West.
Trump's side also says he has the advantage on key issues such as inflation, the economy, crime, immigration, and overseas entanglements such as in Ukraine and Israel.
"If we have a debate on who handled the economy better, it benefits Trump," Marc Short, who served in the Trump administration as a top adviser to former Vice President Mike Pence's now-ended presidential campaign commented.
The economy, under Trump, was hitting milestones in jobs, income, and stocks until the COVID-19 pandemic started in 2020. However, he also was president during four years of rising annual deficits.
Meanwhile, the attacks are growing between Trump and Biden over which one will create more danger for the U.S.
Trump last weekend, while speaking in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, referred to Biden as the "destroyer of American democracy," while Biden's campaign in recent weeks has been airing television ads critical of Trump.
Last week, Biden's side released an ad featuring a pediatric nurse in Nevada who speaks about lowered prescription drug costs under him and warns that a return to Trump means going back to "policies that helped the rich get richer."
The Biden campaign said the shift to being more critical of Trump has always been part of the campaign as the 2024 elections approach. One campaign official said in 2020, Trump had remained visible, and people at that time did not need reminders of how he would govern, but added that four years later that is not true.
In 2016, Democrats also were not sure how to fight Trump, whose political stance was largely believed to be "just rhetoric," Karen Finney, a former senior adviser to Hillary Clinton's campaign told the Wall Street Journal.
Zac Petkanas, who led Clinton's rapid response effort in 2016, also said that the Biden team should concentrate on just some things Trump says, but not all.
"Chasing everything that Donald Trump says and does on the campaign is just a recipe for voters to kind of throw up their hands and say 'I know he's terrible,' as opposed to picking the most damaging things and driving them hard," he said.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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