US Presidential Election: Joe Biden begins his campaign with Donald Trump in mind

With 300 days until the US presidential election, Joe Biden begins his campaign this Friday with a major speech that promises to be damaging to Donald Trump. The president was due to speak on Saturday, three years after the Capitol was attacked by Donald Trump supporters who tried to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory, but the date was postponed due to a storm forecast.

The 81-year-old Democrat, running neck-and-neck or just behind the former president in recent polls and portrayed as a champion of democracy, is expected to portray his Republican rival as a threat to the nation. In his first campaign ad, released Thursday and set to air for the first time on television Saturday, he warns of an “extreme” threat to democracy by broadcasting footage of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Joe Biden’s campaign chief Julie Chavez Rodriguez said the president’s campaign speech four years ago in which he waged a “battle for the soul of America” ​​was more relevant than ever. “The threat that Donald Trump posed in 2020 to American democracy has only intensified since then,” she said in a statement.

Performances in symbolic places

The location Joe Biden chose for his speech on Friday is symbolic: Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, the historic site of the American Revolutionary War. At this event, George Washington, America’s first president, rallied the military forces that had fought against the British Empire nearly 250 years earlier.

“We chose Valley Forge because George Washington unified the colonies there,” said deputy campaign director Quentin Fulks. “Then he became president and laid the groundwork for a peaceful transfer of power—something that Donald Trump and the Republicans refused to do. »

Efforts to boost his re-election campaign will continue Monday with a trip to a South Carolina church where a white supremacist fatally shot nine African-Americans in 2015.

Popularity rating drops

This desire to speed up Joe Biden’s campaign comes after criticism from some Democrats who believe it got off to a slow start. The president has failed to convince voters that the economy is improving despite the favorable indicators, as many Americans continue to suffer from high food and housing prices.

Other issues on the Democrat’s side: the immigration and Mexican border conundrum, support for Israel’s war against Hamas that is dividing his party, or even Congress blocking his request for more funds from Ukraine. Joe Biden’s refusal to mention Donald Trump’s numerous legal cases, so as not to appear to influence the judicial system, also deprived him of one of his main weapons against the Republican billionaire.

But Joe Biden’s main weakness is probably his age. His several slips and language errors are scrutinized. Donald Trump, whom he defeated in 2020, leads him in several recent polls, and Joe Biden has the worst popularity rating of any sitting president in December leading up to the election. “If the election were held tomorrow, President Biden would lose,” William Galston, an expert at the Brookings Institution, told AFP.

The primary for the Republican nomination doesn’t begin until Jan. 15 with the Iowa caucus. But the former president is far ahead of his opponents Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis in the polls.