 "Joe Biden sharpens attacks on Trump, says Republican candidate determined to destroy American democracy")
President Joe Biden targeted directly Republican front-runner Donald Trump during a campaign event on Tuesday, treating him as the presumptive nominee and cautioning voters about the potential consequences of a Trump return to the White House. “Donald Trump and extreme MAGA Republicans are determined to destroy American democracy,” Biden said at a fundraiser in Colorado. Biden critiqued Trump on various policies, including his push to repeal Obamacare and his endorsement of abortion restrictions, while also addressing his political rhetoric. “If Trump gets his way, it’s all gone,” Biden said in reference to the health care benefits provided by Obamacare. He highlighted Trump’s threat to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, emphasizing that when Republicans controlled both chambers of Congress, they repeatedly failed to repeal it. Biden warned that Trump’s actions could result in 40 million Americans losing health coverage obtained under the law. The US president also criticised Trump for the abortion restrictions implemented by Republican-led states following the Supreme Court’s ruling last year, accusing his rival of “running for president bragging he killed Roe v. Wade.”
The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll showed Biden and Trump locked in a tight race, with Trump leading Biden 51% to 49% when respondents were asked to pick between the two.
The poll also showed that voters who are inclined to support Biden in 2024 say they are more motivated by stopping Donald Trump from returning to the Oval Office than they are by supporting the incumbent.
Some aides and Democratic strategists have long urged Biden to be more aggressive, but say he had resisted that approach. Instead, he tried to focus mostly on his own record in the White House and steered clear of naming the Republican former president, listing his multiple felony counts, or painting a dark picture of America’s future if Trump is elected in 2024. That good-news approach is not working, some officials inside and outside the Biden campaign say. A series of polls have shown Trump leading Biden and that voters have a grim view of the economy, even as the U.S. grows faster than many other major economies this year. The shift in messaging also comes as a growing number of Democrats, particularly young voters and Muslim-Americans, are angry at Biden’s backing of Israel’s attacks on Gaza that have killed 12,000 and threaten to abandon him in 2024 unless he backs a ceasefire.
As president, Biden had mostly eschewed direct attacks on Trump and said he wanted to heal a deep political divide that separates rural and urban areas.
He has used legislation to pump investments into rural America, partly in an attempt to claw back voters in regions where Democrats have haemorrhaged support in recent years.
Aides say the 81-year-old president is confident he can beat Trump in 2024, just as he did in 2020.
In addition to campaigning on access to protecting abortion, voting rights, and a ban on assault rifles, Biden will ask voters to let him “finish the job” by giving him a second term, and is trying to focus attention on high employment rates and massive infrastructure spending.
Some Democrats and Biden donors have pleaded with the White House to take the emphasis away from Biden’s economic record, dubbed “Bidenomics,” especially given rising discontent over a surge in food and housing costs over the past year.
Impact Shorts
More Shorts“Bidenomics is a terrible choice of words,” John Morgan, a Florida attorney and top fundraiser for Biden, also known as a bundler, told Reuters. When 40% of Americans have $400 or less in the bank, “you don’t lean into the economy because they don’t feel it,” Morgan said.
With inputs from Reuters.
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