Biden must bring the fight to the battleground states

The trials and tribulations of Donald Trump would stop any other politician dead in his tracks. But he keeps on trucking in the face of the adverse media coverage.  

Democrats rejoice in Trump’s troubles like we did in October of 2016 when his crude comments about women on a hot mic in 2005 became public. His reprehensible words created a national scandal and led just about every Democratic and Republican pundit and politician to write off his candidacy. But he proved all of us wrong.  

At the end of the October 2016, I saw all sorts of danger signs for Hillary Clinton in the polls. But I chose to ignore the warnings thinking that voters couldn’t possibly send a morally corrupt man like him to the White House. I was wrong, but I won’t make the same mistake twice. The stakes are way too high this time to give Trump another chance to destroy democracy in America. 

The Real Clear Politics national average of surveys indicates the contest between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is as tight as a tick on a hound dog. But the Biden vote in national polls is an artificial construct of his big leads in big blue states like California, New York and Illinois. 

Don’t let the national numbers fool you. An examination of the national polls without an analysis of the battleground state standings is like diagnosing engine problems without checking under the hood of the car. 

A new set of Bloomberg News surveys shows the Republican candidate with leads in most of the states that will decide the winner in the Electoral College, which is the only factor that counts in presidential politics. These states total 99 votes in the electoral tabulation. 

These surveys in the seven closely contested states which will choose the next president illustrate President Biden’s vulnerability. In these key states, Trump leads President Biden by 6 points. The ex-president has statistically significant leads in four of them while the rest are within the margin of error. 

In the Sunbelt battleground states, Trump leads Joe Biden in a five-way race with independent and third-party contestants by anywhere from 14 percent in Nevada, 6 percent in Arizona with North Carolina (+10 percent) and Georgia (+8 percent) in between. These states have a total of 49 electoral votes. Biden won 33 of them against Trump in 2020. 

The situation in the closely contested northern tier of competitive states is better for Democrats but not encouraging. The margins in Wisconsin (+3 percent for Trump), Pennsylvania (+1 percent for Trump) and Michigan (+1 percent for Biden) are all within the margin of error. That’s 44 electoral votes that all went to the Democrat in 2020. 

While the failed former president battles Stormy Daniels, the incumbent president battles turbulent headwinds. Overwhelming numbers of voters in these states believe the nation is headed in the wrong direction. This kind of pessimism is never good news for an incumbent. 

The economy is the top voting issue for voters in the battleground states. That is a problem for the president despite improvements after inheriting an economic basket case from Trump. Most battleground voters fear that the economy, inflation and high interest rates will be worse by the end of the year. 

The economy has created more than 15 million jobs under the president’s stewardship but there is little recognition of his accomplishments in the presidential combat zone. Only one fourth of the voters in these states think the employment rate is better despite the hundreds of thousands of new jobs that the Biden economy has created there. 

Inflation is even more of an albatross for the president. Only one out of five voters in these hyper competitive states feel inflation is getting better and most of them think that prices will even be higher by the end of the year.  

There are still six months to go and a lot can happen in a very short time in a volatile political climate.  

Bloomberg conducted the poll just before the Trump trial on 34 felony counts in New York City started. A guilty verdict against him in his hush money trial could influence swing voters.  

His behavior during the trial could be just as damning. He has whined incessantly about his required presence in court and temperatures in the courtroom. He doesn’t look or sound presidential. 

Concern about abortion could save the day for Democrats just as it did in 2022 in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision to nullify Roe v. Wade and to allow states to limit reproductive rights.  

There is much concern about protecting choice in the politically competitive states, especially in Arizona which now operates under a draconian 1864 anti-abortion law. But controversy over the near ban on abortion there hasn’t helped Joe Biden much so far. 

The economy is still job No. 1 for the president. He has not only created a record number of new jobs but he has retooled the economy to prepare it for the challenges that the U.S. will face in the future. 

But his administration has failed to sell his stellar accomplishments to the electorate. Swing state voters blame the president for their financial troubles. Joe Biden must tout his successes even more aggressively. He must adopt a more populist Bernie Sanders-like tone and rail against the excessive corporate profits and the Trump COVID-19 first term blunders that left the economy in shambles.  

Joe Biden must bring the fight to the battleground states to save democracy and the economy from a second Trump term. 

Brad Bannon is a Democratic pollster, CEO of Bannon Communications Research and the host of the popular progressive podcast on power, politics and policy, Deadline D.C. with Brad Bannon.