As this presidential campaign enters its final act, Joe Biden is attempting to con American seniors into abandoning their greatest ally in the federal government, Donald J. Trump.
The Biden-Harris campaign is not running on ideas — a disconcerting truth highlighted by their belligerent position that we do not deserve an answer as to whether they would pack the Supreme Court. One notable exception to Biden’s evasiveness are the task force recommendations his staffers devised in conjunction with Democratic Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have spent far more time distancing themselves from that document than they have elaborating on its far-left policy prescriptions.
Biden is running on fear, and he seems to believe senior citizens are the easiest voters to frighten.
Fear is central to every major theme of the Biden campaign, starting with an approach to the ongoing pandemic that boils down to “you aren’t scared enough.” Contrast that with President Trump’s bold words of hope and defiance: “Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life.”
Biden’s strategy was cemented in place during the critical early days of the original coronavirus outbreak in China, when President Trump was taking extraordinary measures such as restricting travel from China. The day after Trump did that, Biden tweeted about “Donald Trump’s record of hysteria, xenophobia, and fear-mongering.”
Today, Biden is more interested in exploiting for electoral advantage the fact that COVID-19, which I refer to as the Chinese Communist Party Virus because of its origins, disproportionately affects older people. To that end, he’s tried to convince America that Donald Trump is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of seniors despite Trump doing virtually everything Biden has suggested long before Joe even thought of it. After the Trump administration had already embarked upon the largest economic mobilization since World War II in order to ensure that every state would have adequate supplies of ventilators and PPE, for instance, Biden tried to make himself sound smart by suggesting the president do exactly that.
With less than a month to go before Election Day, the Biden campaign has resurrected one of the most ridiculous and implausible lies of the 2016 campaign: that Trump is coming for your Social Security. The flimsy evidence they offer in support of this lie is an order the president signed allowing struggling families to delay their payroll taxes for the remainder of this year, and the fact that Trump has on occasion raised the possibility of eliminating the regressive payroll tax altogether. Even liberal fact-checkers deemed Biden’s claim too absurd to stomach.
That cuts to the heart of the problem with Biden’s fear-based campaign: It simply doesn’t comport with reality. No, Trump is not coming for Social Security, and no, the country should not be living in fear the way Biden has been. In fact, despite Biden’s best efforts, American seniors aren’t afraid. Like most Americans, they refuse to despair even in the depths of a pandemic.
A recent Gallup survey asked the classic reelection question: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” An incredible 56% of registered voters said they were — the highest mark ever.
Gallup has asked that question of Americans every time a sitting president has run for reelection since 1984, when Ronald Reagan famously made it a core component of his campaign message. For the record, in July of 1984, only 44% of respondents answered that they were better off then than four years earlier. Reagan went on to rack up the greatest Electoral College landslide in modern history over Walter Mondale.
That 56% mark under Trump isn’t just well above Reagan’s mark, it’s far and away the best result since they started asking the question — fully 11 points better than Barack Obama had on the way to victory in 2012, nine points up on George W. Bush’s heretofore highest 47%, and a whopping 18 points higher than the 38% under George H.W. Bush.
One must wonder how much better the country’s mood might be if the last eight months hadn’t been marred by COVID-19.
Joe Biden’s fear-based campaign is clearly failing to shake the confidence and optimism of the American people. Seniors, blessed with the wisdom that comes from life experience, should have no trouble seeing through the scam.
Giuliani, President Trump’s attorney, was the 107th mayor of New York City.