I wish that it were a rhetorical question. Sadly, seeing MSDNC eagerly touting this vapid puff piece from Team Biden makes it a serious question:
No one cares who Joe Biden went to grade school with in Scranton over 70 years ago. They don’t care what one of his cousins thinks of him, either. The man has been in public life for over 50 years. He was Vice President for 8 years, and he’s in his 4th year as president. Any potential voter has made up his/her mind about Biden the person long ago. Hearing about what a good guy he was decades before most people were born isn’t going to change any votes.
At this stage, not much can be done about Biden’s approval ratings, which have hovered around 40% for over a year now. He’s not capable of rousing audiences on the campaign trail, and there’s no legislation in the pipeline that might tangibly help hurting Americans. Biden and Blinken Backing Bibi’s Bombing isn’t exactly a hit, either, especially with younger voters whose support was essential to his 2020 victory.
The obvious thing that still can be done is for Team Biden to scare the living hell out of the American public about a former insurrectionist who openly aspires to being a future dictator. Scaring voters about your opponent is a tried-and-true strategy. The GOP has excelled at it since 9/11. LBJ’s “Daisy” ad devastatingly did it in 1964:
There’s massive raw material to (truthfully) portray Trump as a fundamental threat to representative government now. A simple ad can start with a brief clip from his exhortation to insurrection on the morning of January 6, 2021.
Footage can then be shown of the Capitol Hill Riot that ensued as a direct result of his supporters heeding his urgings:
The man put the safety of his own Vice President at risk. He put the safety of every member of both houses of Congress at risk. His words directly led to the first successful attack on our seat of government since 1814. People died as a result of that attack, and it could’ve been a lot worse.
No constitutional government in any country on this planet would trust having Trump near the levers of power again. The fact that he currently stands roughly a 50/50 chance of regaining power is beyond frightening to anyone who gives a damn about 237 years of constitutional government in this country. This fundamental fact needs to be made clear to voters over and over and over again.
It ain’t rocket science. If enough people are exposed to ads that remind them of what Trump did in power before and what he would inevitably do again, his poll ratings will inevitably decline.* It’s something that should’ve been done long ago, and it needs to be done as soon as possible. Otherwise, Team Biden might as well just hand the White House keys to Trump.
*If his poll numbers don’t decline after such an ad campaign, we’re in even worse shape than I thought.