As President Joe Biden barnstorms battleground states this week, he is framing the debate with former President Donald Trump around themes of economic populism that Democrats have employed, often with success, for decades. But Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, may prove to be a more elusive target for those arguments than a typical GOP candidate.
Biden is portraying himself as committed to standing up for average Americans against powerful interests and the wealthy. But polls consistently show that significantly more Americans, including substantial numbers of Black and Hispanic voters, believe they personally benefited from Trump’s policies than Biden’s.
That sentiment risks blunting Biden’s populist arguments: even if he can convince voters that Trump’s policies helped the rich and corporations the most, they may not mind as much if they believe that they also benefited more under Trump than they have under Biden.
For Biden – who spent Tuesday meeting with Teamsters leaders and is headed to Wisconsin and Michigan the next two days – the critical question may be whether voters’ support for key ideas in his policy agenda can outweigh their frustration with their lived economic experience during his presidency. “You are really hitting on the crux of what a lot of swing votes will be [weighing] going into the election,” said Democratic pollster Danielle Deiseroth.
Biden has plenty of ammunition to mount a traditional populist case against Trump. The former president’s principal legislative accomplishment was a massive tax cut that provided most of its direct benefits to corporations and the most affluent. Trump came within one Senate vote of repealing the Affordable Care Act, which has significantly increased health care coverage for lower-income working Americans. As a candidate…
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