Biden Pivots to Pandemic Talk to Sway Swing-State Voters

As President Joe Biden’s reelection team searches for ways to deflate the nostalgia for the Trump-era, it is pivoting toward discussing the COVID-19 pandemic, which the president has largely avoided talking about since announcing his bid for another White House term.

In a number of recent speeches, Biden has frequently recalled the chaos of 2020, when schools and offices shut down, hospitals were stretched thin, and the stock market tanked, Politico reported.

“First responders were literally risking their lives,” he said during a Tuesday fundraiser in North Carolina. “Nurses were in garbage bags as garments because they couldn’t get any other help. Loved ones were dying all alone and we couldn’t even say goodbye to them.”

It was the third time in the last week that he had invoked the darkest days of the public health crisis, according to Politico, and represents a conscious choice on the part of the campaign as it casts about for ways to bring swing-state voters over to the Biden camp.

Campaign advisers told the outlet the strategy must be exercised with caution and could easily backfire.

The issue had long been decided, as Biden officials had agreed that people did not want to relive those times again, Politico reported. They concluded that raising the issue would not win them many votes in November, because the memories of four years ago are still too raw and the response to Biden’s vaccine and mask mandates was so divisive.

Former President Donald Trump’s recent push to paint his time in office as a golden era of peace and prosperity has caused a shift in the thinking inside the Biden campaign, however. According to Politico, Biden officials are keen to remind voters Trump’s presidency lasted through the early days of the pandemic — a time most would rather forget.

So, when the former president recently asked voters on social media, “ARE YOU BETTER OFF THAN YOU WERE FOUR YEARS AGO?” the Biden camp pounced on the opportunity.

Speaking to Politico on condition of anonymity, one Democrat close to the campaign said, “There is a lot of trepidation about talking about COVID.”

“But when Trump comes out and says, are you better off, he’s basically inviting comparisons to his complete mismanagement,” he said.

The president’s team is now trying to take advantage of what it views as a major misstep by Trump and is reworking his question to voters into an attack on his handling of the pandemic.

“When we asked about 13 issues back in November to try to figure out what voters wanted to hear candidates talk about, we had COVID-19 on the list,” Mollyann Brodie, executive director of the public polling and survey research program at health policy nonprofit KFF, said. “It ranked dead last.”

According to Politico, Biden officials are optimistic they can take the issue of COVID-19 and turn it into a referendum on Trump’s competency by reminding people how he conducted himself during an emergency.

“People have really memory-holed the pandemic,” Gunner Ramer, political director of the anti-Trump Republican Accountability Project, said. “What Joe Biden is trying to do is remind voters why they rejected Trump in the first place.”