Get angry, get aggressive: Joe Biden’s campaign needs a change in tone

As next week’s debate approaches, we are still almost five months away from Election Day. The irony of this early start to all the debates, ads, and campaign events to come is that both Joe Biden and Donald Trump are so well known that all these things still won’t likely change many minds.

There will be millions of weary voters, especially in the battleground states, by the time the candidates finally reach the finish line.

And after June’s debate, we will find out whether the failed, felonious former president needs a cell mate, a running mate or both. Trump’s sentencing on 34 felony convictions takes place in New York on July 11. That’s only four days before the beginning of the Republican National Convention with the beautiful skyline of Ho Chi Minh City — excuse me, Milwaukee — as the backdrop. Judge Juan Merchan will deliver the sentence but will not preside over the GOP confab.

The first joint candidate encounter of 2024 between the two presidential standard bearers is the just the first step in the lighting round of campaign calendar events.

During the first debate in 2020, Trump seemed woefully unprepared and demonstrably hostile toward his opponent, so much so that he talked over Biden while he was speaking. At one point, the Democrat responded with “Will you shut up, man.”

CNN, the sponsor of the impending debate, fixed that problem. Trump’s microphone will be muted this time while his opponent is talking and vice versa. 

Muted mic or not, Trump will be his usual ornery and irascible self. The big variable is Biden’s attitude. 

Whereas Trump is combative by nature, Biden tries to be conciliatory. The incumbent comes across as a doting grandfather while his predecessor is your cranky old uncle. 

Historian Jon Meacham, is an informal Biden adviser and speechwriter. The title of his recent books, “And There was Light” and “The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels” reflect Biden’s approach to politics.

The contrast worked well for Biden in 2020, when a frazzled electorate buffeted by the wave of a deadly COVID-19 pandemic sought a safe port in the storm after a chaotic four years with Trump at the helm.

But three years later, voters are angry about high prices and pessimistic about the nation’s future. It is fair to wonder whether the kinder and gentler approach will work for Joe Biden this time. It’s difficult for Biden to appeal to America’s better angels when, as Shakespeare wrote in “The Tempest,” “Hell is empty, and the devils are here.”

The Biden reelection effort needs a change in tone. Voters are angry, yet the tenor of the Biden campaign has been celebratory. Something’s got to give. Something’s got to change. 

Now that the presidential contest has been deadlocked for months even after Trump’s felony convictions, there are signs that the incumbent has recognized the need for a course correction.

The president initially reacted in matter-of-fact manner to Trump’s conviction. But his campaign just took off the gloves and released a hard-hitting TV ad that points out Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts of business fraud and found liable for sexual assault. Biden should carry that aggressive mindset into the debate.

Trump won’t pull any punches during the CNN faceoff. Biden shouldn’t either.

“It’s still the economy, stupid.” The Democrat should take the lead and remind Americans that his opponent’s callous indifference to the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic killed hundreds of thousands of people and eliminated millions of jobs. Biden would be wise to acknowledge his empathy with the financial suffering from inflation but point out the economy would be worse during a second Trump term.

The president should directly attack Trump for his criminal record. The Republican will try to deflect that thrust with an attack on Hunter Biden. The president should respond that he loves his son but that the younger Biden isn’t running for the highest office in the land.

Biden must anticipate Trump’s immigration attacks and remind voters that he supported a tough bipartisan border security bill that the former president killed with his vocal opposition. 

On the fight for reproductive rights, Trump will fall back on states’ powers to oppose a national abortion ban. Biden should get ahead of this argument. It’s up to the incumbent to remind people that the three Trump Supreme Court appointments effectively eliminated the right to choose for millions of women in a couple of dozen states because of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision. And Senate Republicans just killed legislation to guarantee freedom for families to choose in vitro fertilization.

This year’s debate is a great opportunity for the president to refocus his campaign with confrontation and aggression mixed with anger and empathy for the stretch run.

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.