Biden's strength is reflected by where he's shoring up votes and what he's nailed down

Trump was begging the Libertarian Party for support while Biden has the much easier task of bringing the Democratic base together, having already nailed down the tougher votes.

Earlier in the week, I wrote about why Donald Trump went to the Libertarian Party convention and got booed. The simple answer, as I stated, is that he needs votes—desperately.

Now I’ll contrast that humiliating move—which made Trump a laughingstock—with what President Biden did this week, which proves the point and refutes the national media narrative.

But first, just to recap a bit: Trump knows his support is weak for a Republican incumbent, seeing Nikki Haley continually taking a big chunk in primaries. And he knows that he’s hit his ceiling nationally. He has never gotten above 47% of the national vote.

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That wasn’t enough in 2020, even if he squeaked out a win in 2016 in the Electoral College, narrowly winning the blue wall states while losing the popular vote—a risky strategy. So that’s why Trump, who also needs money for his legal bills, is scrounging for both votes and cash. And that’s why he went begging to the Libertarian Party, though they showed him how much they revile him. (You can read that piece here.)

Biden needs votes too, I noted, but he doesn’t need to waste time with desperate moves like speaking to the Libertarian Party convention (to which he, too, was invited to speak), which isn’t going to gain him much.

That’s because, unlike Trump, Biden has huge demographic pools of people to speak to who are among his and the Democratic Party’s traditional base, where he can shore up many votes and nail down voters who are wavering or uncommitted. And that’s what he continued to do this week. The Biden campaign launched “Black Voters for Biden-Harris,” kicking it off with a rousing event in Philadelphia yesterday.

There, the president and Vice President Harris underscored that under Biden’s presidency there has been a record low Black unemployment rate, Black wealth has increased by 60%, more Black Americans have health care coverage than ever before, and billions of dollars forgiven in student loan debt have disproportionately affected Black borrowers.

They also slammed Trump, pointing to the horrors of his authoritarian plans for 2025 and reminding people of his dangerous presidency, which was punctuated by racist actions of all kinds, a desire to use the military on Black protesters, and the promotion of white supremacists.

The Biden campaign has opened up offices in battleground states across the country at an astounding pace—light years ahead of the Trump campaign, which has been cash-strapped for months and still has to help pay Trump’s legal bills.

And, in the same way the Biden campaign launched outreach to the Black community, it will also reach out to Latinos, young voters, women, and LGBTQ people. (It should be pointed out that it’s still early and that later in the campaign Biden will likely broaden out to other groups, having locked down the base.).

These, again, are the groups that are part of the traditional base of the Democratic Party. As you know if you read this newsletter or listen to my SiriusXM program, I don’t think polls at this point matter much and don’t do too much analysis of them. But I discuss them only to take on the corporate media narrative of the election, which relies on that polling.

We’ve seen so many blown-up stories about young people being apathetic about, or angry at, Biden, either not planning to vote, planning to vote for a third party, or even shifting to Trump. We’ve seen sensationalistic stories claiming that Black voters and Latino voters are leaving Biden, with some even claiming Trump is getting 20% of Black voters, which is flat out ridiculous.

There was also an insane story this week in Politico—again, sensational and all about getting clicks—that claimed a “freakout” among Democrats about the election, and of course with an anonymous Democratic source cited.

All of these stories are based on various polls, most notably the New York Times/Siena College poll. Again, this polling doesn’t mean a lot this early, and we can find problems in all the polls. But even if we were to believe it is accurate, it still shows Biden in a very strong position—stronger than Trump.

As I pointed out in the piece earlier in the week on Trump’s speech at the Libertarian Party, the New York Times polling analyst Nate Cohn, after writing a few pieces on the NYT/Siena polls that show Trump leading and why it’s bad for Biden, often follows up with a CYA piece—or perhaps they’re corrective pieces, responding to criticism.

The piece I referred to earlier in the week was about what Cohn called Trump’s “shaky” lead:

There’s one big flashing warning sign suggesting that [Trump’s] advantage [in New York Times/Siena polling] might not be quite as stable as it looks.

That warning sign: His narrow lead is built on gains among voters who aren’t paying close attention to politics, who don’t follow traditional news, and who don’t regularly vote.

President Biden has actually led the last three Times/Siena national polls among those who voted in the 2020 election.

Today, Cohn has another one of these CYA pieces, headlined, “Perhaps Lost in the Polling: The Race for President Is Still Close.”

This is kind of a, “duh.” Yes, the race is close, but it’s not lost in the polling; it’s lost in the reporting, including Nate Cohn’s.

But I digress. The new story makes the point that President Biden, who is winning in the NYT/Siena polls when those who didn’t vote in 2020 aren’t included, would win the election if he won the three blue wall states—Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan—where he’s now tied or has a slight advantage in polls. He wouldn’t need any of the other battlegrounds. Even though Democrats have won Nevada for years, Biden could lose it and win the presidency if he wins those three.

And the reason Biden’s doing well in those three northern battlegrounds is that he’s nailed down the harder voters to get, the ones with which Republicans and Trump have traditionally had healthy leads: White voters and older voters:

In Times/Siena polling this year, Mr. Biden is running only about a point behind how he fared among white voters in 2020. For good measure, he’s also faring a bit better than he did among voters over 65. Other polls tell a similar story.

Mr. Biden’s resilience among white voters and older voters hasn’t gotten a lot of attention, but it’s very important.

This is another “duh” moment. Gee, I wonder why this “important” aspect hasn’t gotten a lot of attention.

Anyway, this underscores once again that the entire media narrative of Trump leading the election—though the polls are tied—is based on polls showing weaknesses for Biden among Black, Latino and young voters.

But even if this is true, Biden then actually has the much easier task of bringing home voters who traditionally vote Democratic, even though many waver in every presidential election in the months before the election. He’s already has lot of support—the same as he did in 2020—among two groups that Republicans usually win with a healthy margin. So, for Biden, the hard part is done.

That’s why Biden, still early in the general election, is focused on bringing the base home, with a huge campaign infrastructure in place, while Trump is desperately scrounging for votes, subjecting himself to humiliation, while his campaign organization struggles and he’s paying legal bills. All of this is a measure of Biden’s strengths and Trump’s weaknesses.