Biden Tries to Defend Electability Against Trump Ukraine Assault
Biden seems eager to talk about Ukraine in personal appearances before reporters, voters and donors.
(Bloomberg) -- Joe Biden has framed his campaign around the pitch that he’s the strongest Democrat to take on President Donald Trump. He’s now facing his toughest test yet to prove it.
Biden, who entered the 2020 Democratic primary race late as its instant front-runner, enters a critical and unpredictable phase. He must look for a way to stop rival Elizabeth Warren’s surge, even as Trump and other Republicans try to paint him as corrupt, based on discredited claims about his involvement in stopping a probe into his son’s work in Ukraine.
Allies say Biden’s strategy is to fend off the allegations by repeatedly insisting there’s nothing to them, and retraining the focus on the impeachment inquiry into Trump’s behavior. The campaign even went so far Sunday as to write to television networks demanding they not interview Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani because they said he lies on air.
The campaign also is trying to refocus on issues such as health care, but that message has mostly been drowned out by coverage of Ukraine, which Biden has used as an opportunity to draw contrasts with Trump in personal appearances before reporters, voters and donors.
‘Best Opportunity’
“This is Joe Biden’s best opportunity to show voters, especially Democratic primary voters, what a general election between Trump and Biden would look like,” said Democratic consultant Mary Anne Marsh, who’s neutral in the primary contests. “If Biden can show voters how he’d take on Trump and defeat him in this debate about Ukraine, then Joe Biden will not only stop the slide in the polls in the early states, he could turn this around.”
She added: “But that is a big if. A big if.”
Some worry the attacks could damage Biden if the Trump campaign and its allies are able to create a perception of wrongdoing.
The 2020 campaign was upended last week when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced an impeachment inquiry of Trump after he asked the president of Ukraine to “look into” whether Biden tried to intervene in the country’s law enforcement to protect his son.
Biden’s son Hunter sat on the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian gas company, which was under investigation by the country’s prosecutor general. Biden, as vice president, joined European countries in urging the prosecutor’s dismissal at a time when the Burisma probe had been dormant for more than a year.
Uncovering Dirt
There’s no evidence that Joe Biden acted improperly. But for Biden, the danger lies in Trump’s ability to smear his political opponents: if Trump is trying to uncover dirt, some people may think, there must be dirt to be uncovered.
Some Democratic primary voters seem prepared to look beyond Trump’s attacks.
“If anything, it might be a positive,” Al McWilliams, a 62-year-old retiree from Las Vegas said about Trump’s attacks after a Biden event on Friday. “This happened a long time ago and everyone has been cleared.” But others, like accountant Emsie Hapner, 25, of Dayton, Ohio, said “whether or not Joe Biden has things to answer for is a separate issue.”
Biden, 76, also needs the backing of independent and Republican-leaning voters and it’s there he could face headwinds, especially as the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee prepare to spend $10 million on television ads showing Biden talking to Ukrainian officials and suggesting wrongdoing.
Deja Vu
Trump’s strategy carries some deja vu from 2016, when he branded Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton as so corrupt and careless with classified information that his rallies featured chants of “Lock Her Up!”
Biden’s strategy is different than Clinton’s. Clinton often appeared defensive and allowed herself to be drawn into extended debates about her actions, which led to her giving conflicting answers. And Biden isn’t burdened by an FBI investigation, as Clinton was.
The 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry was slow to respond to allegations that he exaggerated his combat record in Vietnam, for which he received a Purple Heart, a Bronze Star and a Silver Star. His advisers failed to see that voters would take the allegations seriously and, although false, they sowed doubt on Kerry’s war record, which was his strength in competing against President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The Biden campaign refuses to engage on the premise that Biden has to answer for any of his actions in Ukraine.
Pressure on Networks
On Sunday, two top Biden advisers sent a letter to news and cable TV executives asking them to stop booking Giuliani on their shows because he is sharing “false, debunked conspiracy theories on behalf of Donald Trump.”
“By giving him your air time, you are allowing him to introduce increasingly unhinged, unfounded and desperate lies into the national conversation,” Biden aids Anita Dunn and Kate Bedingfield wrote in the letter.
At the same time, a campaign aide said Biden could benefit from Trump’s attacks because the impeachment proceedings will consume the media’s attention while still giving Biden airtime. It also places Biden as the chief antagonist to Trump. The aide also said the campaign raised more money last week than at any time since the second week of his campaign last spring, but provided no details.
Walking A Fine Line
Still, wary of looking like he’s taking the attacks personally, Biden has been less aggressive than other Democrats in calling for the impeachment inquiry, saying it should only occur if the White House stonewalled House Democrats’ investigations. His strongest words about impeachment came during an interview with ABC talk show host Jimmy Kimmel on Wednesday.
“It’s awful hard to avoid the conclusion that it is an impeachable offense and a violation of constitutional responsibility,” Biden said of Trump.
Biden has generally refrained from discussing impeachment directly. Instead, he’s made Trump’s actions part of a pattern of abuse of power.
“But folks, this isn’t about me. It’s never been about me,” Biden told donors at a fundraiser in California last week that he opened by reading from the complaint by the whistle-blower who heard about Trump’s July 25 call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. “It’s a tactic that’s used by this president to try to hijack an election, so we do not focus on the issues that matter in our lives.”
Other Headwinds
Biden had seen his towering lead over the Democratic field narrow to single digits even before the whistle-blower news became public. Recent polls show Warren, the Massachusetts senator, steadily gaining the lead spot in the first two contests of Iowa and New Hampshire, as well as in California and one national poll.
Sean McElwee, a left-wing organizer, said progressives shouldn’t join in attacking Biden.
“Progressives and the left should not take this opportunity to use this as an attack on Biden. But one can’t help but remember the sort of way that Trump and Republicans manipulated the media to drag out specious stories about Hillary Clinton,” McElwee said.
Democratic hopefuls are treading carefully and generally keeping the focus on Trump. But some are also gently critiquing the arrangement Hunter Biden had in Ukraine while his father was vice president.
Unusual Arrangement
California Senator Kamala Harris told reporters Saturday she’d “probably not” allow a child of her vice president to serve on the board of a foreign company. But she called the issue “a distraction” and “a game” that Trump is playing to deflect from his own transgressions, according to a video posted by a CBS News reporter.
Colorado Senator Michael Bennet, a 2020 hopeful who’s barely registering in the polls, told Politico that it’d “be better not to have that kind of arrangement” as a vice president.
Last week in Keene, New Hampshire, Warren demurred when asked if her anti-corruption plan would bar a vice president’s child from serving on the board of a foreign company, saying she’d have to study the details.
Beto O’Rourke, the former Texas Representative, called a recent Trump campaign ad lacing into Biden for his son’s work in Ukraine “a disgrace.”
“Every one of us needs to call this exactly what it is: propaganda,” O’Rourke said on Twitter. “Doing anything less is playing right into his hands.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Tyler Pager in Washington at tpager1@bloomberg.net;Sahil Kapur in Washington at skapur39@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net, Max Berley
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