Jittery Democrats Prod Biden to Pick Up the Pace as Race Tightens

(Bloomberg) -- Joe Biden’s supporters are beginning to show signs of anxiety as recent polls track a narrowing race between the Democratic nominee and President Donald Trump, with allies saying they’re eager for Biden to hit the ground and make his case in the two months remaining until Election Day.

Republicans dominated national attention last week with their convention, including four nights of speakers who described Biden as a “Trojan horse” who will sneak socialism into the White House and painted Democratic mayors and governors as so soft on crime that they tolerated violent riots in cities across the U.S.

But while Trump spoke publicly every day during the Democrats’ convention the previous week, Biden spent last week at his beach house in Delaware, did two national television interviews and held virtual fundraisers. His running mate, Kamala Harris, gave a speech to counter GOP convention messaging and did a few virtual events. Biden gave a forceful speech Monday countering the GOP messaging but on Tuesday is only doing a virtual fundraiser.

Former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat who earlier this year said Biden should stay home in the face of the coronavirus, says the time for that strategy is over. “He needs to spend the entire fall campaign traveling out to the battleground states,” he said. “He needs to do it in a manner that keeps people safe, but he needs to have a presence in the battleground states.”

The race has been gradually narrowing all summer from a 10-point lead for Biden in June and early July. Now, at least some polls show a dramatic tightening, either from a so-called convention bump or in a sign that the sometimes-violent protests are making voters more receptive to Trump’s law-and-order argument.

An Emerson College poll of likely voters conducted Sunday and Monday gave Biden his narrowest lead yet in that survey, leading Trump by just 2 points, 49% to 47%, down from a 4-point margin in July and within the margin of error, making the race statistically a toss-up.

Other polling has shown a more stable race favoring Biden. A post-convention ABC News-Ipsos poll found that views of Biden and Trump remained have remained strikingly similar -- before both parties’ conventions, after the Democratic convention and after both conventions -- when 31% viewed Trump favorably and 46% viewed Biden favorably. Either way, Biden supporters are growing anxious.

“Someone needs to pull the fire alarm NOW,” tweeted liberal filmmaker Michael Moore, a native of Flint, Michigan, upon seeing one GOP poll that showed Trump leading in his state. “DANGER!”

The poll by the Republican firm Trafalgar Group was the first Michigan survey in months to show Trump with an advantage, leading Biden 46.6% to 45.2% in the state. Trafalgar was the only pollster to correctly predict Trump’s 2016 win in the state.

The Biden campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean said he tries to “ignore the nervous Nellies” but added, “I understand why other Democrats are worried because we lost the last time when it looked like we wouldn’t.”

Dean said he thinks it’s important for Biden to be seen refuting Trump’s charges daily but at the same time, doesn’t think the 77-year-old needs to have a packed schedule. “Make a single appearance a day and don’t exhaust him,” he said. “Biden could stay in his basement and he’d win unless Trump cheats.”

Reed Galen, a veteran of the George W. Bush and John McCain presidential campaigns who is supporting Biden this time, said Biden shouldn’t have ceded the first high-level visit to Kenosha, Wisconsin, to Trump, who is there Tuesday. The city in the critical electoral state is wracked by violent demonstrations following the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, by police, and the subsequent killings of two protesters by Kyle Rittenhouse, a White teenager and Trump supporter.

Galen said Biden should have gone first and declared, “This is wrong, this is un-American, he is inciting sedition, that’s not leadership, it’s criminal.” Biden gave that message Monday in his speech delivered in Pittsburgh.

Galen, a co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, said he’d like to see Biden “take control of the campaign” and “break out of the shell, literally and figuratively.” Biden “is a fighter, he’s a guy who likes to throw a punch,” he said. “This is where Biden needs to stop being a former senator and vice president and be a president.”

McAuliffe, while encouraging Biden to travel to critical electoral states like Michigan, also was dismissive of the doubters, but said Biden needs to do more to promote his economic message and explain to Americans how his presidency would improve their lives.

“They want to hear from us, ‘Tell me what you’re going to do for me? How are you going to keep us safe?’” he said.

Biden on Monday tried to answer those questions with a rebuttal of Trump’s acceptance speech and proffered that Trump, despite his calls for “law and order,” has made Americans less safe through his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and through the absence of language that could unify the country in the face of the protests.

But Biden left the economy aside, something campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond, a Louisiana congressman, said is essential to a winning argument.

“We have to continue to say over and over again that this president has destroyed and wrecked this economy, just like everything he has ever touched in his life,” Richmond said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “And so we need to point out that there are farmers that are filing bankruptcy at all-time highs, that the unemployment numbers are where they are, small businesses are closing their doors every day.”

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.