Trump takes underdog role in campaign against Biden

BY JONATHAN EASLEY

05/06/20 06:00 AM EDT

"President Trump' campaign is heading into the reelection battle against former Vice President Joe Biden as an underdog, a role the campaign embraced in 2016 and hopes to capitalize on once again in 2020.

The White House has retooled its media strategy, and the campaign is going up early with ads casting Trump as the “comeback” president who will lead the U.S. economy to new heights after the coronavirus-induced meltdown.

The Trump campaign will soon turn its attention to tearing down Biden, casting him as complicit in China’s rise as a global superpower and raising doubts about the former vice president’s fitness for office. A pro-Trump outside group is planning to take up the allegation of sexual assault made by a former Senate staffer against Biden, a charge the former Delaware senator has vehemently denied.

The attacks are an effort to make the election a binary choice between Biden and Trump, rather than a referendum on Trump’s first term in office, GOP operatives say.

Trump’s allies acknowledge that they face an uphill climb, with polls showing Biden leading nationally and in key battleground states. If the economy does not prove to be as resilient as Trump claims, the election is all but lost, campaign insiders say.

But Republicans believe Trump may have bottomed out amid the pandemic and there will be opportunities to sell an economic recovery and to damage Biden, who has kept a low profile since the coronavirus outbreak first hit.

“The polling right now doesn’t look great, but we’re seeing a snapshot taken at the most stressful moment of COVID-19 plus economic shutdown,” said Chris Wilson, a Republican pollster and president of WPA Intelligence."

moar:

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/496284-trump-takes-underdog-role-in-campaign-against-biden

underdog? top kek