Trump making the election all about himself just feeds into Biden’s strategy
Tonight sees the start of the virtual Republican party convention and the big speech is going to come from Trump. Same thing on Tuesday and on Wednesday right till Thursday night with Trump nightly being the star speaker.
This is in sharp contrast with normal US convention where you build up to the big event on the final evening being nominee’s big speech. He doesn’t say anything public until that stage. That was how Biden played it last week and by all accounts his speech got very well received and not just by Democratic party supporters.
Political Analyst and editor of PoliticalWire, Taegan Goddard, argues that Trump approach to this week is a big strategic mistake:
Joe Biden wants this election to be a referendum on Trump. With Trump holding a historically low approval rating and large majorities of the country feeling the country is on the wrong track, an up or down evaluation of the incumbent means Biden only has to be seen as a credible president. The majority of voters will be judging Trump on the job he’s done, not Biden. Until now, the Trump campaign has said they wanted to make this election a choice between two candidates. That would give them the chance to do what they did in 2016 to Hillary Clinton: Make the alternative to Trump seem completely unacceptable.But a convention that’s all about Trump defeats that purpose.
I think that Goddard has this right. In the betting Trump has now edged up to a 42% chance.