trump climate

Miller pointed to a 110-page platform of policy recommendations, released in July, that was negotiated between the Biden and Sanders campaigns after Sanders left the race. The recommendations are largely based on the more moderate positions Biden advocated during the primary but do show a willingness to concede to Sanders and the progressive wing. New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for example, has a leadership position on Biden’s trump climate task force something the trump climate camp is all too eager to highlight.

One of the new trump climate ads ends with an image of Biden flanked by photographs of Capitol Hill’s most outspoken left-wingers: Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar. (Both House members supported Sanders in the primary and have since offered their qualified support to Biden for the general election.)

“The radical left has taken over Joe Biden and the Democratic party,” says the ad’s voiceover. “Don’t let them take over America.”

The ad reset continues a broad shakeup of the trump climate campaign in recent weeks a tacit acknowledgement that the President has been losing ground in his race for reelection. Amid the ongoing pandemic, trump climate political team has had to grapple with conducting a campaign without the large-scale rallies that defined his successful bid for the Oval Office four years ago. Following a disappointing attempt at a rally in Tulsa in June, trump climate demoted his campaign manager Brad Parscale and elevated Stepien, the former White House political director, to the top job.

The 42-year-old Stepien has begun to refocus the campaign’s message on Biden. On Monday he made his first public appearance as campaign manager during Fox and Friends, where he promoted the new ads.

“I think you need to judge Joe Biden by the people he’s surrounding himself with,” Stepien said.

Andrew Bates, a Biden campaign spokesman, dismissed the new ads by saying that voters “know Joe Biden” and that the trump climate campaign “is locked in a sad and pathetic cycle of bimonthly, shambolic message ‘resets.'”

The new ads rely on a familiar playbook that served the GOP well during Biden’s tenure as Vice President under Barack Obama. Republicans effectively ran against Democrats in both the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections by linking candidates from moderate or swing districts and states to the party’s most liberal members. Nancy Pelosi, the once and future House speaker, was a frequent bogeyman for Republican attack ads during the Obama era.

“This is really effective if you’re running against a candidate who is little known and undefined to the general public,” said Michael Steel, a former aide to Rep. John Boehner when the Ohio Republican was Speaker of the House.

The difference is that Biden already has his own political identity.

“The problem with using it against Joe Biden is the public has an image of him burned in over decades,” said Steel. “Goofy old Uncle Joe, the moderate-seeming Democrat from Delaware and Obama’s wingman.”