Should Joe Biden Take One for the Team?

When we look at most political polls released in January 2020, it appears as though Joe Biden could win the upcoming election against Donald Trump with ease. Some polls even show the former vice president to be winning by over 15%.

But just like Hillary Clinton in 2016, Biden is (and will remain) the primary target of Trump’s ongoing disinformation campaigns. Trump’s team, as well as his fellow Republicans, have apparently decided on Biden to be the most dangerous opponent for the current president. While this assessment is certainly debatable, the resulting disinformation campaign definitely had an impact on the fight for the Democratic Presidential Nomination.

Like the attacks on Hillary Clinton, most of Trump’s latest conspiracies are meant to distract from his own scandals. Not only did he perform very badly as a president, but he also committed multiple impeachable offenses since he was sworn into office. Because Joe Biden is directly involved in the scandal that pushed the US House of Representatives to eventually impeach Donald Trump in December 2019, he is the perfect Democratic candidate to be targeted by Republican distraction campaigns.

The Accuracy of Polls

In 2016, Trump’s voters did not care about his scandals. His unprofessional and often ignorant behavior was not seen as a sign for utter incompetence but instead distanced him from the political elite that most of the country was upset with. A political elite that Hillary Clinton represented like no other candidate.

As a result, Republican politicians managed to convince a large part of the people, who were left behind by automation and technological progress, that Hillary Clinton was responsible for all of their problems. Paired with Russian-controlled online propaganda, this resulted in a Trump victory that very few saw coming.

As of January 2020, the United States elections are still not protected against foreign intervention in any meaningful way, and external motives for election meddling have not magically vanished either. It is, therefore, very likely that most political polls still do not represent the actual situation in the country.

Another 2016

If the Democrats nominate Joe Biden to represent them in the 2020 presidential elections, there is a good chance that the outcome of the 2016 elections will repeat itself.

Almost every poll of 2016 predicted Hillary Clinton to win the presidential election because no research institute could capture the true mental state of the American people at the time. In 2020, the United States public is arguably even more divided, which makes it even harder to create accurate polls and to protect the country from foreign intervention.

As a result, Democrats could have been fooled into thinking that Joe Biden is their best bet, even though a more progressive candidate might have better chances in reality. Many experts believe, for example, that Bernie Sanders would have won the 2016 election against Donald Trump because many of Trump’s votes were actually ‘against Hillary’ and not ‘for Trump’.

Trump also activated deeply racist, as well as sexist, sentiments that Republicans had cultivated during the Obama presidency, and these sentiments have now been extended to almost anybody who is called a leftist or socialist. Especially the fear of losing parts of their lifestyle to social progress makes many voters sympathetic towards this far-right rhetoric — regardless of whether it is morally sound or even based on the truth.

Republican politicians have proven during the impeachment process that they also operate without a moral compass, so it is doubtful that they would fight any action by Trump — even if it went against the US Constitution. As a result, they will continue to support Trump’s disinformation campaigns against Joe Biden and repeat his debunked conspiracy theories as often as they deem necessary.

They seem to follow the goal of ‘repeating a lie often enough, so it becomes the truth’, a principle that is often attributed to Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s Propaganda Minister.

Dropping Out

But Democrats could use Trump’s irrational focus on Joe Biden to their advantage.

Biden could exit the campaign trail shortly before the Democratic National Convention in July 2020, and use the resulting attention to endorse another candidate. He could be the voice of confidence that tells moderate voters that it is okay to vote for a candidate that conservative media outlets portrait as too extreme — similar to his role as Obama’s vice president.

It would be a move that nobody in the Trump team could see coming, and it would send a message of Democratic unity to voters before the most important US election in many decades. It would also send a signal across all borders that the United States is coming to its senses.

As some Americans have now noticed, the international community is watching the road to the 2020 elections very closely. The outcome will show the world whether the American public is equipped to protect its democracy or whether it will allow a fascist leader to become even more powerful and, therefore, an even bigger threat to the global community.

Do you disagree? Is there a better strategy to defeat Trump in November 2020? Let me know in the comments!