Former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden are apparently locked in a tight race with a year to go until the election — but, according to an analyst, Trump is set to blow it by repeating mistakes.
Salon writer Amanda Marcotte said he's beginning to revisit policies that cratered his approval when he was in the White House and in the days after he left — and it's reminding voters why they kicked him out in 2020.
"This week, a small ray of hope has opened up, because Trump has indicated that he plans to run an incredibly stupid campaign, focused on two of his least popular political views," wrote Marcotte — to wit, his obsession with 2020 election conspiracy theories, as he prepares to claim the election was stolen as a defense in his criminal trial, and his renewed pledge this week to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which even Republican senators shot down.
"Even better, his approach to these two toxic issues suggests that, despite his team's efforts to normalize Trump, his psychotic levels of narcissism will always drag the campaign straight back to his ego obsessions, reminding voters what they most dislike about Trump," wrote Marcotte.
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Moreover, she argued, this is something the Biden campaign can capitalize on, tying Trump's promises to his own achievements on health care in office: "The Biden campaign ... has been looking for ways to highlight the president's under-covered efforts to drive down health care costs, from capping the cost of insulin at $35 to tweaking Obamacare to make it easier to get health insurance," she wrote.
"But while getting the rate of uninsured Americans down to a record low 8% is a major achievement, it also flies under the media radar, since it's a bureaucratic-sounding news story without much conflict to draw attention to it. But with the Trump vs. Biden angle, the massive difference between the two candidates on health care policy might actually get some coverage."
As for Trump's election denial, there is a trove of evidence suggesting that election denial persistently reduces margins for Republican candidates in tight races — something that contributed to their unexpected underperformance in the 2022 midterm elections, with candidates like Kari Lake losing winnable races.
At the end of the day, wrote Marcotte, "Trump's impulsivity and narcissism are such that he can't help but rant and rave about his imaginary grievances, helpfully reminding people that he is, without exaggeration, the worst. So, as gross as it is, let's hope Trump keeps talking up the Big Lie and how he wants to end Obamacare, long and loud enough so it gets on the radar of people whose memory needs jogging."
