SPLIT-SCREEN SPECTACLE — Thursday figures to produce one of the more memorable days of the 2024 presidential campaign. President Biden and former President Donald Trump will make separate visits to the southern border, creating a split-screen spectacle that spotlights their conflicting political imperatives. For Biden, the issue is a serious political liability. Gallup reported this week that, for the first time in five years, Americans say immigration is the most important problem facing this country — and that percentage has spiked over the last month. And the president’s disapproval ratings, which remain stubbornly high, are in part fueled by dissatisfaction with his performance on immigration issues. According to a different Gallup poll two weeks earlier, immigration rated as the top reason among issue-related concerns for those who disapprove of his job performance. Trump, meanwhile, has made border security and harsh restrictionist immigration policies a centerpiece of his campaign. Republicans have hammered Biden for the chaos at the border and the migrant crisis afflicting many big cities, even after congressional Republicans blocked a bipartisan compromise. The issue has become increasingly salient amid reports of high-profile crimes committed by migrants in New York and the recent killing of Laken Riley , a 22-year-old Georgia college student, allegedly murdered by an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela. That Biden would visit the border is no surprise. The question is what took him so long, given the politically radioactive nature of the issue. His trip to Brownsville, Texas, was announced only after Trump’s own plans to visit Eagle Pass, Texas, were announced, making it appear as if the president was following Trump’s lead. It’s part of a pattern of missed opportunities and slow reaction times that suggest his political operation isn’t firing on all cylinders. His operation is good at mastering the symbolism and optics of campaign set pieces — such as his recent Valley Forge speech and his appearance at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina — but it’s been late to the game and far too reactive on other symbolic occasions that require a more nimble approach and quick pivots in the face of political danger. One of Biden’s political superpowers is his empathy. Yet it took more than a year for the president to travel to East Palestine, Ohio, after a Norfolk Southern train derailed there in a fiery crash that devastated the community with a toxic chemical spill. Trump was there within weeks. When wildfires tore through Maui, Hawaii’s historic town of Lahaina leading to the deaths of more than 100 victims, the White House once again was slow out of the gate. As in East Palestine, the execution of relief efforts weren’t the issue — a disaster declaration came quickly as did federal aid to supplement state and local recovery efforts. Rather, the optics were bungled, thus obscuring the actual actions that were undertaken. Biden, at the time, was on vacation in Rehoboth Beach, Del., where he was asked by a reporter as he approached a car if he had any comment on “the rising death toll in Maui.” He responded with “no, no comment” before cracking a smile. There are plenty of plausible explanations for that response. But as the episode made the rounds of social media and the conservative media piled on — portraying Biden as callous and dismissive of the situation — the response initially generated outrage in Hawaii and in other Democratic quarters. Trump, whose own term was marked by criticism that he politicized natural disasters, seized the opportunity to post a 2-minute video on Truth Social expressing his “sympathy and warmest regards to the people of Hawaii” while also bashing Biden and criticizing him for spending “a great deal of time” at the beach. His hand forced, the next day Biden announced that he would go to Maui “as soon as we can.” The day after that, the White House scheduled a date for his visit. Similar dynamics were at play in Michigan last year during the UAW strike, when the White House scheduled a Biden visit to a picket line — after the Trump campaign had already recognized the symbolism of the moment and had scheduled their own event at a non-union Detroit-area engine parts supplier. The Biden operation’s messaging problems have also frustrated Democrats on the Hill , who worry that Democrats’ big legislative successes have been obscured by the White House’s inability to sell them. In presidential campaigns, as any advance person can tell you, political stagecraft matters a great deal. So do the optics surrounding how quickly and confidently campaigns respond to news events — it’s an essential part of communicating a message and making it stick. The Trump campaign is far more professionalized this time around than in its previous two slapdash incarnations and appears to understand that fact. The Biden campaign needs to recognize that if it hopes to climb out of its polling deficit. It can start tomorrow in Brownsville. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s authors at cmahtesian@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @PoliticoCharlie .
| 
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.