This game is easy. It’s fun. It’s predictable. It’s finding the buried portion of a liberal news outlet’s story that totally undercuts their headline. President Trump has been hammering former Vice President Joe Biden. Granted, it’s not sticking as well as “crooked Hillary,” but the non-stop rioting, the endless assaults on cops, the calls to defund the police, and the overall anarchy that’s been met with Democratic Party approval has had an impact. Yet, in this New York Times story, this is the headline: “Trump Onslaught Against Biden Falls Short of a Breakthrough.”
Game over, right?
There are endless paragraphs about how Biden is ahead in the polls and on some issues, though the former VP’s campaign rarely acts like that. They’re chasing Trump in key states and Biden is not doing as well as he should in Democratic bastions, like Miami-Dade County in Florida. Yet, here are the passages that got buried coming from swing voters in Wisconsin (via NYT) [emphasis mine]:
If there is a warning sign for Mr. Biden in the survey besides Mr. Trump’s modest growth, it is that many seniors want him to more forcefully denounce the violence that has grown out of the summer’s racial justice protests.
By a 20-point margin, 53 to 33, voters over 65 in the four states [Minnesota, Nevada, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire and Wisconsin] said the former vice president had not done enough to denounce rioting. And 70 percent of these same voters said crime was a “major problem” in the country.
Ellen Christenson, a 69-year-old Wisconsinite, said she voted for former President Barack Obama twice before backing Jill Stein, the Green Party nominee, in 2016. Now Ms. Christenson said she was torn between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden and “could go either way.”
Mr. Biden, she said, had not sufficiently “condemned the violence and the burning.”
Originally a supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement, Ms. Christenson said she now felt it had “gone too far,” and she said she “kind of resented” that her workplace recently forced her to take a seminar on microaggressions.
Believe it or not, this voter exists (and might help decide 2020)... pic.twitter.com/C4NTtX0nfQ
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) September 12, 2020
Undecided voters - of all colors - w/ seemingly contradictory views are actually *under-covered* by the media, judging by the number of stories framing 2020 as all about base turnout.
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) September 13, 2020
So, it’s not so rosy for Biden, huh? Commenting on this text, Cook Political Report’s David Wasserman said, “Believe it or not, this voter exists (and might help decide 2020).”
It’s the same old song as it was in 2016. Blow hot air into all these polls but ignore that there are still people on the fence and better yet, there are shy Trump voters out there. How can Biden be up, let’s say 7-10 points over Trump nationally, but not performing too hot in Miami-Dade? There are also troubling signs in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where there’s been a massive GOP voter registration surge. Moreover, in Lackawanna County, the move to the GOP is also evident. If Biden cannot do well in Lackawanna, he’s probably not going to win the state. And with more attacks on cops, more rioting, and more insanity from the Left—more “Ellen Christensons” will pop up. Let’s not forget that CNN’s Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo pleaded on air for the rioting to stop because the polling was starting to shift.
