The "Nuh Uh" Strategy

Biden's desperate attempt to stay in office

I have talked about the upcoming US presidential elections plenty of times before. Mainly I have focused on the impact of third party candidates and the administration’s handling of international events on Biden’s reelection prospects. Today though I will focus on something different: Biden’s actual (or lack of) strategy.

I was inspired to write this because of the Thanksgiving message that the Biden-Harris HQ X account put out on November 23rd, but what was in there was so laughable that I weighed whether or not it would be worth it to analyze. Well you know what, I have decided to do it anyways, because I am starting to notice a pattern when it comes to the Biden campaign, where they just seem to be straight up denying things are happening, shifting blame, or decrying our woes as this inevitable problem that would have happened regardless of who was in the White House from 2021-2024. As well as the famous “yeah, Biden did this, but imagine what Trump would have done, he would have done it worse!” I have come to dub this baffling approach as the “Nuh Uh” strategy. You’ll see why right now.

See that first point? WRONG! This is where I actually got the idea to dub this the “nuh uh” strategy, as whoever wrote this could have just wrote nuh uh and the messaging would have been the same. This also gives a tone that the President’s campaign is talking down to voters rather than talking to voters, something that Donald Trump is very good at and why he is still very appealing despite everything.

His first point claims that Trump had the worst jobs record of any President since the Great Depression. Gee, I wonder what could have possibly happened in Trump’s term that resulted in such a loss, because it sure wasn’t happening from 2017-2019. Covid did a lot of damage to people’s employment prospects. Most of these job losses were a result of lockdowns imposed by blue states and advocated by people like Biden and Co. The campaign seems to just think that everyone lost their jobs out of the blue without any outside factors. Essentially saying: “Everything was going great, but all of a sudden, everyone lost their jobs and the economy shut down.” They can’t admit anything else though, because doing so ruins their argument that these losses were a result of policies that they pushed, implemented and defended. You can’t expect people to believe that Donald Trump was solely responsible for people who lost their jobs in states like California or New York that had the strictest lockdown measures imaginable. The only thing you can blame Trump for is allowing the states to choose their own Covid policies but Biden can’t do that because the states that he would be pointing to are states ran by people who like Biden.

His second and third point here sort of mesh together so I will address them as one. He (and I am well aware that Biden himself didn’t write this) says that inflation is lowering and the economy is growing. I should also call this the “muh graphs” strategy because these people put out a lot of graphs showing how much the economy has supposedly improved. The problem is, people don’t vote based on graphs, they vote based on how they are feeling. If people are feeling like the economy sucks because everything is horribly expensive then they aren’t going to be happy. Joe Biden is probably happy because he can afford to be happy, as well as those in his administration who are talking about how good those graphs are and how those lines are going up. They live on an amazing salary. The cost of living being at an all-time high won’t affect them in the way it affects everyone else. They can afford to proudly proclaim how the price of a Turkey has gone down two cents and say that it is amazing progress. Now, I will say that gas has gone down over the past couple months, but even then I am cautious about that given that the Middle East is currently in the process of exploding as well as the fact that we have seen gas prices lower and then rise back up before. Call me a contrarian but I am not biting that bait just yet.

His fourth point circles back to his first. Yes Joe, it is very easy to inherit an economy wrecked by Covid policies that you yourself supported and then claim that the jobs people are going back to are jobs that you yourself created. The first and fourth points of this graphic are perhaps the worst ones because it counts on denying what you, the voter, experienced with your own life. The administration is playing this game where they admit that there was bad economic fallout because of Covid but refuse to go into why despite the fact that they proudly supported the why. The virus itself didn’t make it so people lost their jobs. This is a direct insult to the intelligence of the American people.

There it is, the nuh uh again. There is another thing I have noticed about the Biden campaign. It tries to attribute things to Trump that Trump has never said or advocated for. Trump has said multiple times during his campaign that he will not cut social security or Medicare, and has even attacked fellow Republicans like DeSantis for hinting that they would. Joe Biden is doing a desperate play by trying to say something enough times to the point where people will just accept it as factual. He cares about poor people? The poor people who are struggling to afford basic goods and services? The poor people that have seen the costs of living skyrocket and the standards of living lower? That is caring for the poor people? That is caring about the seniors? He talks about how cutting taxes benefitted the super rich, but where is the data proving this? I never see it, I just see rhetoric. Honestly I am of the belief that the tax cuts should not have been the primary goal of the Trump administration out the gate because it gave all the leverage to Paul Ryan first and not second. The wall and other social issues should have came first and the tax cuts second. Speaking of the border:

Nuh uh. This doesn’t even address what it is claiming to address. I’m actually struggling to come up with a response to this one because it is just a blatant denial of what actually happened. The immigration system was broken before Trump entered office. That is what he ran on. While there were some hiccups along the way, at the end of his term border crossings were down. His strategy of putting the military at the border was paying off. Then Joe Biden comes in, dismantles all of that progress, and then claim it is Donald Trump’s fault despite the fact that we are now facing all time high surges at the border? I didn’t realize that Trump was still the President who has the power to enforce our laws and regulations Joe! In fact, there was an entire congressional committee established to prove to us that this wasn’t the case and that Joe Biden is the rightful president of the USA. Are you saying that your own beloved January 6th committee was wrong? That it is actually Trump who has the power to secure our borders and enforce our laws? That it was Donald Trump who ceased military operations at the border and stopped building the wall? That it was Donald Trump who ordered states like Texas to cease building barricades? Who in the world does this guy think he is fooling? Joe Biden is blaming Trump for his own inaction here. If he wasn’t, why didn’t he list the efforts that his administration are undertaking to ensure border security? Oh right, because those efforts are nonexistent.

Trump has repeatedly stated that any action on abortion should be left up to the states. He is probably the most moderate Republican running on this issue because he understands that endorsing a federal abortion ban would be electoral suicide in states that Republicans need to win in order to get to 270. He knows that he cannot let Biden make the election a referendum on abortion rights. This would be an effective attack on people like DeSantis or Haley but on Trump it falls flat. Even in deep red states like Kansas anti-abortion activists have had trouble getting it banned. Trump is playing a smart game despite the whining of certain evangelicals who don’t understand that they should take their victories where they can and learn when to and when not to engage in battle. At this time, to make abortion a national issue only benefits the left.

Again, nuh uh. Can you expand upon this Joe? Lies how? Where were all these jobs shipped overseas? Our domestic manufacturing was booming during the Trump years. We had become energy independent. Now, due to Biden’s climate policies, we have to rely on other nations for our energy. Yet again, you cannot claim to be pro-worker or pro-poor while supporting policies that raise the cost of living while lowering the standards. I’m running out of things to actually say here because ultimately it all circles back to the same argument.

Yeah, I bet all those heads of state that mocked and laughed at Trump sure are still laughing now. The same heads of state that are whining about Putin invading Ukraine and China making moves around Taiwan because they arrogantly believed that they could force Russia and China into a “my way or the highway” relationship. Trump knew that wasn’t the case because it was the same policy that failed for years. Trump got along well with Putin, as well as Xi despite his anti-China rhetoric. Trump was the first US President to step into the DPRK on invitation of Kim. What is bad about this? What would Joe Biden and everyone else have us do? Bomb Russia, China, and the DPRK? Is that what they are advocating for? Because according to Russia, China, Iran, and the DPRK right now, that is how they see it. That is why our relationships with those states have now deteriorated to even worse than Pre-Trump levels. We may never be able to rebuild those relationships again, even with Trump back in office, because why should they if the next Democrat administration will just go back on everything?

I also like how they hit Trump for praising Russia and Hezbollah for doing smart things. So are we not able to recognize when adversaries commit to smart strategies? That used to be standard back in the day. General Patton thought General Rommel was smart. Was Patton secretly a German agent? Mutual respect on the battlefield has been a concept since the dawn of time. Those who think their enemies are stupid all the time are most likely fools themselves. Then we wonder why Ukraine is currently losing to those idiotic Russians and why Israel has been bogged down by idiotic Hezbollah militants. Arrogance is the bane of empires. Donald Trump realizes this and it is why his foreign policy was so effective while Joe Biden’s falls flat. Just as how neoliberals view their domestic opponents as stupid hicks, they also view their international opponents the same way.

Look, I’m not going to say that you should take the polls at face value. At the end of the day, what matters is how people vote. At the same time, I never was of the opinion that polls should be disregarded entirely. We all remember the big night in 2016 where Hillary Clinton was absolutely taken by surprise when all the polling was pointing to her landslide victory. We remember what happened in 2022 when by all rights Republicans should have had a safe majority in the house and a majority in the senate. Polling isn’t perfect. It isn’t indicative of the final results of any election.

However, I do believe that polling does indicate trends. Donald Trump has never polled good against any of his opponents until recently. In 2020, Biden was always the favorite between the two. This was true all the way back to 2019, which is why he was drafted to run against Trump in the first place. If you recall, he was initially very hesitant to get in the race. Liberals practically begged him to run because of how well he polled against Trump, and even used that polling to bash the Sanders campaign. Low and behold, despite some cope polls that were favorable to Trump, he ended up winning, even if by slight majorities across a couple swing states. Now, I am not going to go into Covid shenanigans and am only taking this at face value, because at the end of the day, even with everything going against Trump, he still only won by a few thousand votes in a year he should have won in a landslide. The polls, while they may have not given him the accurate final tally, were right in that he ultimately won the election.

Fast forward to today, and he and his supporters are claiming that polls this far out cannot be trusted because they show Trump winning, despite the fact that they ran on the same argument in 2020. The problem with this analysis is that there has been a pattern of discontent that Biden has chosen to just ignore. His people think that he is such an electoral juggernaut that they can compare him to Reagan (lol) Clinton (lol lol) and Obama (lolololol). Yeah man, Joe Biden has that Reagan charisma going for him for sure. As much as I disliked Clinton and Obama, they had a spark to them and actual enthusiastic support. Obama was the first (half) black president. The man was a good talker and could draw a crowd. People had yard signs, flags, and would actually tell you that they are a proud Obama supporter. I don’t see that for Biden. The main argument I see for Biden is “I am not voting for Biden, I am voting against Trump.” That may have worked in 2020 when Biden wasn’t an incumbent President with a bad record, but if that messaging hasn’t changed, then they are in trouble. The race is going to be a comparison about how voters are living now compared to four years ago (disregarding Covid). If even a fraction of those 80 million people Biden somehow managed to dig up still can’t say that they are proud Biden supporters, then the guy is in big trouble next year. If his campaign thinks he is some sort of Ronald Reagan, the guy who won in one of the biggest landslides in the history of this country and still has a huge cult following over 40 years later, they are delusional. If his campaign is betting on the fact that the polling is wrong without doing anything to change voter’s minds, they are stupid.

We also have to remember that Biden actually has to campaign this year. This isn’t 2020 where he could safely hide in his basement and people would make excuses for him. He has to hit the road. He has to go around and actually argue as to why he is the better option. Trump, despite being only a few years younger than Biden, has the energy of a man 50 years younger. Trump will be campaigning and hitting Biden nonstop. It will be an offensive campaign. Biden is going to be on defense. Defense is fine if you can take it, but if these graphics his campaign is putting out are any indication, he cannot take it. He also isn’t just campaigning against Trump, he is campaigning against Stein, West, and RFK Jr. Yet his campaign is treating these other candidates like they don’t exist. Sir, they exist, and they are either to your left or are fellow liberals like you. You can’t just ignore them and wish that they go away. The voters aren’t going to. You have people who voted for you initially fed up with you which is why those other people jumped in the race. They see an opportunity to leech your support base.

I’m serious when I say I am baffled at the worst campaign I have ever seen for an incumbent President. Is he hoping that the fraud meme actually works out and he can get 6 gorrillion ballots cast for him? No really, what is the strategy here? “Nuh uh” and “these other guys don’t exist” by all rights should mean that he is doomed next year. I know I said that you should recognize your opponents intelligence when it occurs, but is it time to admit that whoever is running his campaign is just plain stupid? Did he get the zoomer tiktokers to run the race? That’s what it’s feeling like to me.

I have said this many times, but unless something drastically changes in Joe Biden’s favor, I doubt that he wins next November. There have been too many missteps and strategic errors that if not fixed soon will be too late to remedy. I’m not just saying this as someone who supports Trump, I am saying this as someone who is really confused by this approach. If he actually ends up winning with is “nuh uh” approach, I will give up politics. What do you all think?

Oceanus