The Biden campaign has recently held two high-profile fundraisers. The first one was in New York City back in April, which brought in $26 million, and the most recent one was in Los Angeles last week, which brought in $28 million.
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The Biden campaign called these fundraising hauls huge—though they were significantly smaller than Donald Trump’s May fundraiser in Florida, and paled in comparison to the $53 million Trump raised in the first 24 hours after the sham verdict in New York City at the end of May.
Heck, since the verdict, Trump’s campaign and allied groups have raised more than $420 million, destroying the cash advantage Biden had earlier this year.
The Biden campaign has gone from boasting a cash advantage to not even being in the same league as Trump in terms of campaign fundraisers, and now they’re about to blow most of the haul from the New York City and Los Angeles events on an ad buy that’s not going to do a darn thing for them.
According to a report from Axios, the Biden campaign is launching an ad campaign in all the swing states, seeking to make Donald Trump’s recent criminal conviction a central theme of the 2024 election.
Related: Politico Thinks They Have a Bad Post-Verdict Poll for Trump. They Don’t.
The ad buy is part of a $50 million investment in June alone and will target key demographic groups, such as black, Hispanic, and Asian American voters, whom Biden is struggling to keep in his column this year.
This approach signals a significant escalation in the election dynamics, relying on voters’ negative reactions to Trump’s character and legal history as a decisive factor in their choice between the two candidates.
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Why is it a waste of money? Because the public really doesn’t care about the trials, and many see them as politically motivated. Hence, Trump’s very public trials and verdicts haven’t done anything to move the needle in Biden’s favor.
Here’s the ad:
The ad claims, without evidence or citation, that Biden has lowered healthcare costs and his commonly used line about making corporations pay their fair share. These aren’t exactly the messages that resonate with average voters, and good luck convincing people that healthcare costs have come down when they’ve been going up, according to BLS data. So, what exactly does the campaign think this ad will do for them? People have already made up their minds about the verdict, and you can’t convince people things are better if they aren’t actually better.
Pollster Frank Luntz declared earlier this month that the verdict is “not going to significantly alter the results at this moment” and suggested that the presidential debates will be more important.
“Trump approaches the first debate as a convicted felon who continues to prove that he will do anything and harm anyone if it means more power and vengeance for Donald Trump,” Biden-Harris 2024 communications director Michael Tyler told Axios.
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The ad doesn’t include any messaging that Biden hasn’t already trial-ballooned on the campaign trail, yet Biden officials believe that as voters consider the prospect of Trump returning to the White House, they will increasingly support Biden.
However, Axios notes that their efforts haven’t worked so far. Despite running TV ads since Labor Day, their efforts have not significantly shifted public perceptions of the candidates or the race.
But, hey, if that’s the strategy the Biden campaign wants to use, I’m all for it. It’s just money they’re wasting. In the end, the problem with Biden’s strategy is that he’s leaning more on attacking Trump than on his own record. Of course, when you have a record like Joe Biden’s, there really isn’t much to brag about.