The New York Times’s White House Memo had this story up today: Biden Must Campaign Against a Man Who Already Thinks He’s President
Former President Donald J. Trump has not even clinched the Republican presidential nomination, but he has wasted no time issuing directives as if he were making them from the Oval Office instead of between appearances in a New York courtroom.
And now, President Biden has been forced to ponder a campaign question that no president has ever had to consider: How do you run against a man who has already had the job, never conceded his election loss and is already acting like he has the job again?
Actually, the problem is even worse: Trump acting like he’s the president is making it more difficult for the real president to govern — which is exactly his plan. The Senate worked up a bipartisan bill to help ease the border crisis. But Sneaker Mike Johnson says the bill is "dead on arrival." Why? Because Trump [is] Privately Pressuring GOP Senators To ‘Kill’ Border Deal To Deny Biden A Win.
Biden is fighting back. From the NYT story:
On Friday, when Mr. Trump had all but torpedoed the border bill, Mr. Biden was quick to respond in a way that pointed out that Republicans were walking away from a bill that would allow for the emergency closure of the border.
But the former president is shadowboxing with the current president in other areas, as well.
On Thursday, in between stints in a courtroom for a defamation trial, Mr. Trump posted on social media calling on “all willing states” to deploy National Guard troops to Texas “to prevent the entry of illegals, and to remove them back across the Border,” exacerbating a standoff between Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and the Biden administration.
But Biden needs to more. And so do we.
I’m struggling with this point, and after several attempts to suggest a path forward, I will just lay out the problem and ask for commentary:
Trump is trying to pretend he is (still) the president for three reasons, as I see it:
- He wants to stop Biden from being successful, so he can claim he’ll fix it.
- He wants to assert his complete domination of the Republican party.
- On some basic level, he has never accepted that he is no longer the president.
All of this presents a clear and present danger, not just to our democracy after November, but to a functioning government now. So we need a campaign that not only defeats Trump in November, but that counters the damage he is already doing to the nation.
In the past couple of diaries I’ve posted, some of the commentators have suggested that it’s too soon to attack Trump, that we must wait until after the conventions, until the country is paying attention. No. We cannot wait. The time is NOW.