Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden's polling lead over President Donald Trump continued to widen this week, with some polls showing a double-digit lead in battleground states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, with many respondents unhappy with the way the president has handled the coronavirus pandemic and Black Lives Matters protests.
That gives Biden's campaign an opportunity to emphasize the former vice president's political experience and personality as compared to Trump's divisive leadership style, said TJ Ducklo, national press secretary for the Biden campaign.
"I think what you're seeing is a powerful contrast between the kind of leader that Vice President Biden is and the kind of leadership, or lack thereof, that we've seen from Donald Trump over the past couple weeks," he said.
One area where Trump's approval rating remains high is on the economy. But Ducklo made the case that economic recovery is also a strong suit for Biden.
"The vice president is someone who knows how to lift our economy up out of crisis," he said. "He did it in 2009 with the Recovery Act and implementing that, one of the largest influxes of cash into the government in American history. He got people back to work."
Ducklo pushed back against the idea that the ongoing coronavirus stimulus under Trump, including the Paycheck Protection Program and CARES Act, will gain him voters in the fall.
"What we've seen from the Trump administration is a corrupt recovery. That the folks with connections, Donald's Trump donors, Donald Trump's political allies, they're ones that are helped by this. It's not working families. It's not the folks who need it most."
In response to the criticism lobbed by Trump that Biden has not been very visible on the campaign trail, the press secretary stressed that the vice president is making an effort to engage with voters despite the restrictions presented by the coronavirus pandemic.
"We are campaigning," he said. "We've done roundtables with small business owners. We've done a meeting with faith leaders. As you'll recall, Vice President Biden was in Houston meeting with the Floyd family a few weeks ago."
Still, despite the string of good polling news, the campaign is tempering its excitement.
"It's important to remember that polls are a snapshot in time," TJ Ducklo, national press secretary for Joe Biden, told Cheddar. "Here at the Biden campaign, we are focused on doing the work, doing what we need to do to get the vice president's message out to voters and to reach the kind of folks that we need to get to the polls and to vote in the fall."
