Former Obama adviser David Axelrod is might be the only Democrat to recognize what’s happening with the electorate. He has often pointed out that while most Biden supporters, and often the White House itself, focus on Trump, the actual public just wants the president to do his job.
Previously, Axelrod received the ire of Joe Biden by saying that the president should consider stepping down after one term because of his age. Now, he’s taking fire for stating the obvious: indicting Trump on frivolous charges has only made the former president stronger.
The Hill writes:
David Axelrod said Monday the indictments former President Trump faces have made him look “indomitable” and “strong.”
“I think we have to stop and acknowledge, the sort of moment that we’re in, where a guy who engineered an insurrection at the Capitol is on the verge of being his party’s nominee again. And I don’t want to in any way brush that point aside,” Axelrod, who was an adviser to former President Obama, said on CNN’s “The Source” with host Kaitlan Collins.
“But he is selling strength, and in a weird way, all of these legal travails that he has — all of these indictments, all of these lawsuits and so on — has given him a chance to look indomitable, look strong, look resilient and that’s actually, in some ways, helped him,” Axelrod said.
A recent profile by The New Yorker focusing on Biden and his advisors revealed they won’t be taking the advice of Obama’s right hand man. The magazine spoke with Mike Donilon, one of the president’s top advisers.
“Like Biden, he has firm beliefs—about politics, the public, the press—and a contrarian side. In 2020, he and his campaign team had to decide whether to emphasize the economy or the more abstract idea that Trump imperiled the essence of America. “We bet on the latter,” Donilon said, even though “our own pollsters told us that talking about ‘the soul of the nation’ was nutty.” That experience fortified his belief that this year’s campaign should center on what he calls “the freedom agenda.” By November, he predicted, “the focus will become overwhelming on democracy. I think the biggest images in people’s minds are going to be of January 6th.”
He sees a parallel to the race between George W. Bush and John Kerry, in 2004. At the time, Donilon was working on television ads for Kerry. ‘The Democratic Party didn’t want to believe it was a 9/11 election,’ he said. Instead, the Party tried to focus on an array of issues—the war in Iraq, the economy, hostility to Bush. But, shortly before the election, a new video of Osama bin Laden was released that dredged up memories of 9/11. Bush won, and Donilon vowed not to repeat the error: ‘I decided, after the election, I would never be part of a Presidential campaign that didn’t figure out—with clarity—what it wanted to say and stick to it.’”
After being asked about the plan, Axelrod was blunt: “I’m pretty certain in Scranton they’re not sitting around their dinner table talking about democracy every night,” David Axelrod told me.
Biden allegedly plans to double down on his strategy on Tuesday during his State of the Union and will ask, “What side are you on?”
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