What Exactly is Joe Biden’s Primary Campaign Plan?

Photo by royaannmiller.com.

By Darren Katz, Founding Parter of Amplia Group

During the video to announce his candidacy for president in 2020, Joe Biden framed the debate around the tragic events that took place at a white nationalist rally as an existential threat to our country. It was not just the murder of a civil rights protester that Biden was referencing, but rather Donald Trump’s famous statement equating white nationalists, Klansmen, and Neo-Nazis, by claiming there were “good people on both sides.”

Among the 20 Democrats vying for the nomination, there are a variety of raison d'êtres.  Some are attacking Trump’s corruption, some his incompetence, and some are going after his cruel policies. Many are just putting forward their own biographies and policies without much reference to Trump. But by framing his candidacy around Trump’s dog whistling to racists, Biden is signaling that he intends to make Charlottesville, and by extension, Trump’s racism, the issue.

In that sense, Biden is starting a general election campaign before the primary even gets underway. That’s the strategy that a favorite would take. My guess is that Biden is going to rerun Hillary Clinton’s primary campaign of 2016. She won by superior organization, endorsements, electability, and inevitability. That is much harder to pull off in a field of 20 candidates, but as the field winnows, it might still prove to be a winning strategy.