President Trump’s advisers are trying to plot a political turnaround centered on his stewardship of the economy, seeking to exploit a rare issue on which voters trust him as much as Joe Biden and vowing to usher in the “great American comeback” after the country plunged into a financial free fall on his watch.
Biden, under growing pressure from Democratic allies to wage a more aggressive rebuttal, plans to sharpen his economic focus in coming weeks with the rollout of new proposals to stimulate job creation, according to a senior campaign adviser. The campaign also plans to intensify its drive to remind voters of Trump’s sluggish response to the novel coronavirus and the unemployment spike that followed.
The dueling efforts come less than five months before Election Day. By almost every indicator, Trump’s bid for a second term is in peril, with Biden sprinting out to leads in battleground states and into competition in some conservative strongholds. But in a twist, the economy, which has been a bellwether in the modern history of presidential races, is one major domain where voters still give Trump encouraging marks, bolstered by occasional bright spots like Tuesday’s report that retail sales jumped 17.7 percent in May. Continue reading.