White House pivots to ‘letting Trump be Trump’ amid his rancid poll numbers | Analysis

'Letting Trump be Trump worked out okay in 2016, but times have changed. It is unclear that the president is changing with them,' analyst says

Donald Trump revealed a new campaign strategy this week, promising Americans he will save them from Joe Biden's conspiracy with the far left to "abolish" the country's suburbs and dishwashers.

The president turned two events at the White House ostensibly about Hong Kong policy and rolling back federal regulations into pseudo-campaign rallies, part of a strategy to go after the policy proposals Mr Biden has rolled out. Mr Trump described an America that would be run exclusively from Washington and weighed down by economy-crashing regulations.

"The American dream would be sniffed out so quickly and replaced with a socialist disaster," Mr Trump said of a Biden victory in November.

"We must never return to the days of soul crushing regulation that ravaged our cities, devastated our workers, drained our vitality right out of our people, and thoroughly crippled our nation's prized competitive edge," the president said while standing under a large crane on Thursday. "That's what we have. We have great, great people, the greatest people in the world."

"Our entire economy and our very way of life are threatened by Biden's plans to transform our nation and subjugate our communities through the blunt force instrument of federal regulation at a level that you haven't even seen yet," he claimed. "You think [the Barack Obama era] was bad, you haven't even seen it yet. They want to go many times [beyond] what they put you under in the past."

Nevermind that half the Obama administration's regulations were slapped on the financial sector after its follies drove the US and global economies into the 2008 economic recession.

To hear Mr Trump tell it, a President Biden would wipe out everything from America's dishwashers to its suburbs. Dishwashers? Yes, dishwashers. And shower heads.

"We are bringing back consumer choice in home appliances so that you can buy washers and dryers, shower heads, and faucets. So shower heads," Mr Trump said in a confusing riff that contradicts his argument that he is sharp and Mr Biden has mentally lost a step, "the water doesn't come out you want to wash your hands the water doesn't come out, so what do you do? Do you just stand there longer or do you take a shower longer because my hair, I don't know about you, but it has to be perfect."

Hardly a convincing message for four more years. He kept going, however.

"Dishwashers, you didn't have any water so the people that do the dishes, you press it and it goes again and you do it again, and again, so you might as well give them the water because you will end up using less water, so we made it, so dishwashers now have a lot more water and in many places ... of the country, water is not a problem. I don't know what to do with that, it's called rain," he said.

'Suburbia will be no longer'

Political analysts and operatives from both parties this week told The Independent they have yet to hear Mr Trump succinctly tell voters why he wants a second term or what he would do with it.

Apparently, he plans to save America's suburbs from a left-wing invasion and eradication.

"The Democrats in DC have been and want to add a much higher level: abolish our beautiful and successful suburbs by placing far-left Washington bureaucrats in charge of local zoning decisions," he said.

"Your home will go down in value and crime rates will rapidly rise. Joe Biden and his bosses from the radical left want to significantly multiply what they're doing now," the president roared. "And what will be the end result is you will totally destroy the beautiful suburbs? Suburbia will be no longer as we know it."

Nevermind that Mr Biden and Democratic officials are betting big on suburban voters — with an assist from black voters — to push the former VP over the finish line in November. Mr Trump's claims ignore the fact that Democrats have worked hard to change the mind of college-educated white suburban voters, especially women, since 2016.

Mr Trump won among suburban voters by 4 percentage points in 2016, but exit polls from the 2018 congressional midterm election showed white college-educated women in those areas flocked to Democratic candidates.

'Letting Trump be Trump'

Mr Biden has worked to avoid being pulled too far from the left by progressive darlings like Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren while also trying to adopt some of their ideas to keep the Democrat's big tent unified. That is intentional, to avoid scaring away white suburban and black voters. And it's working.

According to polls like a recent one from Monmouth University, Mr Biden is leading among the white college-educated voters who dominate suburbia. That survey gave the former vice president a commanding 61 per cent to 34 per cent lead in those areas over Mr Trump.

These extended attacks on Mr Biden with the White House as a campaign rally backdrop likely will continue: Mr Trump promised this week to do more of them. He is turning up the heat on Mr Biden, but in his own way – with the kinds of bold claims, hyperbolic attacks and meandering diatribes that turned off key voting blocs in 2018.

"Letting Trump be Trump worked out okay in 2016, but times have changed. It is unclear that the president is changing with them," said William Galston, a former Clinton White House official. "At his Mount Rushmore speech before July 4th, his staff reportedly worked hard to convince him to not mention the Confederate flag. He managed to avoid it."

"But by the next morning, he was tweeting about it," Mr Galston added. "Any advantage they might have gained was wiped out."

Even if Mr Trump in recent weeks resembles a hard-throwing baseball pitcher struggling with his control, this week's amped-up warnings about a country led by Mr Biden is not without purposes, Republicans say.

"The biggest thing for the president is he has to make the case that a United States under Biden would be a disaster," said one GOP strategist with ties to the White House. "He is trying to drive up Biden's negatives. The president has to make this election about Biden, not about him. And no offence to suburban voters, but they don't turn out [to vote] like other groups do."