What undecided voters need to hear from Joe Biden

Trump wants Biden to fall into his trap, but Biden shouldn't take the bait

Biden still has time to win conservatives around (DNCC via Getty)

Most voters have already made up their minds when it comes to giving Donald Trump a second term or voting for his opponent, Joe Biden, this November.

Trump won via the electoral college in 2016 thanks to a slim 70,000-80,000 win in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin — three states not won by a Republican since 1988. Joe Biden's convention speech is not likely to change minds automatically. Still, the address will set the tone for the remainder of the campaign.

Re-election campaigns typically have centered around the incumbent — it is a referendum for the years the sitting president spent in office. But Donald Trump wants to make the election similar to 2016, which was a choice election.

Joe Biden must be careful not to fall into that trap.

While Democrats haven't gone as far as some did in 2016 in making 'Flight 93' analogies, prominent Democrats have engaged in rhetoric such as claiming "our democracy is at stake" and "Donald Trump is a threat to the republic." They argue only Joe Biden can stop the country from descending into a banana republic or a state of fascist authoritarianism.

The thing is, Biden has to go beyond "I am not Donald Trump." He must give people a reason to go to the ballot box for him and not against Trump. People without a clear motivation to vote for a candidate will choose, more often than not, to sit on the sidelines instead.

Biden has several options to do this during his acceptance speech.

First, he can promise a return to a sense of normalcy. For over three and a half years, Trump has managed to treat the nation like a captive of his delicate ego. The Twitter bickering, the constant fights with the press, and his braggadocio about hiring the best personnel, only to trash them publicly when they get fired or leave and criticize Trump after they've left. It's exhausting. Biden can get some mileage by simply promising not to center the news of the day around himself.

One question typically raised about Trump back in 2016 concerned how he would perform in the event of a crisis. With most polls showing a large share of the public giving Trump low marks for his coronavirus handling, Biden has the opening to discuss competence. Trump can spin his response all he wants, but it is a strong possibility the US death toll from Covid-19 will reach 200,000 before election day. His claims the United States has more cases because it only does more testing is farcical. Biden will have to seize upon that and argue that a more competent administration will not only clean up that mess but also be better prepared in the event of another outbreak.

Normalcy and competence come off as a simple recipe for an election strategy. Still, Biden won't be dealing with an opponent willing to get into the weeds on policy and ideology. Trump will throw everything he can at Biden and hope something sticks, zeroing in on the alleged spying by the Obama administration and attempting to throw Biden off by attacking his son Hunter as a by-product of Biden's supposed "corruption."

Joe Biden will soon be given his first opportunity to make a case for why he's the better choice to lead the country than Donald Trump. He will be laying out his campaign strategy and deciding how he chooses to pursue the goal of making Trump the first one-term president since 1992.

Suppose Biden can stick to making it a referendum on Trump without engaging in the frenzy and chaos that one can easily find on social media. In that case, he'll effectively reach the people who want to hear a compelling argument for change, but haven’t heard it yet. Those are the people he needs to swing the election his way.

Jay Caruso is the Managing Editor of the Washington Examiner Magazine