ONE: Hide. It is abundantly clear that Joe Biden has poor live speaking skills; the amount of times a clip has circulated of him mincing his words is almost unbelievable. So what should he do? Hide, of course! If you don’t give Trump a direct head to head, then he can’t exploit your flaws anywhere nearly as effectively. You saw what happened to Hillary Clinton right? However, debates are a huge part of US politics and not debating whatsoever is a risky move, so what I would advise Biden to do is have stipulations for debate. Things like a live fact-checker and a no-interruption clause could help Biden mask his flaws. So, yes, hide, but hide behind stipulations not hide from political discourse.
TWO: Use polling data; close the gap. Polling may have Joe Biden ahead when it comes to the entire population, but when this data is broken down Joe Biden is polling behind Trump in one key demographic. White and male Americans. This is a considerable proportion of voters, and although Biden has some of these votes, he should really try and close the gap on Trump in this section. He needs to make himself more likeable to white American men. And although Biden is in the lead in almost every other demographic, some leads he has are not as large as he would like them to be. In the 32 million registered Latino voters, Trump is polling around 35% and Biden around 50%. This is crucial in states like Texas, which has 5.6 million eligible Latino voters. Biden should carefully select how he uses his funding and take votes away from Trump using polling data.
THREE: Swing states. The fabled swing states (Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin) together totalling well over 100 Electoral College votes. These states are infamous for flip-flopping from one election to the next and winning in these states at the right time is key, Trump showed that in 2016. Biden absolutely has to win some of these Electoral College votes. He should pump his funding into states like Florida because in the last election that was the state that pushed Trump over the line, plus Florida is over 10% of the total votes needed to become President of the USA. If Trump were to win some of these states, the 320 Electoral College votes some pollsters put Biden on could be dramatically wrong.
FOUR: Statistics. Any politician worth their salt understands that statistics can be your best friend and worst enemy, simply because they can be manipulated and portrayed in almost any way you like. Biden can use statistics to show flaws in Donald Trump’s Coronavirus response, things like the number of deaths and manipulated data in population centres can help Biden do this. Trump will do the exact same thing, but the way people operate helps Biden, as for some reason people gravitate to the negative side and pay more attention to it. An example of this is comparing the number of deaths of Coronavirus globally to the number of recovered cases. We hear a lot more reporting on the deaths and not the recovered. This is good for Biden.
FIVE: Show some passion. One of Hillary Clinton’s main flaws that was because she was so level-headed all of the time some voters (helped by Trump’s constant badgering) saw her as not invested in the American people. Biden can not fall down the same rabbit hole. He has to be vocal, be loud and show his emotions. Although people may not tell you this or even consciously know it, when leaders show emotion, it tells us that they care and they truly mean what they say. You can have some of the best-articulated slogans and sayings, but people don’t remember those. People remember the “We’re gonna build a wall” over the “they go low, we go high” – one of these two was assertive and passionate the other was calm and neutral. So, Mr Biden show some passion.
Joe Biden may be well on his way to the White House, but he has to make sure that he maintains his supposed lead. He also must be wary that Hillary Clinton had the same narrative of being in the lead for the whole race, and look how that turned out. Everyone loves an underdog, and everyone loves an upset. Joe Biden needs to make sure the people don’t vote for one.