Could Biden Beat Trump By Ignoring Him?

Plus: The White House tries to talk Israel out of invading Gaza’s last city.

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Mar 19, 2024

Lots of developments on the MAGA legal front this week: Donald Trump’s lawyers tell the court he can’t find an underwriter for his $454 million bond in his civil fraud case, and the Chief Justice John Roberts declines to tell Peter Navarro he doesn’t have to go to prison. Meanwhile, Trump is appealing Judge Scott McAfee’s ruling that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis can stay on his racketeering case, and Judge Aileen Cannon’s latest procedural decisions in Trump’s Florida classified-documents case are raising eyebrows.

Some important congressional primaries happening today! Happy Tuesday.

(Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images.)

Should Biden Debate?

Yesterday—IN ALL CAPS!—Donald Trump challenged Joe Biden to debate. “WE OWE IT TO OUR COUNTRY,” the former president type-shouted. “ANYTIME, ANYWHERE, ANYPLACE!”

So: Should Joe Biden agree to debate Donald Trump?

My answer is No.

But that answer is part of a broader judgment I’ve come to somewhat tentatively: Joe Biden shouldn’t even campaign against Donald Trump.

Don’t get me wrong. Joe Biden needs to defeat Donald Trump in 2024.

But the way to defeat Trump, I’m increasingly convinced, is not by engaging in a conventional campaign against him. Biden has recently been getting out and about, doing traditional campaign events around the country. Has any of that really helped him in the polls? I don’t think so.

And so I wonder if rather than engaging Trump as a kind of rival and equal, the way to defeat him is by pursuing a different, somewhat unorthodox, strategy.

Such a strategy would have two complementary parts.

First, Biden needs to govern as successfully as possible. And he needs to be seen to be governing as effectively and energetically as possible.

Joe Biden is the incumbent. The election is to some degree going to be a referendum on his performance as president. If the American public sees Biden governing, or fighting for sound governing policies in cases where he needs action from Congress, it would help him. Many of his policies are actually pretty popular. And those that aren’t—the border, for example—he can explain he’s working to get Congress to change.

So the public needs to see Biden governing full-time—fighting for his border bill and for aid to Ukraine, implementing a new, tough but sensible policy toward China, keeping the economy on track and reducing drug and housing costs, and appointing judges who will protect our liberties. Stories about his governing efforts—even visuals of him governing—will make the case for his re-election more convincingly than transient campaign stops in swing states.

It’s not that Biden should run some kind of cautious Rose Garden campaign. He should run an energetic Oval Office campaign.

The flip side of this strategy is that Biden should explicitly say that he’s not going to dignify Trump by campaigning against him.

Biden can point out that he enjoys campaigning, and that he did a lot of it against opponents like John McCain and Mitt Romney. He can acknowledge that he campaigned against Donald Trump in 2020, when Trump was president and Biden had to make the case to the American people as to why Trump should be replaced.

But that was all before January 6th. It was before Trump fully embraced January 6th. It was before Trump saluted the insurrectionists, promised to pardon them, and made unmistakably and forever clear his commitment to lawlessness and lies and the degradation of our democracy.

Biden can say that he simply will not dignify this man by campaigning against him. You campaign against democratic rivals. You criticize their policy views. But you don’t treat an opponent of democracy as just another candidate with different policy views. So, Biden can say: I won’t engage in conventional campaigning against him as I did against McCain and Romney. And I won’t debate him.

It’s of course terrible that one of our two major parties has nominated such a man. And Biden’s refusal to treat him as a credible alternative who needs to be debated doesn’t mean others can’t make the case against Trump. Indeed, that case needs to be made aggressively—but not by Biden.

Former Republicans and former Trump officials, former conservative judges and former Republican members of Congress, former military officials and civilian leaders, need to explain what a threat, what a danger, a Trump second term would be. They need resources and support to do that, and the Biden team can help with this behind the scenes.

But the moment Biden personally engages in the argument it becomes partisan squabbling. It becomes one politician seeking to keep his job against another who wants it. It treats this year as an ordinary political campaign, not as a national emergency. Which is what it is.

So Biden shouldn’t debate Trump. He shouldn’t acknowledge Trump. He shouldn’t campaign against Trump. He should ignore Trump. He should govern as well as possible. He should explain to the American people what he would do in a second term. And he should trust that the American people, when presented with the plain truth about Trump by other voices that can’t be dismissed as motivated by partisanship, will reject Donald Trump. Which I think they will.

—William Kristol

Busy few days of campaigning upcoming for Biden, with stops planned in Nevada, Arizona, and Texas between today and Thursday. In Arizona, Biden will be kicking off Latinos con Biden-Harris, a new Latino outreach program; in Nevada, he’ll be spotlighting his recent legislative proposals to try to rein in rising housing costs.

Hitting Trump isn’t the point of these trips, but if Biden’s latest ad is any indication, he’s isn’t quite on the same page as what Bill’s recommending today.

Released yesterday, the 45-second spot jumps from Trump’s “bloodbath” comment over the weekend, to his “very fine people on both sides” remark in the wake of the Charlottesville white nationalist rally, to his “Proud Boys stand back and stand by” statement at a 2020 presidential debate, to his weekend salute to the “horribly and unfairly treated January 6th hostages.”

You can watch the spot here.

Biden’s Rafah Tightrope

Israel’s war against Hamas has worked from north to south in the tiny Gaza Strip over the last five months, gradually forcing more than a million refugees from the conflict to squeeze into smaller and smaller noncombat zones.

On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was forging ahead with a ground invasion of the southern city of Rafah—the last haven in Gaza both for Hamas forces and the civilian population in which they habitually shelter. Israel insists rooting out those last forces is necessary to achieve their aim of crippling Hamas; human rights advocates have warned that a ground invasion would lead to yet another massive new wave of civilian suffering and death.

The White House has opposed a ground invasion of Rafah, and on Monday they suggested they might have temporarily coaxed Netanyahu back from the brink: In a call between President Biden and Netanyahu Monday—their first in more than a month—Netanyahu agreed to send a team of Israeli officials to Washington this week to discuss the next steps for the war.

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters Monday that the Biden administration believes Israel can root out Hamas without a major ground invasion of Rafah.

“Anytime I hear an argument that says if you don’t smash into Rafah, you can’t defeat Hamas—I say that is a straw man,” Sullivan said at the White House press briefing. “Our view is there are ways for Israel to prevail in this conflict, to secure its long-term future, to end the terror threat from Gaza, and not smash into Rafah. That’s what we’re going to present in this integrated way when this team comes.”

Biden continues to walk a political tightrope on the conflict: Since Hamas’s brutal surprise attack into Israel on October 7, he has continually insisted Israel has the right to bring the terror organization to its knees in Gaza. But he’s faced blistering criticism from his left as the civilian casualties from Israel’s counterattack have mounted, and his administration has increasingly leaned into the rhetorical suggestion that, if they were calling the tactical shots, they’d be working a little harder to minimize Palestinian death. They’ve also increasingly pushed for an at-least-temporary ceasefire—although they’ve continued to assert that the chief obstacle to such an arrangement is still the recalcitrance of Hamas, which is still holding some of those taken in the October 7 terror attack as hostages.

“If Hamas just handed over the elderly, the women, and the wounded,” Sullivan said yesterday, “tomorrow there would be a six-week ceasefire.”

—Andrew Egger

Catching up . . .

The most important Senate primary of the year is just one of today’s elections: Politico
Potential 2024 candidates keep saying no, but No Labels is pressing forward anyway: NBC News
Trump says Jews who support Democrats “hate Israel” and “their religion”: New York Times
Elon Musk aligns with Trump in anti-Biden crusade: Axios
Medication abortions rose in year after Dobbs decision, report finds: NBC News

Quick Hits

1. What Cannon’s Up To

Over at the Daily Beast, Jose Pagliery breaks down an eye-popping procedural move from Judge Aileen Cannon in Trump’s Florida classified documents case:

The MAGA-friendly federal judge who keeps siding with Donald Trump in his Mar-a-Lago classified records case has forced prosecutors to make a stark choice: allow jurors to see a huge trove of national secrets or let him go.
U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon’s ultimatum Monday night came as a surprise twist in what could have been a simple order; one merely asking federal prosecutors and Trump’s lawyers for proposed jury instructions at the upcoming trial.
But as she has done repeatedly, Cannon used this otherwise innocuous legal step as yet another way to swing the case wildly in favor of the man who appointed her while he was president.
Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith must now choose whether to allow jurors at the upcoming criminal trial to peruse the many classified records found at the former president’s South Florida mansion or give jurors instructions that would effectively order them to acquit him.
Alternatively, Smith could appeal to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, where more experienced judges have already overturned Cannon and reined her in. But doing that will only further delay a trial that’s at least three months behind schedule, entirely by the judge’s own design.

Read the whole thing.

2. My Kingdom for $454 Million

The Wall Street Journal has a helpful video breaking down the trap Trump is in with regard to his $454 million civil fraud judgment. He wants to appeal the ruling, but has to get financing for the amount of the judgment in the form of a bond before he can do so. So far, he’s striking out: