 The general election is in full swing and Joe Biden and Donald Trump are already exchanging insults through various annoying political television advertisements. And I will just say that trying to analyze this objectively speaking, based on what I'm seeing, Joe Biden is off to a very bad start. And I will say that making predictions at this point in time, when a lot can change between now and November, I think that's not very useful because COVID-19 has dramatically changed the 2020 election. This is an entirely different election now than it was six months ago, right? In the same way that Brexit changed the 2019 UK election, COVID-19 has transformed the 2020 US general election. And the individual who I think is going to do the best is the one who delivers a vision for America, a concise, simple vision that just says we're going to get back to normal. And, you know, we make fun of Democrats on Twitter because we say that vote balloon a matter who is basically MAGA for liberals. But that's actually, I think, a true statement in this instance. Whoever can promise to get Americans through this pandemic and make sure that we minimize suffering both economically and from the standpoint of health, that person who can convince people that things will return to normal, that's going to be the winner ultimately. And Joe Biden is off to a bad start because you can already see the type of election that he's going to run. So he's not very good at controlling the narrative. And Donald Trump has that incumbent advantage in the sense that he has the bully pulpit at his advantage, right? He tweets and it's a 24-hour news story, whatever he says. So Joe Biden, he's got to work extra hard to make sure that his message is out there. And already I see him failing, like Donald Trump is holding daily press briefings whereas Joe Biden is nowhere to be seen. Like if I'm Joe Biden's team, I'm trotting him out every single day so he can do a follow-up to Donald Trump's COVID-19 press briefing because it doesn't matter what Joe Biden is saying, the fact that he's there in and of itself is valuable. And the thing about Joe Biden's team is that what they're doing is they're allowing Donald Trump to craft the narrative and then they respond and debate an issue on Donald Trump's terms, which is a recipe for disaster. It's exactly what Hillary Clinton did. It embarrassed Elizabeth Warren, remember her DNA test. Sometimes you have to acknowledge that you lost a particular battle. You move on and you always try to have Donald Trump on the ropes. Like if you are a challenger going up against an incumbent, your number one goal is to discredit that individual. Call out their failures. You have no shortage of failings of Donald Trump. You know, throughout his four years in office, he's been a disaster. But just these last couple of months with his handling of COVID-19, there's no shortage of Donald Trump's failures. So Joe Biden has a lot of tools at his disposal. The question is, will he use them? Now, I'm not saying that he should just basically try to go with this high and mighty response where he ignores and sidesteps all criticisms that Donald Trump throws at him, but I'm going to go through a couple of examples here and I want to show you where I think he could improve. So the first thing that we all knew Republicans would hit Joe Biden on was his obvious cognitive decline. Tucker Carlson talked about this, I think, the day of or day after Bernie Sanders dropped out and Donald Trump just tweeted out this joke ad and things like this are going to be very, very effective. Take a look. Not another commercial. So that is very effective. It's effective because it's true and it shows that Joe Biden is very obviously in cognitive decline. But on top of that, people see this as, oh, Donald Trump is just like you and I. We joke about people, we poke fun at our friends once in a while, so Donald Trump is just kind of doing the same thing, albeit to Joe Biden, his opponent. So this is funny, he's just like you and I. So I mean, if you're Joe Biden, I don't want to suggest that if I'm on his team, we'd be responding to every single attack. But I mean, if you have a president just go after your number one vulnerability and everyone's going to talk about this now for a week. The news is going to report on this. What do you do? Well, you don't necessarily address your own cognitive decline, but you call out Donald Trump's cognitive decline as well. I mean, if I'm on Joe Biden's team, we're putting together a montage of all of Donald Trump's incoherent statements, you know, raking the forest floors, big water. I'm the chosen one. Why can't we new hurricanes? Why can't we let COVID-19 wash over Americans? We're playing all of the greatest hits and we're going to be the ones who are talking about mental fitness, but not on Donald Trump's terms, on our terms. We're going to force Donald Trump to prove that he's the one that's competent. We're not going to be the ones who are playing defense all election. And that's what you really want to do. If you're the challenger, you've got to have the incumbent on the ropes. You've got to put him in a position to where Donald Trump is playing offense because I think that's relatively easy to do. He's the incumbent president. His record is terrible. So use that to your advantage. Right? Make sure that we're talking about Donald Trump's inability to govern because he's not mentally fit. Don't make this about you. Don't let him make this about you. But that's just one example. And I don't know what the response to be fair will be to this. And I get that this is basically the Spider-Man pointing at Spider-Man meme in action. But if you want to win, you can't allow this to be the narrative. You've got to prove, OK, you know what? Sure, I'm in cognitive decline. You don't have to say that. But so is Donald Trump. No, you make that your strategy with regard to this issue. But let me show you why I think Joe Biden's team just doesn't have the correct strategy. So Donald Trump put out an attack ad against him and COVID-19 and China. And I'm going to tell you what I think the response should be followed with Joe Biden's actual response, which I think is not very persuasive. Ready to go? This is a crisis. This is no time for Donald Trump's record of hysterical xenophobia. Biden's son inked a billion-dollar deal with a subsidiary at the Bank of China. China is going to eat our lunch. Come on, man. They're not bad folks, folks. Since the outbreak, the Communist Party has been mobilizing overseas organizations to buy local supplies and send them to China. And it is in our self-interest that China continue to prosper. But a beautiful history we wrote together. Vending all travel will not stop. The president is right. The travel restriction on China is every public health official we've talked to who said bought the country time. That was a very smart move right there. There's hierarchical xenophobia. xenophobia. I complimented him on dealing with China. I'm not going nuts. Okay. So if I'm working for Joe Biden and I actually want to win, not convinced all Democrats want to win, but if I do want to win, what do I do? Because that's a very effective political ad. He, you know, hit Joe Biden for Hunter Biden's corruption. He played the clip of Dr. Fauci praising him, who is a very trusted figure in American politics right now. So what do you do in this instance? Because that's an ad that while I don't necessarily think it's going to broaden Donald Trump's coalition, Donald Trump doesn't necessarily have to win over more voters. Republicans win if turnout on the other side is low. So the thing that Joe Biden has to do in response to this is he can't just be reactive. He has to be proactive. Now, what do I mean by that? So obviously we attacked Donald Trump back. We hit him for his numerous failings. We call out the fact that he asked his own advisors why we can't just let COVID-19 wash over Americans, which would kill them. We call out the fact that he failed to take action. I think that's important. But you have to make the attack and then you move on quickly. You tell people exactly what you're going to do very simply to get their lives back to what it was before COVID-19. Basically, every other issue has been brushed aside. You know, healthcare education, people right now are most affected by COVID-19. And whoever is going to win this election, I think, will be able to prove that they're better off post pandemic with that individual. So if I'm Joe Biden, I'm saying these are all of Donald Trump's failings, but here's where we're going to turn things around. I'm going to make sure that you're protected from COVID-19. But on top of that, we're going to protect you economically speaking. So I gave Nancy Pelosi legislation that I want her to pass in the House. And if you deliver me a Democratic Senate, if you deliver us the White House on day number one, I'm signing that into law. And here's what that includes. Extended universal basic income of $2,000 every single month for the duration of this pandemic. On top of that, what we're going to do is extend unemployment benefits. We're going to expand our social safety net. We're going to spend in the economy. And we know that a lot of these jobs that are lost currently, they're not coming back. So we're going to have a federal jobs program that puts Americans back to work. So that way, if you lost your job specifically during this pandemic, you are going to have the benefit of getting a job from the government until you can find something back in the private sector, if that's what you prefer. But we're going to make sure that coming out of COVID-19 in this pandemic, you're as good, if not better off than you were before going into it. Because certainly before this pandemic, things weren't PGQ in America, but I'm going to make sure that we don't do worse off. Like that's the message. You simplify that as much as you can, wrap it in a nice little package, and you make Americans know that you're the person who is going to save them from this pandemic. And again, looking back to the 2019 election in the UK, part of the reason why Jeremy Corbyn lost to Boris Johnson is because Boris Johnson's message was simple, get Brexit done. That's what people wanted. And the problem is that Jeremy Corbyn, he didn't really have strong messaging here. He tried to play both sides and ride the fence. And I think that if you have a type of get us through COVID-19 message or back to normal message, even if that's literally what you want it to be, that can be really effective because people right now want relief. And they're not getting that. So that's what I would have done, right? Really focus on what we're going to do for people. Not worry too much about the attacks that Donald Trump lobbed against you. But instead, Joe Biden didn't do that. He responded to Donald Trump's attacks. And he tried to outflank Trump from the right rather than actually trying to just propose at least the centrist vision. I'm not even going to say left-leaning, but at least the centrist vision of what we can do to get us back to normal. I mean, any ad related to COVID that's political has to focus on getting us back to normal, getting us out of this. This is what Joe Biden put out. We are going to need to be in your country. You have to be open. You have to be clear. We have to know what's going on. But Trump rolled over for the Chinese. He took their word for it. The president tweeted, China has been working very hard to contain the coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts in transparency. China spoke with President Xi and they're working very, very hard. And I think it's going to all work out fine. Trump praised the Chinese 15 times in January and February as the coronavirus spread across the world. It's a tough situation. I think they're doing a very good job. Are you concerned about a potential impact on the global economy? I think that China will do a very good job. Trump never got a CDC team on the ground in China. And the travel ban he brags about? Trump led in 40,000 travelers from China into America after he signed it. Not exactly airtight. Look around. 22 million Americans are out of work and we have more officially reported cases and deaths than any other country. Donald Trump left this country unprepared and unprotected for the worst public health and economic crisis in our lifetime. And now we are paying the price. All the negative ads in the world can't change the truth. That was not a good ad. And it worries me because people who already support Joe Biden, Democratic Party loyalists and operatives, they love that ad. And I get thinking that this is a good ad if you're under the impression that the way you'll win this election is by convincing enough Trump voters to flip to you. But we know that that's not how Democrats win elections. Democrats win elections when turnout is high. They have to get people out of their houses to vote for you or if we can vote by mail. But you get what I'm saying. People have to be convinced to come out to vote. Turnout has to be high or you lose. And what he did there was go tit for tat with Donald Trump, which is not a good strategy because you can't play Donald Trump's game and beat him at his own game. So, you know, in the ad that Donald Trump ran, he showed a video of Joe Biden saying that Donald Trump is xenophobic. This ad communicate. No, Joe Biden doesn't care about xenophobia. In fact, he is xenophobic. Now, rule number one in all of politics is you always have to hold your base. Being xenophobic, trying to out xenophobe Donald Trump is not going to be a winning strategy because you're just going to demoralize your own base and they're going to stay home. They're going to stay home. So if you're running an ad, if you're taking any time to hit Donald Trump or COVID-19. Yes, you stayed where he failed. Joe Biden did that and moved on. But you have to tell people that you're going to save them from this pandemic. You can't just say, I would have been more xenophobic than Donald Trump. That does nothing to improve our lives at a very concrete level. And the fact that he doesn't get that, it's worrisome. Now, again, I don't I don't want to say that, you know, I should be making predictions because a lot can change between now and November. And maybe Joe Biden doesn't take any of my advice. Maybe his strategy is the same as it is and he still wins. COVID shaped up the selection. This is a very different game now. But with that being said, I think that he can improve his odds if he actually reads the room and acknowledges what's happening. Republicans just hit Nancy Pelosi with a really, really powerful ad. Trump's campaign manager hit her after she went on some late show and was boasting about all of the ice cream she stocked up on. On her giant fridges and showed how out of touch she is because people are hurting. That messaging is exactly what Joe Biden should be doing. You should never be outflanked by a Republican from the left and you should have learned this from 2016. You're never going to be perceived by the general electorate as being more right-wing than Donald Trump. But what you can do is try to convince people that you are going to lead them through this crisis and that you are concerned with the needs of the American people and you're not just worried. You know exactly what those needs are because you are in constant contact with people. But what we're seeing so far, if this is any indication of the trajectory that Joe Biden will continue on, I don't think he's going to do well. I don't think he's going to do well. I think he'll lose. So he's got to change it. Now again, I'm very reluctant to predict because I think that COVID-19 has changed the calculus here. But with that being said is if people are going to make that change from Donald Trump to Joe Biden, it's not going to happen by flipping Trump voters. It's going to happen by getting them to come out and vote against the status quo, which is Donald Trump. They have to believe that you're going to improve their lives. And you do that by telling them how you're going to improve their lives and understanding their suffering. Right now, the future looks grim. The current situation is abysmal, but we can't necessarily see the light at the end of the tunnel for tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, next week, next month. People are really terrified right now. So what we need is leadership. And we're not getting that. I mean, Joe Biden's team is being very one-dimensional in their approach to this. And I think it's going to backfire if they don't learn from all the mistakes that Hillary Clinton made in 2016. Like, I think that they believe that it's important to go to Wisconsin. It's important to campaign in the Rust Belt and hold white working class voters, you know, suburbanites, the Karens of the world. But you're still not going to win unless people believe they're going to be better off with you than Donald Trump. Because if Joe Biden wins, that means people think that we have to change the direction of the country. Even if he said business is going to be the same as usual, people oftentimes vote for the incumbent, not necessarily because they like the incumbent, but because voters are risk averse, right? They don't like to take risks. And if they just stick with what they know, which is the person who's in charge, they usually feel safer with that. So you've got to convince them that this is not the safe option. It's actually the riskier option. What I see so far is just it's like there's an iceberg dead ahead and we're heading straight towards it on the Joe Biden Democratic Titanic. And as we're headed towards that iceberg, you know, it's difficult to assess what's going to kill people on board first, the iceberg itself, or the fact that there's already holes in the ship and it's going down. So I just, I don't know. But what I do know is that what I'm seeing from Joe Biden working class Joe is that he's painfully out of touch. And if he actually cares about beating Donald Trump, again, not convinced that he is, he's got to change it up. It's simple. This is not rocket science. It's very simple. Tell them their lives are going to be better off with you as president. You're going to get them through COVID-19 and you can win. If you don't do that, people are going to opt for the same thing. And maybe they vote for Donald Trump or maybe they just stay home. But if you don't get them out to vote for you, you lose. Period. End of story.