The right has spent tens of billions attacking Joe Biden – and of course, it’s working

Yes, we must take the polls seriously because some of the world's most powerful forces will make sure this race is a coin flip.

That anyone would consider voting for Donald Trump is depressing. That he’s ahead or ahead within the margin of error in the critical battleground states, at least in one highly rated poll, can be paralyzing. And that’s precisely what the right is hoping you will feel.

A few things should go without saying. 

Joe Biden is only a great president if you compare him to every other president of our lifetime, especially the one running against him. You can dislike or even hate some of his policies or how he’s carried them out. And you should because you’re an adult. 

But you have to be honest enough to admit that the man running against him is far worse when it comes to every single policy. But this isn't just about who's worse. Biden is the best president of our lifetime regarding job creation, labor rights, judicial appointments, infrastructure investment, student loan forgiveness, and climate change. And it’s not particularly close.

And his opponent is a literal rapist who wants to destroy our democracy. And we know this because he’s already tried—both rape, apparently dozens of times, and stealing the presidency. He was also terrible at every aspect of the job, except rigging the judiciary and saying, “Someone should invent a Covid vaccine.”

We’ve said it before:

You don’t even need to pretend these two men are comparable in any way. Biden is a standard 20th-century American public servant imbued with all the imperfections that come with that. Trump is the worst president in American history. A demagogue with dictatorial aspirations. A fraud whose greatest accomplishment was avoiding any indictments for his first 76 years.

So, how did we get to this point? How has the choice between a vanilla cone and a vomit and feces smoothie become a toss-up leaning toward the vomit and feces smoothie?

First of all, we forget what Trump is good at, and that makes sense because he’s despicable, and our brains don’t want to cede him anything. But like Elon Musk, he’s good at conning people, exploiting weaknesses in society, and appealing to masculine fantasies of domination.

But he’s not so good at this. He’s never broken 47% in an election. And he would have no chance of ever being president if the electoral college weren’t entirely rigged to keep him competitive, though he gets millions of votes fewer than his opponents. 

That’s why we must remember two other things that are going on that rarely get mentioned.

1. The right has spent tens of billions of dollars trying to destroy Joe Biden and democracy.
There’s a lot of talk about how all his legal woes and costs have depleted Trump’s campaign. This point misses that Trump’s campaign is mainly irrelevant compared to the ever-present right-wing media machine that works in coordination with the “intellectuals” behind Project 2025 to destroy the Democratic party and, recently, democracy in general. Fox News is the flagship of this armada. This billion-dollar business motivates and shifts thousands of right-wing media personalities on AM radio, podcasts, and blogs by having them all tournament for whoever can come up with the best ways to batter common decency and the left.

We cannot ignore how the right-wing media landscape has rapidly expanded and gotten worse over the last two years. When Elon Musk bought Twitter with about $13 billion of his own money loaned to himself in the kind of tax dodge he’s desperate to keep and to quote me again, it was clear:

Elon’s goal is to empower right-wingers and weaken democracy everywhere – especially in the United States. If you ever wonder what he will do next with Twitter, just remember that.

We cannot underestimate the damage Elon has done by wrecking the utility of Twitter for journalists and activists while normalizing neo-Nazism and fascism and allowing the other major social media platforms to back off of any responsible minimal levels of moderation.

2. There’s a wildly successful ongoing attack on our democracy that aims to drive Joe Biden out of power.
Putin wants Biden out not just because he favors Trump and wants the US to stop Ukraine. But because his goal has always been to turn America against itself and destroy its role as the world’s (very imperfect) champion of democracy and human rights. And electing Trump as a dictator would make that goal all but accomplished.

So what can we do about it? Because that’s what earlyworm is all about.

Well, we ruthlessly work on building those Reverse Coattails that could save democracy.

You can join Run for Something’s call Wednesday night to find out how fighting the book banners could help defeat Trump.

You can also help us Flip Arizona.

Or you can help spread the word about how people can help as they begin to tune into this election.

We also need to try to tell the story of the attack on our democracy that the press has essentially decided to ignore for fear Trump will say, “Russia! Russia! Russia!” again, mainly because no one else will. That’s why we’re helping launch Ball of Thread, the podcast in which Marcy Wheeler unwinds the true story of the attack on democracy that is bringing the United States to the brink of fascism. You can find out more about this here.

But we can’t ignore polls or question them away due to some genuinely freaky inconsistencies or absurdities in the crosstabs. We have a responsibility to be clear about the danger we face to our democracy and the massive forces aligned to make sure that this race will never be more than a toss-up. 

People are desperate for the truth. And that desperation can be filled by patriots who make the case for multiracial democracy or by slithering con men sidling up to someone who’d put a noose on his closest ally for just the chance to grasp the power he needs to survive.