Flush with cash, Joe Biden hammers Trump on health care and coronavirus

One of the things that raising $364.5 million in one month means for a presidential campaign is that it can afford to broaden its message across the airwaves and spend resources trying to reach voters who might not be following the race especially closely. 

For most presidential campaigns, the final weeks of the race would be spent mobilizing their supporters to get out and vote. But the truncated 2020 campaign timeline, and Biden’s avalanche of cash, mean the Biden camp can afford to go on offense against Trump right up until Election Day.

This is the thinking behind new ads the Biden campaign announced on Wednesday morning, along with an enormous ad budget this week: $65 million. The Biden campaign has paid ads up in 10 key battlegrounds: Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Nebraska, and Minnesota. 

Notably, only two of the 10 states, Minnesota and Nevada, were won by Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016. Defending two states while going after eight states won by your opponent is practically the definition of an offensive campaign map.

The four new ads released Wednesday all focus on health care, with the two longest ads focused on the Trump administration’s effort to dismantle Obamacare.

“If Donald Trump gets rid of our health care law, my son won’t be protected,” says the mother of a sick child in one of the ads. “We would have to making some tough decisions about what medications we can afford. We need a president who will protect our health care and that’s Joe Biden.”

To put the Biden ad spending in perspective, last week the Biden campaign spent $31.1 million on TV and radio ads. The Trump campaign spent $9.2 million on TV and radio ads in the same week, according to NBC News. 

Earlier this week, the Trump campaign announced it was increasing its TV advertising by 50%, which would mean spending about $14 million. 

At this rate, Biden’s $65 million of ads this week will exceed the Trump campaign’s ad spending by a 4-1 margin. 

A Trump campaign spokeswoman did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the disparity between the two campaigns’ weekly advertising budgets.

Watch Biden’s new health care ad below.

Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/16/joe-biden-hammers-trump-on-health-care-and-coronavirus.html