Analysis: Voters got first true 2024 week with Trump on trial, Biden on the trail

Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California, a sometimes-Biden critic, said he thinks “it helps the president only to the extent that he’s talking about real issues that people care about — the price of food, the price of child care, the price of gas and what he’s doing to help lower those costs for Americans.”

“They want us to be talking about pocketbook issues. So in that sense, it gives the president opportunity to focus on what matters to people. I think we should be focused on addressing the economic issues, addressing the issues of national security, addressing the issues of having secure borders and yet being welcoming of immigrants. And also letting the legal process play out,” Khanna said.

Khanna, who last year criticized Biden and his aides for not allowing voters to “see the authentic President Biden,” said Biden’s recent polling surge is directly tied to what he detects is a recent communications strategy shift among senior White House and campaign aides. “Whoever wrote his State of the Union speech, and maybe he did himself, really did a phenomenal job,” Khanna said, citing a “recalibration” since that March 7 address to Congress.

As Trump was drawing warnings from Judge Juan Merchan multiple times for muttering as jurors were speaking or violating courtroom rules by using his phone, Biden was taking jabs at his top political opponent.

Biden told supporters at a rally Thursday in Philadelphia that Trump “already promised to be the dictator on day one — his own words — and call for — you know, he means it — and he calls for another bloodbath when he loses again.” Trump earlier this year said his first day back in the Oval Office would be dictator-like, so he could seal the U.S.-Mexico border and open domestic energy drilling beyond the record level under Biden.

Tight race in polls

Recent polls have shown a very close race, both nationally and in key swing states — with Biden narrowing Trump’s advantage in several of those battlegrounds. A recent national Emerson College poll of registered voters gave Trump a 4 percentage point lead over Biden when other candidates were added to the question, and a 3 percentage point lead in a head-to-head matchup.

A RealClearPolitics average of recent polls in seven battleground states gave Trump a lead of less than 1 point in those states — but the 45th president’s biggest lead was 4.5 percentage points in Arizona, according to the organization’s calculations.

At his stops in Pennsylvania, among the most important of a handful of swing states, the Catholic Biden continued the effort to make access to abortion a thorn in Trump’s and other Republican candidates’ collective side. And he kept up his descriptions of a second Trump term as eroding democratic norms.

“I see an America where we defend democracy not diminished,” the president said Thursday. “I see an America where we protect our freedoms, not take them away.”

Meantime, Trump was back in court on Friday.

“It’s a rigged case. And it’s a case that was put in very strongly because of politics. So instead of making Pennsylvania or Georgia or North Carolina or lots of other places today, I’m sitting in a courthouse all day long,” Trump said before the day’s proceedings began, according to a pool report. “This is going on for the week and it will go up for another four or five weeks. And it’s very unfair. And people know it’s very unfair.”