Trump licks his chops as Biden veers left on sanctuary cities, fracking

At Sunday night’s debate, Bernie Sanders scoffed at Joe Biden’s nearly $2 trillion — with a “t” — plan to combat climate change.

“What Joe is saying is nowhere near enough,” Sanders said, dismissing Biden as an incrementalist.

Republicans could barely contain their glee. To them, Biden’s pronouncements on a range of issues — from energy to immigration to health care — provided a trove of on-camera material to paint him as a radical in moderate’s clothing in the general election. Though Biden drew praise for a strong debate performance, his commitments underscored the line he’s trying to straddle between pragmatism and progressivism as he works to unite the party as the likely Democratic nominee.

Republicans think his positioning will be particularly harmful in the Rust Belt states that decided the 2016 election, and where Biden is seen as a particular threat to Trump.

“He effectively called for open borders — no deportations — and has already raised his hand for taxpayer-funded health care for illegals,” Scott Jennings, a former political aide in the George W. Bush White House, said of Biden’s leftward drift. “So, at the same time he’s called for a ban on fracking, he’s opening up America to a flood of illegal immigration. I’m sure this will fly in Pennsylvania and the rest of the upper Midwest. This issue — not to mention the tax increases to pay for abortions — will hurt badly in rural areas and in the big Senate races.”

A Trump campaign aide told POLITICO on Monday that Biden had “openly declared war” on traditional energy sources, effectively pledging “a death sentence for the oil and natural gas industries.”

Biden called for an end to new fracking (his staff later clarified he only meant on federal land). He said he’d endeavor to take millions of cars off the road, convert gas-powered fleets to clean-burning and end drilling on federal lands. He’d haul the world’s 100 biggest polluters before the U.S. in his first 100 days and make them pay an economic price. He’d convene the hemisphere to provide tens of billions for Brazil to stop burning the Amazon.

And that was on the environment alone.

From immigration to social issues to health care, Republicans insist Biden is harming himself in battleground states where his appeal to centrist Democrats has long been viewed as an unmitigated asset.

In a statement following the debate, Trump’s campaign even tried to yoke Biden to Sanders on health care, arguing that both offer “a complete government takeover” of the system.

The warning shots at Biden come as Trump is message-testing ways to drive up excitement among his restive base while struggling with the enormous responsibilities of managing the coronavirus pandemic. Biden aides and allies view charges that he’s making himself vulnerable to Trump as fanciful.

A Biden campaign official rejected the thinking outright, saying Trump will have to defend his record of supporting efforts in the courts to strip essential health coverage from millions. The Biden aide pointed to Trump’s caging of immigrant children and demonization of immigrants as antithetical to America’s values and his ignorance of the climate emergency as costing the U.S. when it should be pursuing green jobs.

“These guys are going to have a tough time turning Joe Biden into an extremist liberal in this environment. In that context, Sanders served as a great foil for Biden,” said Tim Miller, a former adviser to Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign, who voted for Biden in California’s March 3 primary. “Biden spent 30 minutes waving off Sanders’ claims that a trillion-dollar climate change plan is not enough — this is how you make a bold agenda look pretty centrist.”

Trump’s campaign has signaled in recent days that it will try numerous approaches to confronting Biden — from questioning his mental acuity to focusing on what they view as his out-of-step liberalism. Dan Pfeiffer, the former Barack Obama adviser, dismissed the Republican strategy as reeking of desperation for a Trump campaign that had been planning to run against Sanders. The Vermont senator had appeared ascendant leading into Super Tuesday.

“Trump already has the voters driven primarily by immigration,” Pfeiffer said, “so it’s about base maintenance as opposed to growing his vote share to a number sufficient to win.”

“Several strategies,” he added, “is the same as no strategy.”

For months, Biden has unveiled far-reaching plans that would make him a more progressive nominee than Hillary Clinton or his 2008 running mate, former President Barack Obama. Yet Biden has continued with his move left on past statements and policies relating to immigration, abortion, criminal justice and entitlement programs like Social Security.

Now, poised to wrap up the nomination, he has grasped for even more olive branches as part of a broader effort to unify Democrats. Biden, who leads Trump in several battleground polls, has endorsed former rival Elizabeth Warren’s sweeping bankruptcy plan to strike through portions of a law that they once fought over. Ahead of Sunday’s debate, he gave his blessing to a Sanders-inspired plan to make college tuition free for students whose families earn less than $125,000 annually. The debate offered him yet another chance to appeal to progressives.

Biden pledged that under his administration only felons would be deported in his first 100 days, saying he’d focus on uniting families. “It’s about making sure that we can both be a nation of immigrants as well as a nation that is decent, he said. Biden also said undocumented immigrants arrested by local police should not be turned over to federal immigration authorities, after opposing sanctuary cities as a presidential candidate in 2007.

He again distanced himself from voting for the Hyde Amendment, which banned federal funding for the majority of abortions. Biden also restated his policy on public lands and waters, including prohibiting permitting of oil and gas drilling.

Trump’s campaign has focused intently on Biden’s environmental and immigration remarks.

“Fossil fuel industries employ 10 million Americans and he would yank the jobs out from under all of them. His plan would also drive heating and cooling bills through the roof,” said Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for Trump’s reelection campaign.

Murtaugh said Biden’s plan to halt deportations would leave enormous numbers of other criminals in the U.S. who continue to pose a threat to public safety. And Biden’s position on locals not cooperating with federal immigration officials would “effectively turn the entire United States into a sanctuary country and tell the world that our borders are open,” he said.

In a Monday email, America Rising, the Republican opposition outfit, cited a Wall Street Journal infographic that tallied up Biden’s agenda as costing more than twice as much as Clinton’s, with his proposed taxes totaling three times as much as the Democratic nominee four years ago. The message: Biden and Sanders “will be virtually indistinguishable.”

“As we have said over and over, the eventual Democrat candidate will have to adopt the agenda of the extreme left in order to become the nominee in the first place, and Joe Biden proved that last night,” Murtaugh added.