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Biden's Dilemma: Navigating Trump's No-holds-barred Style

Associated Press

   John Kerry got "Swift Boated" in 2004. For Hillary Clinton in 2016, it
   was her "damn emails." Remembering those failed Democratic presidential
   campaigns, Joe Biden is determined not to get "Ukrained" in 2020.

   Since a whistleblower report last week revealed that President Donald
   Trump asked Ukrainian officials to investigate Biden, the former vice
   president has struck an aggressive tone.

   He has told supporters that he would beat Trump "like a drum" in a
   general election and that the Republican president is scared of that
   possibility. Biden has demanded that reporters "ask the right
   questions" and accused Trump of trying to "hijack" the campaign with
   unfounded assertions that Biden and his son Hunter had corrupt dealings
   in Ukrainian business and politics.

   Biden has built his campaign around the idea that he can return
   Washington to a more stable pre-Trump era. But Biden's ability to win
   will turn on his ability to navigate the turbulent, no-holds-barred
   vortex that Trump has imposed on American politics with his Twitter
   megaphone, deep well of campaign cash and phalanx of surrogates.

   And while many Democratic strategists and Biden supporters give him
   plaudits for pushback, there remain some worries about how the
   storyline might affect Biden's tenuous front-runner status.

   "It's really a no-win situation," said Karen Finney, an adviser to
   Clinton in 2016, when the former secretary of state was besieged with
   media scrutiny and Trump criticism over her use of a private email
   server when she ran the State Department.

   Finney credited the Biden campaign for "working the refs" by sending
   detailed memos to the media explaining the timeline of Hunter Biden's
   service on a Ukrainian energy company board and Joe Biden's involvement
   in Ukraine as vice president and for pressuring television executives
   not to give a platform to Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal
   attorney.

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