will it bring more scrutiny of obama s record to really try and pick apart biden? i think and hope they will try to challenge biden and not obama s policies. every report we ve seen says that biden has the best chance of beating trump, and that s really the only thing that matters. even if you look at the top tier five to seven candidates, they are not pulling as well against donald trump as biden s. the democrats have to be smart about this. again, we love winning the argument. i love my party, but we love winning the argument. but we don t think about the bigger picture, often times, and our debates. about winning the vote or winning the election. that s a critical error sometimes. julie: thank you very much. appreciate it. happy friday. so the president expected to make a major announcement on trade with the european union after he threatens china with a new round of tariffs. we will also take a look at july s solid jobs numbers. that s all straight ahead. got allstate.
in september to about seven to ten. politically what i look at the self and we analyze it and comment on it, but the reality is it s not going to get into serious debate and people paying attention to voters until after labor day. i do think this i do think they ve the democratic candidates have got to focus on biden and his words and his policies but not attack obama s policies. the big picture here is to beat donald trump. so they ve got to get down to one or two candidates, get laser-like focused and stop attacking each other. and learn how to attack trump during this debate. if they are going to attack obama, just give them some political love taps but get back on message with donald trump. julie: political love taps, i like that. [laughter] you think this will play to the president s advantage, or could ultimately be to whomever emerges as the democratic nominee to have gone through
head into the general election, someone who is getting under the president s skin. of course there s another school of thought that perhaps by trump going after biden, that could hasten attacks on biden from other democrats. but certainly there is a contingency within the trump campaign circle that don t want him to be making those attacks on biden. alex, we ve seen other democrats in the field go after joe biden. do you expect they ll follow the president s lead and also start to turn their attention toward warren? you know, it s going to be interesting to watch these debates that are coming up at the end of the month. obviously there s going to be a lot of focus on biden, because he gives democratic candidates an opportunity to sort of contrast themselves with him and to sort of present themselves in sort of a more liberal light, which of course is where the democratic primary electorate is. if you see elizabeth warren continue to gain traction, which we ve seen her do in a numbe
to go after president trump. it positions him as the front-runner. it acts as though this is the general election. it also works, according to all of our reporting, for president trump to have joe biden because as maggie haberman and kaitlan collins have pointed out, he likes having a foe. in fact, he needs a foe to stay focused on his own campaign. no doubt, it works for both of them to be in this mode. there are some trump advisers that felt that the president s focus on biden might be elevating biden, helping him, but i think the value of having him engaged and having him have a foil and getting him focused on the year and a half battle to come for his re-election may outweigh some of those concerns. listen, joe biden, as you noted, wants to pretend that there s not a democratic primary taking place or better yet, he wants to be so focused on president trump so he can go to democratic primary voters and say see, i am
get attention. raise money, get to policy later. buttigieg has said before he got into this race that he feels that has been a failing on the part of the democratic party. that they don t focus enough on narrative. he s really trying to do that, kimberly, as jake points out. today he is going to be really making a counterpoint to president trump. he s going to try to make that case. can he do that at this stage in the game without also focusing on biden. everyone is going to be focused on trump, but does he also need to focus on biden who is the frontrunner in this case. he has to focus on donald trump, everyone does. if you talk to democratic voters who they are looking for in a candidate is somebody who can beat donald trump. he has to show that he can do that and talk about policy, too. i think policy is really resonating among voters. that s why you see folks like elizabeth warren growing and getting that name recognition and uv mooing forward. foreign policy is hard. most peop