Donald Trump’s well-attended rally in The Bronx last week is a “wake-up call” for President Biden and the Democrats, said ex-New York Democratic Gov. David Paterson on Sunday.
Paterson, who also previously served as chairman of the state Democratic Party, noted that a recent Siena College poll shows the former Republican president is in “striking distance to actually winning the state of New York” — also another warning sign for Team Biden and the Democratic Party’s ticket this fall.
“This is a wake-up call to the Democratic Party, who just seems to think that you can criticize what Trump did four years ago and that that will be enough,” Paterson said on 77 WABC radio’s “The Cats Roundtable” show with host John Catsimatidis.
“Or that you can try to claim that inflation isn’t as high as it is. All these little things that aren’t going to change people’s minds,” Paterson said.
Trump went into the belly of the beast — the heavily Democratic south Bronx — on Thursday night and drew thousands of supporters at the rally in Crotona Park.
“It’s a brilliant political move. You can’t argue with it,” Paterson said of Trump’s rally.
He said four years ago, Biden and the Democrats let Trump bloviate and defend his record as president during a once-in-century pandemic. Biden won.
But now Biden has to publicly defend his record.
“We may have a situation that happens in reverse,” Paterson said.
The Siena College poll released last week showed Biden leading Trump by a relatively close margin 47% to 38% — despite New York being a deep-blue state.
Ronald Reagan was the last Republican to carry New York during his 1984 re-election.
”Political advisors tell you, ‘The public, you have to treat them like geniuses.’ And the geniuses right now are trending where Trump is only 9% behind Biden in New York,” Paterson said.
“This is quite an interesting turn of events,” he said.
Meanwhile, Republican South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott — considered a potential Trump running mate for vice president — on Sunday applauded the ex-president’s aggressive outreach to minorities who largely are Democratic-leaning voters.
“So I give him a lot of credit, and [he’s] going into places where Republicans have not done before. If we’re going to win this election cycle, we must go where we’re not invited,” Scott said on CNN “State of The Union.”
“He’s not just going to the Libertarian [Party] convention. He’s also doing rallies in The Bronx. He’s doing something — what I consider a 50-state strategy. He doesn’t just want to win the votes of the American people, he’s trying to win the hearts of the American people to unite our country and start steering us towards the strongest, most powerful, prosperous future we can have,” Scott said.