Any time Joe Biden makes a public appearance, the voters become more convinced that he is too old, too physically frail, and too cognitively impaired to handle the presidency. This is one of the biggest problems he faces as he attempts to make the case to voters that he deserves four more years. These concerns existed in 2020, but because of the pandemic, he was able to get away with campaigning from his basement.
Well, it’s 2023 now, the pandemic is over — even Biden’s administration is even willing to admit that — so he can’t exactly campaign from his basement.
Or can he?
According to a report from the New York Times, Biden’s reelection campaign strategy will, in fact, remain similar to his hide-in-the-basement strategy of 2020. He won’t travel extensively to win over the American public but instead will observe the internal divisions within the GOP and rely on the White House to highlight his accomplishments.
“President Biden has formally moved from a campaign-in-waiting to a campaign of waiting,” the New York Times explains. “Despite his heavily anticipated re-election announcement on Tuesday, Mr. Biden has no immediate plans to barnstorm the key battlegrounds. Decorative bunting is nowhere to be found, and large rallies will come later.”
Instead, Biden’s 2024 campaign strategy involves using the White House to promote his accomplishments through ceremonial events and stepping back to allow the Republican presidential primary candidates’ “dogfight” to play out.
“Biden advisers say his entry was driven more by the internal demands of constructing a presidential campaign rather than the external need to communicate with voters, which he can do from the White House, though his team has begun producing potential advertisements,” the report continues. “The Democratic National Committee has bought advertising time beginning Wednesday on MSNBC and on local stations in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, according to AdImpact, a media tracking service.”
But ultimately, staying below the radar seems to be the strategy Biden’s campaign has chosen for their decrepit candidate.
“But Mr. Biden’s campaign is hardly seeking to have him dominate the headlines. As he has traveled the country recently to promote his legislative accomplishments, the nation’s attention has often focused elsewhere, especially on the never-ending legal and political drama encircling his predecessor.”
Limiting his self-promotion to official events also leaves taxpayers on the hook for all of his travel, when such expenses would normally have to be covered by his campaign. Barack Obama employed a similar strategy in 2012 by combining campaign events with official travel, limiting the amount of money his campaign had to reimburse the taxpayers for. Whether this was a factor in Biden’s campaign strategy is unclear, but given the lack of enthusiasm for Biden, it seems likely that he won’t be raising records amount of campaign cash.
Will this strategy work? It’s debatable. In 2016, Hillary Clinton was essentially coronated as the Democrats’ nominee early on, while a large slate of Republican candidates duked it out for months in a bitter primary battle that Donald Trump ultimately won, and would go on to defeat Hillary. The bitter rivalry between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in 2008 did little to thwart the Democrats in the general election either. It’s hard to avoid the spotlight when you’re running for president and even harder to do so when you’re the sitting president. If Trump maintains his lead, the GOP primary season could end rather quickly, and Biden’s Basement 2.0 strategy won’t work because voters will ultimately expect him to wage a traditional campaign.
