We’re just about a year from the next presidential election, and the Biden campaign thinks it has the perfect formula for keeping the White House.
I’m here to tell you it won’t work.
The Associated Press obtained a strategy memo from the Biden campaign. In it, Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez already concedes that the general election “will be very close,” which itself is a stunning admission from Team Biden, especially since, as the memo claims, “the message Joe Biden ran on in 2020 remains popular with voters and central to this campaign."
“The president and vice president have a strong message that resonates with voters, a clear contrast with whoever the MAGA Republican Party nominates,” Rodriguez wrote in the strategy memo. “This campaign will win by doing the work and ignoring the outside chatter — just like we did in 2020.”
Recent national polls have shown that a Trump vs. Biden rematch will, in fact, be close. However, polls of battleground states that will ultimately decide the election have favored Donald Trump. Joe Biden's approval ratings have been underwater since August 2021, and his incompetence has resulted in him losing the advantage on most issues (everything from the economy to foreign relations) to Trump and the Republicans, Consequently, there is increasing pressure from within his own for him to consider withdrawing from the race.
This strategy memo sounds more like a false flag than a serious dossier on how the campaign intends to win in 2024. According to Rodriguez, "our early research shows the president’s message of building on our progress to finish the job remains a winning one for mobilizing our base and persuading undecided voters."
That’s insanity. A recent Gallup poll found that Biden’s approval rating among independents has fallen to 35%. He previously had a 61% approval rating with independents at the start of his term. These are the voters who are ultimately going to decide the 2024 election, and Biden has given them virtually no reason to vote for him. Meanwhile, Biden can’t, as the memo says, ignore the “outside chatter” because he’s the incumbent. The 2024 election is, in every sense, a referendum on the job he’s done, and, based on this memo, it seems that the Biden campaign doesn’t acknowledge that reality, because between crippling inflation, the border crisis, and pretty much everything in between, Americans aren’t happy. Polls show that Biden is bleeding support from key constituencies, including nonwhite voters and young people. Meanwhile, the Israel-Hamas war isn’t helping voter perceptions of him, and his public support of Israel has caused a major decline in approval from within his own party.
In 2020, Joe Biden could make the election about Trump, but making that contrast in 2024 won’t work because people will remember that, as a nation, under Trump, we were more prosperous and the world was safer.
