Joe Biden was wrapping up his annual State of the Union speech to Congress on Thursday night when he decided to take his final dig of the evening at Donald Trump.
“My lifetime has taught me to embrace freedom and democracy . . . to respect everyone,” Biden said. “Some other people my age,” he added, in a thinly veiled reference to the former president only four years his junior, “see a different story — an American story of resentment, revenge, and retribution”.
The US president and his top aides believe that by November 5, general election day in America, voters across the country will see that same contrast and hand him, and not his predecessor, a second term in the White House.
Biden’s ebullient speech was warmly received by Democrats. But it could not disguise that with eight months to go, his approval ratings are languishing at the lowest levels of his presidency — and his capacity to pull off a second consecutive winning campaign against Trump is far from certain.
At best, Biden is facing an excruciatingly close race — even against a divisive predecessor who is alienating moderate and swing voters across the country and is saddled with 91 criminal charges, including for his role in the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
The US president has his own problems which could undercut his chances. These include doubts about his physical and mental fitness for office at the age of 81; a backlash from the left over America’s support for Israel; fears about immigration at the southern border; and stubbornly persistent gloom over inflation even as price gains have eased.
Some Democrats worry that Biden is actually behind: according to the Realclearpolitics.com polling average, he trails Trump by 1.8 percentage points in a head-to-head match up nationally, while his approval rating is languishing below 40 per cent.
“The bad news is if the election were held today, he’d lose,” says Paul Begala, a Democratic strategist who advised former president Bill Clinton. “The good news is that it is not being held for 243 days.” But does Biden have the right strategy — and political skills — to turn the tide?
The White House had always expected Trump to win the Republican primary contest, even months ago when rivals like Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, and Nikki Haley, the former UN ambassador, were still in contention.
In many ways, a Trump victory had been the ideal scenario for Democrats, compared with a more youthful Republican candidate with broader appeal than the belligerent former president.
But even so, it has been striking for Democrats to see how rapidly Trump was able to quash his Republican opponents. After Haley dropped out following the Super Tuesday primaries this week, Trump is now poised to lock up his party’s presidential nomination for the third consecutive time — and earlier in the process than he did in 2016.
Conservative voters remain extremely devoted to him and he has dominated state after state with little suspense, making him, on paper, a formidable opponent.
Trump also has near unanimous support among Republicans on Capitol Hill — and is placing his allies in charge of the Republican National Committee, allowing him to keep his grip on the party apparatus without much dissent.
“Trump begins this general election in the strongest shape of his political career,” Amy Walter, the editor-in-chief at the influential Cook Political Report in Washington, wrote in a note this week, citing the former president’s “unified and enthusiastic base”.
Meanwhile, the concern among some Democrats is that Biden’s electoral coalition has splintered and weakened over the course of the past year — and will have to be patched up. Some polling has shown that Biden has been struggling to maintain the backing of younger voters, as well as non-college educated Black and Hispanic male votes.
1.8Number of percentage points that Biden trails Trump, according to polling average
“Trump’s coalition is smaller but it is impregnable, Biden’s is broader but it’s much more fragile,” says Begala. Making matters more difficult for Biden is the fact that there is more competition from third party candidates this year than in 2020.
The well-funded political scion Robert F Kennedy Jr, the Green party’s Jill Stein, and progressive activist Cornel West are still in the mix, with the potential to attract protest votes. No Labels, a prominent political organisation, has also threatened to push a so-called “unity ticket” with a Republican presidential nominee and a Democratic running mate.
If multiple candidates are on the ballot, Trump’s lead in the polling average over Biden increases further. “The biggest threat for me is the third parties,” says Democratic strategist Joe Trippi, who fears additional candidates will fracture the anti-Trump vote. “If it is an up and down vote on Biden, there are far more pro-democracy people who do not want Trump.”
The Biden campaign, which is based in Wilmington, Delaware, is adamant that the president’s own weaknesses are being overblown while Trump’s vulnerabilities are far greater, particularly in suburban areas where Haley performed more strongly during the primary contests.
Biden also has a fundraising edge over Trump which will allow him to flood the swing states with early ads, and has been buoyed by a series of federal, state and local elections across the country in which Democrats have been outperforming Republicans.
“Joe Biden has made it his mission to reach voters where they are and bridge our divides, while Donald Trump – saddled with a losing agenda and a cash-strapped operation – is actively alienating decisive voters,” Jen O’Malley Dillon, the Biden campaign chair, said on Friday.
Exit polls showing that a significant chunk of Haley voters would not back Trump in a general election have boosted the Biden campaign’s belief that the former president remains a toxic candidate with a hard ceiling of support.
“[Trump] strikes voters as extremely dangerous,” says Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster at Hart Research, who predicts Biden will pick up more support as the race continues. “A lot of voters [are rethinking] whether Trump can be trusted with another term.”
During the past few months, Biden has been attacking Trump far more openly, and frequently, than incumbent presidents typically do so far out from election day.
In Thursday’s annual address, Biden did not refer to Trump by name but lashed out at his “predecessor” for his unwillingness to help Ukraine in its defence against Russia, his support for a Supreme Court ruling that limited abortion rights, and his push to derail a bipartisan immigration deal that might have eased the situation at the southern border with Mexico.
“He feels it would be a political win for me and a political loser for him,” Biden said, about the border agreement. “It’s not about him or me. It would be a winner for America!”
Begala says that feisty spirit is what Biden needs during the campaign, far more than simply touting his accomplishments. “I believe he has made that turn away from bragging and towards bashing — he’s saying Trump is weak, soft, dumb and unpatriotic — that’s music to my ears.”
Even if he does pivot to the offensive, polls show Biden has a lot of ground to make up on key issues.
Despite the success of his economic policies in creating a strong labour market recovery, the pain of high inflation is giving him low marks with the US public on the handling of the economy — and the recent rebound in consumer sentiment has not translated into credit for the White House.
“Voters are gilding the lily about Trump,” says Matt Bennett, a former Clinton aide and co-founder of Third Way, a centre-left think-tank. “They are forgetting all of the things that were terrible about Trump the first time, and they are remembering that the economy was doing pretty good before the pandemic . . . Trump benefits enormously from people’s faulty memory about that period.”
Meanwhile, despite his support for a bipartisan border security bill, Biden’s handling of immigration remains a major liability as long as the number of people crossing the border with Mexico illegally keeps rising — and this remains a daily lightning rod for Republican criticism.
Biden is also trailing Trump for his handling of foreign policy, which has long been seen as a strength for him given his history dealing with diplomacy both as a senator and a vice-president.
Not only is the war in Ukraine dragging on longer than hoped, but Biden’s backing for Israel’s war in Gaza has turned into a political problem for him in several swing states.
The most serious is in Michigan, a crucial battleground state in November, where more than 100,000 people this month voted “uncommitted” on their Democratic ballots rather than for the president.
Abdullah Hammoud, the mayor of the Michigan city of Dearborn, which has a heavy concentration of Palestinian-Americans, says he is not sure what, if anything, could make those voters revert to Biden in time for this election.
“Some are looking for a significant shift on Gaza, some are looking for a permanent lasting ceasefire, some are looking for a restriction of military aid,” Hammoud says. “There’s a large breadth of opinion on what it would take [but] . . . they are looking for change today.”
Biden will also have to reassure Americans of his capacity to do the job. Already the oldest sitting president in US history, he would be 86 years old by the end of a second term.
His age has become consistent fodder for public Republican attacks and triggered worry among some Democrats too. A special counsel report on Biden’s handling of classified documents, written by a Trump appointee, referred to the president as a “well meaning elderly man with a poor memory”.
MAGA Inc, a fundraising vehicle supporting Trump, released an ad this week showing Biden stumbling, looking confused and struggling to find his words.
“We can all see Joe Biden’s weakness. If Biden wins, can he even survive till 2029?”, the narrator asks. The Biden campaign said the ad was “sick and deranged”.
Cornell Belcher, a Democratic strategist and former Barack Obama campaign adviser, said criticism of Biden’s age was “in many ways so insulting” because he had “accomplished more than Lyndon Johnson, has no ethical issues, ran an efficient government with no drama, a robust economy and good standing with our allies”.
If Biden doesn’t start making up some ground on Trump in polls by the summer, it could fuel additional talk of whether he should step down and pave the way for a different candidate to be chosen at the Democratic convention in August.
But most Democratic strategists see that as an unrealistic — and politically risky — scenario at this stage in the campaign. Instead, Biden will have to win at the voting booths.
Bennett says that although the numbers look bad for the president right now, there is still time for the dynamics to shift. “I am super worried. But I am not panicked because it is eight months out and a lot is going to change between now and November.”
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