On Tuesday, Biden announced his intention to run in the 2024 election, where he is likely to once again square off against his Republican predecessor, Trump — a matchup that is quite unpopular among voters if polls are to be believed. The recent Reuters-Ipsos survey has shown that about two-thirds of all respondents do not want to see Biden or Trump running again.
Patrick Basham, the director of the Democracy Institute think-tank, said that modern US politics are all about both Democrats and Republicans mobilizing their respective bases to achieve the highest possible turnout, since the number of truly undecided voters is relatively small. Thus, the incumbent US president will have to once again unite disparate strands of liberal and progressive voters by reminding them of what is at stake.
"The Biden campaign will stress different messages simultaneously in order to reassure different Democratic voter groups that the president remains on their side," Basham explained to Sputnik.
"To left-wing, so-called 'progressive,' voters, Biden will stress the trillions of dollars in new social and environmental spending. To pro-choice voters, Biden will stress the need to continue the fight against Republican attempts to restrict abortion. To anti-gun voters, the president's campaign will emphasize his support for gun control legislation."
Clodagh Harrington, a US politics lecturer at University College Cork, believes Biden will follow the same pattern as most modern US leaders and zero in on the issue of the economy, suggesting that the incumbent president "has a positive story to tell (that is, if you are a voter who is comfortable with big public expenditure)."
"Everyone wants better roads, bridges and broadband as well as technology and climate progress. He will need to speak to the social issues of the day too, not least the hot topic of abortion access, but the amount of bandwidth this gets will depend to an extent at least on how well, or not, the economy is doing," Harrington said.
He went on to add that Biden "has the potential to galvanize differing factions of liberals, progressives and far-left voters if he can sufficiently convince them that he hears their voices."
Trump Card
Donald Trump announced his 2024 presidential campaign in November 2022 and is currently the most popular candidate among registered Republicans, with his main rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis - who has not announced his run for the White House - coming a distant second in many polls.
Although, the US businessman is currently the preferred candidate of the Republican base, there are questions regarding his performance during the presidential election, with some polls showing DeSantis as more likely to beat Biden next year.
"Not being Trump is a key strength for Biden in relation to getting underwhelmed Democrat voters to the polls in November 2024. Even those Democrats who would prefer him not to be the candidate acknowledge that he has the (proven) capacity to beat Trump. He may find victory over a different GOP candidate more challenging," Harrington told Sputnik.
She also suggested that there could be a surprise Republican candidate, that is neither Trump nor DeSantis, who could move the needle, noting that a younger opponent would have the natural advantage of "not being in their 80s" regardless of their political message.
At the same time, as Basham pointed out, in 2020, Biden did not have a track record to defend, which allowed his campaign to focus on criticizing Trump and promising that Biden "would do a better job handling the COVID-19 pandemic because he and his team of experts would restore adult leadership to the presidency."
"The difficulty for Biden seeking reelection is that he now has a record to defend, and it is a disastrous one. Above all, he and his team seem incompetent and out-of-touch on both foreign and domestic issues," Basham said.
"So, although the Biden campaign will continue to attack Trump's record, it will have to spend considerable resources defending its own record against Republican attacks."
Both experts believe Biden and Trump could potentially peel off some of the other's constituents.
"He [Biden] could attract some of the white suburban married conservative women who supported Trump in the past but have now distanced themselves from him. Biden will have to carefully consider how he can authentically speak to these very disparate groups. He has the potential to reach them all but he has to sound true to himself. This will take some skill," Harrington remarked.
Basham, for his part, cited his think-tank's own polling, which shows between 10% and 20% of Black voters as well as 30% to 40% of Hispanics planning to cast their ballots for Trump in 2024.
"Biden is losing working-class Black and Hispanic voters, especially, to Trump. This is a trend that was impactful in 2020, but has gained significant momentum over the past two years," the expert said.
Approval and Turnout
The FiveThirtyEight website, which conducts opinion poll analysis, currently estimates Biden's approval rating at about 42%, with roughly 53% dissatisfied with his performance. As per received political wisdom, this does not bode well for the current officeholder as presidents with such approval-disapproval ratios are typically rejected by voters seeking a change.
Nevertheless, if the 2024 election will be about pitting one base against another, Biden may buck the trend by exciting enough of his supporters to show up on election day.
"Turnout-centered campaigns are so influential in determining the outcome of modern presidential elections, it is possible for a relatively unpopular president to be reelected should his campaign do a disproportionately effective job of mobilizing and motivating his own supporters to cast a ballot," Basham said, adding that "such an instrumental approach may be Biden’s best, perhaps his only, path to reelection in 2024."