President Joe Biden. (Photo by palinchik/Bigstock)
With the holidays behind us and the Iowa caucuses less than two weeks away, the nation’s attention is turning toward this year’s presidential election as new polls suggest President Biden and the Democrats face uphill battles to victory.
On the heels of the new numbers, top Biden-Harris reelection campaign officials hosted a press call Jan. 2 to preview some steps they will take as part of what Campaign Manager Julie Chávez Rodriguez called an “aggressive push in early 2024 to mobilize the winning coalition that will reelect” the president and vice president.
According to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll released Jan. 1, the president is, as Fox News wrote, “hemorrhaging support from Black, Hispanic and young voters.” Among those first two groups, compared with data from 2020 captured by Pew Research, the poll showed Biden’s support down a respective 29 and 25 percentage points.
Among voters younger than 35, meanwhile, the data showed him trailing former President Donald Trump by four points. The younger demographic was instrumental in delivering him the White House in 2020.
The findings come with important caveats. For example, to the extent that support for Biden has eroded, the numbers suggest a greater embrace of third-party candidates rather than movement in the direction of Trump.
However, 44% of Trump voters ranked their enthusiasm for his candidacy at a 10 out of 10, versus just 18% of Biden supporters.
A survey released by Gallup at the end of December found Biden’s approval rating hovering around 39%.
Gallup notes that former Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump had slightly higher ratings heading into the year they sought reelection, 43% and 45%, respectively, while all of the other past seven presidents were above 50% at this point in their tenures.
Another survey, which was released on Monday by The Washington Post/University of Maryland, found that one-third of U.S. adults believe that Biden was not legitimately elected president of the United States in 2020.
The survey was meant to explore evolving views about the deadly ransacking of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021. On that topic, opinion is moving “in a more sympathetic direction to Trump and those who stormed the Capitol” according to the Post.
At the same time, the paper wrote, “most Americans have not bought into that revised version of events” and Jan. 6 remains a political liability for the former president heading into 2024. For example, most Republicans said they believe punishments for those who breached the Capitol were either “fair” (37%) or “not harsh enough” (17%).
As they gear up for the months ahead, it looks like the Biden campaign is betting that Jan. 6 will be a sticking point for voters, and an illustration of the contrast between the candidates’ visions for America.
Biden campaign focusing on the contrast
“On election day in 2020, Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump by more than 7 million votes and got more votes than any presidential candidate in history,” Chávez Rodriguez said. “On Jan. 6 2021, we witnessed a very different vision of America — one defined by revenge, retribution, and a rebuke of our very democracy.”
“When Joe Biden ran for president four years ago, he said we are in the battle for the soul of America,” she said. “And as we look towards November 2024, we still are. The threat Donald Trump posed in 2020 to American democracy has only grown more dire in the years since. There’s less than two weeks until GOP primary voters began casting ballots in Iowa and former President Donald Trump’s extreme and dangerous MAGA agenda continues to define the Republican Party.”
“The choice for voters next year will not simply be between competing philosophies of governing,” Chávez Rodriguez said. “The choice for the American people in November 2024 will be about protecting our democracy and every American’s fundamental freedoms.”
The campaign’s Communications Director Michael Tyler later told reporters, “If reelected, Donald Trump will use all of his power to systematically dismantle and destroy our democracy.”
“He wants to end free and fair elections altogether, is promising to rule as a dictator and use the government to exact retribution on his political enemies, all while he and his MAGA supporters encourage and applaud political violence across the country,” Tyler said.
He noted the Post’s poll about Jan. 6, highlighting that respondents said the insurrection was an attack on democracy that should never be forgotten, and an event for which Trump bore responsibility.
Biden team outlines early 2024 plans
“The threat that Donald Trump posed in 2020 to American democracy has grown even more dangerous than it was when President Biden ran last time,” Principal Deputy Campaign Manager Quentin Fulks said during the call. “That’s why we’re hitting the ground early. We’re running hard this year to bring the message directly to voters who will decide this election.”
This will begin, Fulks said, with an address by Biden on Saturday, Jan. 6 near Valley Forge, Pa., a historic site with important ties to the American Revolution. “There, the president will make the case directly that democracy and freedom — two powerful ideas that united the 13 colonies and that generations throughout our nation’s history have fought and died for, a stone’s throw from where he’ll be on Saturday — remains central to the fight we’re in today.”
Biden will then head to South Carolina on Jan. 8, for a visit to Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, Fulks said, the site where a white supremacist murdered nine Black churchgoers in 2015.
He said Vice President Kamala Harris will also be in Charleston on Saturday for an appearance at the 7th Episcopal District AME Church Women’s Missionary Society annual retreat to discuss the attacks on freedoms in states across the country.
“And on the anniversary of Roe v Wade later this month on Jan. 22, Vice President Harris will kick off her official reproductive freedoms tour in Wisconsin,” Fulks said, “where she’ll highlight the chaos and cruelty created by Trump all across the country when it comes to women’s health care.”
Harris will be joined “in full force,” he said, by “the entirety of our campaign” on that anniversary.
“The rest of 2024 will be no different as we will continue scaling up our operation and taking our message to the American people,” Fulks said. “We’re entering the election year with significant resources thanks to a historic 2023 fundraising operation, including a strong Q4 powered by consistent and stronger than expected grassroots support.”
Fulks said this will mean expanding programs across states, hiring leadership teams “in every battleground state,” and dedicating thousands of staff to “talking to our voters early and often” while implementing new organizing efforts.
Finally, he said, “we’re going to continue to scale up our paid media program including a new paid media investment we will announce ahead of the president’s speech near Valley Forge on Saturday.”
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