IN
Washington DC – Joe Biden’s efforts to become the Comeback Kid of the
American presidency are moving into high gear this week, even though there are still eight months left in the US presidential campaign. Capitalising on the success of last week’s
State of the Union address , Biden is now seeking to outgun, outspend and outmanoeuvre former President
Donald Trump in the key battleground states where the November
election will be won or lost. New strategies abound for Biden , including a fresh effort to lean in to his biggest vulnerability: his age . In a new ad campaign that will blitz seven key states for the next six weeks, Biden open with a fresh gambit. “Look, I’m not a young guy. That’s no secret”, he chuckles at the beginning of a campaign commercial that sees him casually dressed in an open-neck shirt and a blue quarter-zipper. “But here’s the deal”, Biden continues. “I understand how to get things done for the American people”. In the advertisement, which goes by the less-than-subtle title of “For You”, the President extols his successes reviving the American
economy, lowering prescription drug prices, battling climate change, protecting reproductive rights and passing a massive infrastructure bill to rebuild America. The ad takes multiple swipes at Trump, all of them accompanied by imagery in which the former President looks older and more dishevelled than Biden, despite being four years his junior. I'm not a young guy. That's no secret. But, here's the deal: I understand how to get things done for the American people. Here’s the first ad of our spring media campaign. pic.twitter.com/SFvwMdgzwv The ad is part of a broad push by the Biden campaign into the key states of Michigan,
Pennsylvania, Wisconsin,
Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina. In all of them, Biden is trailing Trump in the polls, with the former President enjoying double-digit leads in North Carolina and Nevada in some surveys. In addition to an advertising blitz that will particularly target
Women and younger voters, the Biden campaign is now flooding resources into the seven swing states in an urgent effort to boost its existing operations there. By Easter, the President’s re-election campaign is expected to triple its staff in the battlegrounds, with a plan to deploy more than 350 people working out of more than 100 separate field offices. The moves reflect the Democrats’ urgent need to begin building an extensive get-out-the-vote operation to combat ennui among core supporters about Biden’s candidacy, and emphasise the risks of Trump’s possible return to the Oval Office. Trump goes into the election counting on the solid determination of his “Make America Great Again” supporters to turn out in November. By contrast, his efforts in the battleground states will need to persuade primary supporters of
Nikki Haley as well as undecided independents, that the former President can be trusted with the keys to the White House. Biden’s $30 million (£23m) blitzkrieg in the battlegrounds is availing itself of a sudden deluge of fresh funds for the President. Between 9pm and 11pm last Thursday – the two hours that the State of the Union Address was being broadcast and livestreamed into every living room across America – Biden enjoyed his most successful two hours of fundraising of the 2024 election cycle so far. Polls taking in the speech’s aftermath indicate that 65 per cent of the audience gave Biden’s address positive reviews. His war chest currently enjoys reserves of over $130 million (£101m) compared with a mere $56 million (£44m) salted away by Trump, and the Biden team is exuding confidence that it can spend almost a quarter of its cash this spring without missing a step. Read Next Age is just a number. But not when it comes to Biden, Trump and Murdoch But taken another way, it can also be seen as a desperate move that indicates the depths of anxiety about Biden’s position in these early stages of the election. The
White House urgently needs to change the narrative, and the President needs to take the energy he displayed in last Thursday’s speech and reproduce it again and again in the long months of campaigning that lie ahead. Adding to the Biden team’s anxiety is the growing numbers of people in key primary contests that have chosen to vote for “uncommitted” instead of Biden. In Michigan last month, more than 100,000
Democrats (13 per cent of the vote) protested against Biden’s policies, particularly his stance on Israel and
Gaza , by choosing “uncommitted”. On Super Tuesday in Minnesota, that number swelled to 19 per cent of the vote. Biden campaign chiefs will be keeping an anxious eye on the outcome of Tuesday’s
Democratic primary in Georgia, and Wisconsin’s primary on 2 April to determine whether the President has succeeded in resetting his re-election effort and reducing the size of the protest vote in at least those two key states.