From the beginning of President Biden’s reelection campaign, his plan for victory was to make former President Donald J. Trump so unpleasant that voters uneasy about the incumbent president would vote for him anyway.
But now Biden is politically stalled, his poor performance in the debates has highlighted his inability to stand up to Trump, there are national concerns about his ability to get the job done, and there are growing calls among House Democrats for Biden to drop out of the race. Biden’s allies say that to focus voters’ attention on the threat of a second Trump administration, Biden must first break out of this vicious cycle and convince voters, especially Democrats, that he can get the job done.
“The focus has to come back to Trump and the rights we stand to lose if he becomes president,” said Rep. Eric Swalwell, R-Calif., who ran against Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. “We’ve learned in the last three elections that if that’s the focus, you lose.”
In fact, the Biden campaign has long been a major target of Trump.
That’s why Biden kicked off the year with a scathing speech about Trump’s efforts to overturn the last election, how his allies spent millions of dollars to thwart the No Labels movement and the president’s attempt to highlight the anniversary of news about abortion rights.
And that’s why Mr. Biden’s aides thought it was a good idea to move the first debate from September to June: The president’s team thought giving voters a one-on-one look at Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump would recalibrate the race, bolster Mr. Biden’s sagging poll numbers and remind voters what would change if Mr. Trump were re-elected in January.
A memo written before the debate by Biden’s campaign manager, Jen O’Malley Dillon, mentioned Trump’s name 18 times and Biden’s just five. Of Trump’s record, Dillon wrote, “The President will hold Donald Trump accountable for everything on the debate stage — and he’s intent on doing so.”
That didn’t happen.
But first Biden must address doubts about himself — a task his team has been working hard on for more than a week since the debate. In an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos on Friday, Biden drew one-sixth the audience of the debate and spent most of the 22-minute interview fielding questions about his fitness to be president.
“Trump is a deeply flawed candidate,” said David Axelrod, a longtime skeptic that Biden, 81, could run for president. “It’s going to be very hard for the Biden team to focus on Trump now.”
There is no question within the Democratic Party that this election must be centered around Trump, just as Biden did in 2020, when he was able to draw a winning coalition that spanned progressive Democrats and moderate Republicans alike.
Biden then ran as a transition candidate, winning the support of Republicans and other voters seeking a return to normalcy in Washington. Standing next to Sens. Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, Biden said he was “a bridge and nothing else,” giving the clear impression that he was a vehicle for moving the country away from the Trump administration.
Four years later, the poll found that 74% of voters believe Biden is too old to run for president again.
“It’s become established in people’s minds that this isn’t going to go well for him, and I don’t see how he can recover from that,” said former Ohio Gov. John R. Kasich, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 and supported Biden across party lines in 2020. “People think, ‘We’ve got to get going,’ to run a campaign against Trump.”
Democrats who braved political talk shows on Sunday faced a barrage of questions about Biden’s fitness to hold the presidency.
Debbie Dingell, a Michigan Democrat whose warnings of Hillary Clinton’s weakness among blue-collar voters in her state were ignored in 2016, appeared outraged on CNN.
“Let’s stop talking about this,” Dingell said. “We need to get back to talking about Donald Trump.”
Senator Chris Murphy, speaking on CNN, suggested Biden was running out of time.
“They need to hear more from the president,” he said. “I hope to see that this week.”
There’s some evidence that black voters, who helped Biden win the 2020 primary, haven’t abandoned him yet. Adrienne Shropshire, executive director of Black PAC, said a post-debate poll her group conducted showed Biden’s support had risen among black voters who watched the debate, but had fallen among black voters who only watched the coverage but not the debate.
Biden visited one of Philadelphia’s largest Black churches on Sunday, seeking to reassure voters that he is fit for the presidency.
“Joy comes in the morning,” Biden told the churchgoers, “You never gave up. In my life and as your president, I have tried to live out my faith.”
Even Biden’s most ardent supporters say Democrats will lose if the election remains a referendum on Biden’s ability to be president.
“My goal is to defeat Trump,” Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas, who was one of Biden’s campaign spokespeople, said after the debate. “Those who want him to resign and those who want him to stay are in agreement about the fear of MAGA.”
As questions swirled about Biden’s acumen and Democratic lawmakers began calling for him to resign, the president’s campaign highlighted Trump’s own debate comments about “black jobs” as well as the Supreme Court’s decision to grant him partial immunity from prosecution for actions leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Biden’s campaign on Friday sought to highlight Trump’s attempts to distance himself from Project 2025, an effort by Trump allies and the Heritage Foundation to develop policies that would be implemented if Trump is re-elected.
“Trump wants to take away more basic freedoms, ban abortion, rule as a dictator, round up and deport Latinos, and use the new powers he gained from the Supreme Court to punish, harm and even imprison his opponents,” Biden campaign spokesman Amar Moussa said. “That is not who Joe Biden is. This election will be about Donald Trump and the threat he poses to America.”
But to focus voters’ attention on the threat posed by a Trump victory, Biden and his team will have to prove they are physically fit to get the job done — a low bar for most candidates.
“Biden and the Democratic Party have been clear from the start that this election must be a choice, not a referendum on the president,” said Matt Bennett, co-founder of Third Way, a Democratic think tank that has led efforts to stop independents and third-party candidates from siphoning votes away from Biden. “That means focusing voters’ attention on Trump’s criminality, chaos and cruelty. As we emerge from this period of uncertainty, the party must recommit to prosecuting this case with all its might.”
