To be sure, some questionable assumptions underlie any theory about how the 81-year-old president can defeat his predecessor, Donald Trump, this fall.
The question that matters most is whether Mr. Biden can demonstrate enough acuity and energy to erase any doubts about his ability to serve another four years in office. That test will come Thursday evening, when the president holds a rare solo news conference. Mr. Biden cannot afford an inconsistent performance.
Biden remains adamant he will not step down, but elected officials, big donors and other influential figures in a faltering party are divided on whether betting on a new administration would improve their chances. At the top of their list is Biden, with obvious fears that a Biden defeat would not only restore Trump to office but also destroy Democrats’ hopes of regaining control of the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Polls since the June 27 debate have shown little movement in the race, which may indicate how entrenched and unshakable the Democrats and Republicans are.
The Biden campaign said internal data showed his support has slipped since the debates. The drop in support has come mostly from what Biden strategists call “engagement targets”: younger voters, non-white voters and women voters who supported Biden in 2020 but are less enthusiastic this time around. The drop in support since the debates is within the margin of error, the people said, and there is no sign yet that they are leaning toward Trump.
These voters were also less likely than engaged, attentive partisans to actually watch the entire debate, meaning most of their perception of what happened comes from news articles and social media videos.
But there are some silver linings for Biden — or, given the current turbulent situation, perhaps it’s more accurate to call them turns around. The debate has many of the president’s grassroots supporters on edge. His campaign said $38 million flowed into its coffers between Thursday night and the following Sunday, and scores of new volunteers have signed up.
This shows that Biden’s most ardent supporters There was no opportunity to argue that what Americans saw on the Atlanta debate stage was extraordinary.
What the campaign must do now is to shift the focus that has been almost exclusively on the candidate ever since. “This election is about Trump. It’s our job to make that case,” the senior adviser said.
That’s why we hear them talking a lot these days about Project 2025, an effort overseen by Trump’s allies to the right and the conservative Heritage Foundation to detail a policy blueprint for the next Republican president.
Major media outlets, including The Washington Post, have reported over the past year about the radical proposals, which include using military force to enforce mass deportations, severe restrictions on abortion and expanding White House influence over the Justice Department. But the political resonance of Project 2025, which would give substance to Trump’s authoritarian rhetoric, wasn’t clear to the Biden campaign until a few months ago, when the campaign noticed a surge in conversations about Project 2025 among liberal political influencers on TikTok.
It doesn’t help that the very name, Project 2025, reeks of conspiratorial conspiracy: The Democratic National Committee has begun putting up billboards about the project, and Biden campaign officials plan to highlight it in ads they plan to run at the Republican National Convention next week.
The impact of the attacks is evident from the fact that President Trump has distanced himself from the proposal for his next term in office, writing on his platform Truth Social that he “knows nothing about Project 2025” and has “no idea who is behind it.”
Biden campaign officials insist that what hasn’t changed since the debate is that this election will be close — and they believe they’re better prepared than Trump for a campaign whose outcome may be decided by fewer than 100,000 voters in seven states. They have a much larger presence on the ground than Trump, with 1,200 staffers in battleground states and investing heavily in voter registration and other efforts to ensure that their supporters not only vote but that their votes are counted.
Full of memes From their headquarters 100 miles away from the chaos unfolding in Washington, the Biden campaign is focusing on what they can still control. What’s out of their hands is whether Americans can still have confidence in their candidate.
