President Joe Biden’s campaign team is showing signs of desperation, even if they would prefer we believe that they are simply considering what strategy to use to eke out another victory in November.
The president’s team is planning a messaging strategy focusing not on Biden’s accomplishments in office but on the supposed threat to democracy posed by former President Donald Trump.
That’s right, folks, Biden’s strategy is to run an “Orange Man Bad” campaign to scare American voters into giving him another term. This raises some serious questions: What does this say about how Biden’s team views his chances of winning the upcoming election?
As the 2024 race gears up, battle lines are being drawn in the proverbial sand. While Trump’s camp appears to be focused on highlighting Biden’s failures, the president is pursuing a different strategy for winning hearts and minds. RedState’s Streiff wrote about how Biden’s advisors, including Mike Donilon, are steering the campaign’s messaging more toward protecting democracy, hoping to use the left’s narrative about how Orange Man What Is Bad™ threatens America’s way of life.
Instead, the 2024 Biden campaign will campaign on saving democracy from Donald Trump.
Donilon’s mild demeanor can be misleading. Like Biden, he has firm beliefs—about politics, the public, the press—and a contrarian side. In 2020, he and his campaign team had to decide whether to emphasize the economy or the more abstract idea that Trump imperiled the essence of America. “We bet on the latter,” Donilon said, even though “our own pollsters told us that talking about ‘the soul of the nation’ was nutty.” That experience fortified his belief that this year’s campaign should center on what he calls “the freedom agenda.” By November, he predicted, “the focus will become overwhelming on democracy. I think the biggest images in people’s minds are going to be of January 6th.”
...The freedom campaign, Donilon said, is a story in three acts: “The first act was 2020. Trump represented a threat, and Biden won. 2022 was a second round. You had these election deniers, and all these folks around the country, and they were beaten back.” He added, “Round three is 2024. The thing is, you got to win all the rounds.”
This move speaks volumes about the precarious position in which Democrats find themselves. Recent polling shows Trump and Biden in a statistical dead heat, which is noteworthy considering the lawsuits, bad press, and politically motivated indictments. In light of all these factors, Biden should be sitting pretty in the polls right now.
But he’s not, which is why his team is trying to find a message that will help them win over the electorate. However, the “threat to democracy” angle is a weak one. After years of peppering the airwaves and interwebs with hysteria about Jan. 6 and handwringing about the MAGA Republicans’ "war on democracy," the left has gotten about as much mileage out of this trope as they are going to get.
The bottom line is that pretending Trump will somehow dismantle our system of government if he is allowed to serve another term is not going to be early as effective as it was in 2020. At this point, this type of messaging only works on those who already believe that Trump is the AntiChrist.
What is telling about this development is that Team Biden knows it cannot run on the president’s record. The public is aware that record-level inflation, an unmanageable situation at the southern border, and Biden’s other failures aren’t exactly the best selling points for one who wishes to continue occupying the White House.
For Trump, this provides an opportunity. One of Biden’s main weaknesses is his apparent inability to do his job. Team Trump’s strategy should rely on constantly reminding the public about how horrible a president Biden has been. Biden’s record, combined with his age and obvious lack of cognitive abilities, should be prime targets for the former president.
If Team Biden was gracious enough to telegraph the cause of their desperation, Republicans would be remiss to fail to take advantage.
