Biden’s 2024 reelection campaign could center on something brighter than Trump

Although he has not officially announced it, President Joe Biden has acted like he is on the campaign trail today. Tuesday’s raucous and raucous State of the Union speech was not only the latest and most visible sign that Biden is in campaign mode; it also imagines how the 2024 campaign will differ from other elections in the last decade.

During his State of the Union speech, Scranton Joe not only drew boos from House Republicans in a flash, but also made a 2024 slogan (to “get the job done”), and made a positive case for Democrats. It’s a different political message for a party that, since 2016, has been accused of being reactive and overly defensive in the face of Republican attacks.

Vox spoke with several Democratic strategists who all saw Biden’s speech as a preview of a larger shift in how he and the Democrats will make their case during the 2024 campaign. Biden’s campaign has tended to be less oppositional and more optimistic, with less focus on highlighting how bad on the other hand, and more attention is paid to imagining how the Democrats can be in power for another four years. (The White House declined to comment on the approach.)

Biden has a lot to work on. Despite having some of the worst approval ratings for a second-year president and an economy in rough shape in 2022, the current president can boast low unemployment, a less threatening pandemic, and a string of legislative victories that are now taking effect. , including elements of the Inflation Reduction Act, the infrastructure, health, and climate bills passed last year.

“He feels confident in his record, in what he’s going to deliver to the American people,” said Chris Moyer, a longtime Democratic strategist and veteran of the presidential campaign. “There’s a thirst for optimism and not the same old negativity in politics that makes people hate politics so much.”

It is unlikely that Democrats will campaign in the Trump era and even in a Biden presidency. Since the 2016 election, much of the Democratic political strategy has been to vocally and clearly campaign anti-Trump, anti-MAGA Republicans. This approach led to many of Hillary Clinton’s campaign closing messages, and boosted Biden’s 2018 and 2020 blue wave victories, while Biden framed the election as a battle between him and Trump’s “dark season in America.” The message also helped Democrats reject the possibility of the 2022 midterms.

But 2024 offers Biden a different opportunity, as an incumbent, to make a proactive case for government’s role as a force for good, and a vision of hope for the upliftment of the middle and working class. “At [2022] midterms, there is a split in thinking about how Democrats should campaign. Democrats — congressional Democrats — generally have a hard time talking about their accomplishments in a cohesive way,” Rodell Mollineau, senior counsel for the pro-Biden super PAC Unite the Country, told me. and we don’t have to hide,’ helps in the midterms and shows political instincts.

Mollineau said he sees parallels between the 2010 midterms, Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, and the current political moment. During the 2012 campaign, Democrats were not sure how positive to talk about economic recovery, given the slow pace and “shellacking” they received in 2010. Post-Covid economic recovery, faster than post-Great. Recession economic recovery. But amid high inflation, Democrats faced criticism last year for not engaging Republicans enough in their arguments on the economy.

Despite some terrible polls evaluating the handling of the economy, the voters, in the end, did not punish the Democrats as expected, and if the economic trend continues to improve, Biden could enter 2024 with the upper hand on the issue, while the Republicans. that corner to the culture, anti-“building” crusade. “There is a difference between thinking ‘you don’t tell non-believers’ that they feel they are being poured out, and positive economic indicators today,” said Mollineau. “Biden can come out and talk about these achievements if the economy continues to trend, and people will buy into this idea.”

The positive case may also be because Biden has the advantage of incumbency. After a chaotic first two years, many of the president’s major legislative victories, especially the Inflation Reduction Act and the investment from CHIPS and the Science Act, will finally become more visible this year – something the White House has denied for months. and that will be a clearer message when the president and Cabinet across the country to talk about their achievements. Already, Biden has visited Wisconsin and Florida since his speech, to highlight infrastructure projects and several Republican proposals to overhaul Social Security and Medicare.

“The first year of Biden’s presidency was consumed by a global pandemic that took countless lives. You’re going to look out of touch with the American people if you say how big it all is. And then year two, a lot of the narrative is ‘Democrats can’t come together,’ no can get together, can’t pass anything,” Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist and former Republican adviser, told me. “Well, we’re at the beginning of year three, and you’re finally in a position, post-Covid, post-legislative gridlock, where you can tell that positive story.”

It also helps that the Republicans have chosen a doom and gloom political message, for example through Arkansas Gov. Choose to hype up the discussion of gender pronouns, critical race theory, and Latinx is a calculated tactic between prominent Republican presidential candidates like Trump and Ron DeSantis, who have engaged in a once-but-now-normalized cultural crusade that most Americans are unaware of.

This strategy for Republicans to address social issues while Democrats talk about the economy seems like a reversal of the longstanding partisan messaging divide, a shift toward Democrats controlling the economic narrative. “Democrats have, for years, been allergic to saying anything good about the economy, even when we’re in charge,” said Matt Bennett, co-founder of the moderate Third Way think tank, adding that the Obama administration often cautious about economic messages. “What are we waiting for?” Bennett said. “I mean, I’ve been in politics for 35 years. In those 35 years, the economy has been perfect for about two years.

This does not mean that Democrats should give up on social issues. Progressives, like Sawyer Hackett, a senior adviser to former presidential candidate Julián Castro, say there are ways to fight the culture war while still creating an optimistic vision for America. “We can celebrate our accomplishments,” Hackett said, “while still reminding voters that more can be done if Republicans don’t get in the way.” Democratic messages in the fight against culture wars can protect vulnerable communities, Hackett said, and give Democrats “an opportunity to taunt” Republicans. That levity, Hackett said, could help Democrats hold on to base segments, such as young voters, infrequent voters, and nonvoters.

Biden’s 2024 shift also offers Democrats a way to emphasize his populist road map for the economy, which former Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer called “a blue-collar blueprint for winning re-election.”

Making smarter economic appeals will be critical to rebuilding the Obama-era coalition of educated voters, Black and Latino voters, and working-class voters without college degrees. “We saw the beginning of that speech,” said Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, founder of the progressive group Way to Win. “To have a story that counters the onslaught of the culture war, it has to be a story about economic renewal that embraces and celebrates diversity, and that speaks to the role of government to include everyone.”