In 2020, President Joe Biden campaigned on a platform promising economic prosperity and preventing his main GOP rival from regaining the presidency. In 2024, per a leaked campaign memo, his platform will echo the 2020 promises, including a threat to “finish the job” he started while again preventing the popular GOP frontrunner, former President Donald Trump, from reclaiming the White House.
In the memo obtained by The Associated Press, Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez stresses that her team is preparing for a general election that is expected to be highly competitive. She observes that “the message Joe Biden ran on in 2020 remains popular with voters and is central to this campaign” while glossing over the fact that Biden has failed miserably to deliver on his past campaign promises to help the average American.
Rodriguez pointed out that both the president and vice president have “a strong message that resonates with voters” and offers a clear contrast to whoever the MAGA Republican Party nominates. She emphasized the importance of focusing on the campaign’s work and not getting distracted by external factors. But these “external factors” include ignoring valid voter concerns over Biden’s age and mental competency alongside his ever-emerging corruption scandals and failed economic policies.
The memo outlines President Biden’s focus on framing the race as a referendum on Trump and MAGA politics. Despite Trump facing legal challenges, including four separate indictments and a total of ninety-one criminal counts, the MAGA movement remains influential and continues to be a prominent force in American politics.
Biden’s message may be a strong one, but it highlights the failure of his administration to fulfill the same promises he made in 2020. Americans are struggling under Biden’s abysmal assault on hard-working middle-class citizens while illegal immigrants flourish and receive everything Biden promised but failed to deliver to legitimate American citizens.
Rodriguez emphasizes that in the 2022 midterms, the administration’s focus on core “democratic values,” abortion rights, and economic improvements for the middle class defied historical odds. They held the Senate and narrowly lost the House majority to the GOP. But in a general election, voters may hold a different view.
For 2024, the memo speculates that early research allegedly indicates that President Biden’s message of building on progress and “finishing the job he started” is effective in mobilizing their base and persuading undecided voters.
The memo also anticipates that the 2024 election will represent a “clear-cut choice for the American people” as they reject “MAGA extremism” and support the administration’s purported accomplishments, notably the green energy packages that progressives take such extraordinary pride in.
However, polls suggest voters simply do not care about Biden’s “successes.” Green energy initiatives don’t matter to average Americans experiencing pain at the pump, price gouging in utility, rent, and mortgage costs, and an inability to afford even the barest necessities at grocery and retail stores.
Likewise, the ability of a woman to have an abortion up to, and even past, her due date is less of a priority to Americans than the return to the personal prosperity voters enjoyed under Trump’s leadership.
Regular polling consistently shows that only four out of ten people think Biden is doing a good job. In fact, an October 2023 poll revealed that 51% of Americans acknowledge that they were doing better under Trump. To put it in perspective, only 35% of swing state voters trust Biden on economic policies. Even more telling, 58% of voters disapprove of Biden’s handling of the key Democratic pet policy, abortion.
Biden plans to invest $1 billion in campaign funds to convince Americans that they should not believe what they are experiencing and should put their trust in him. Currently, his campaign is centered on drawing attention to Biden’s record, especially the economy, to jog voters’ memories about the pandemic economy he inherited in 2021 and its current “improvements.”
But pandemic-weary Americans are tired of a presidency that blames its failing policies on COVID-19.
Patrick Bonsignore, a Biden campaign adviser, says that Biden’s messaging will attempt to focus on “accomplishments” and contrast them to alleged Trump-era “failures.” To combat complacency and the voters’ sense of déjà vu, the campaign is promoting its “achievements” and “reminding voters what everyday life was like under Trump.”
But everyday life under Trump was a walk in the park compared to the new reality of life under Biden.
For Trump and MEGA supporters, Biden’s messaging strategy guarantees a sweeping victory that no amount of “voting irregularities” can overcome.
