A few weeks ago I received a letter from President Joe Biden that distilled one of the key — and under-discussed — reasons that I believe he’s at serious risk of losing in November.
To be clear, this was no personal missive. It was a fundraising pitch signed by Biden and sent out by his presidential campaign, presumably to people who might vote for Democrats in November. In this letter Biden laid out his case to voters for supporting his re-election bid. In paragraph after paragraph over the course of two pages, he sounded the alarms about former President Donald Trump. He warned of Trump’s campaign of revenge. He detailed the threats that Trump poses to democracy and the rights and social services that Americans currently enjoy. He called for help in debunking “MAGA lies.”
Biden’s case against Trump was sound. But something was missing: Joe Biden’s case for himself. He allocated just one sentence at the bottom of the first page to discussing his legislative accomplishments. As for his future aims, buried on the second page were three bullet points explaining a handful of things he planned to do if he wins a second term: ban assault weapons; cap insulin costs; and increase taxes on billionaires. The rest of the note returned to talking about the fight against Trump and the importance of mobilizing for November.
Banking on dread of Trump isn’t working as an election strategy.
Biden’s fundraising letter typifies a broader trend. His campaign relentlessly issues warnings about Trump — and there is much to warn about — but it’s thin on what he would do with his own time in office. His inaugural re-election campaign video opened with footage of Jan. 6 and focused overwhelmingly on the menace of Trumpism. His campaign’s leading social media account on X is laser focused on dunking on Trump or talking about how dangerous he is. A central theme of his and Vice President Kamala Harris’ public commentary is protecting abortion rights from further erosion under Trump. Even though Biden announced his re-election bid over a year ago, up until a few weeks ago, his campaign website didn’t even have a policy section (unlike Trump’s). The site’s headline argument was the need to support Biden “to keep Trump out of the Oval Office.” In recent weeks, Biden’s website has added an “issues” section, but it remains anemic. (More on that later.)
Again, preventing another Trump presidency is an essential part of the case for Biden’s re-election. But framing the case almost purely in those terms neglects an essential task of any political candidate: clearly communicating an agenda and building a mandate for that agenda. What should Americans expect — and get excited about — when casting their ballot for Biden other than “this guy is not Trump”?
Banking on dread of Trump isn’t working as an election strategy. The president has trailed Trump in national polls and in polls of swing states since last year, after Trump promised to be “dictator for a day,” after his Hitlerian rhetoric about immigrants and even after he was convicted of 34 felony counts. Polling indicates that for less politically engaged voters, who outnumber highly engaged voters and who lean toward Trump, economic concerns outweigh concerns about democracy.
Since the 2020 Democratic primaries, Biden’s central value proposition has been that he serves as the most practical bulwark against Trump and an American slide toward autocracy. But the president’s evidence for that premise has become far less clear since he has taken a huge hit in his approval ratings over the course of his tenure. And even before his disastrous debate performance, a majority of voters felt he was too old for the office. If Biden is not a reliable defender against Trump, then what exactly is it that will get voters to see the point of sticking with him?
Just as Biden is out of touch with voters’ widespread doubts about his ability to serve another term, he is also out of touch with how to renew their faith in him as someone who can deliver a better future.
This is all the more frustrating because Biden has many accomplishments as president to be proud of and which should, theoretically, shape the public’s understanding of him. His first term was surprisingly productive given the narrowness of Democrats’ congressional majorities. His aggressive intervention in the economy with the American Rescue Plan was bold and successful, and he passed major bills securing, among other things, badly needed infrastructure, advanced manufacturing jobs at home, major clean energy investment, and lower prescription drug prices for seniors.
But voters have famously short memories. Polling shows that huge swaths of Americans are unaware of Biden’s signature policy achievements, and some even credit Trump for passing Biden’s infrastructure policy. A New York Times / Siena College poll taken earlier this year showed that more than twice as many voters think Trump’s policies helped them personally compared with Biden’s. Dispiriting as this may be, it means that Biden cannot rest on his laurels — he needs to set up more big swings and give people positive reasons to vote for him that speaks to their current concerns. While Biden’s execution of his agenda was remarkable, a lot of his motivation to take it on in the first place was due to circumstances that don’t exist anymore. Biden’s 2020 policy vision was beefed up by that year’s primaries, which generated Democrats’ most progressive policy debate in decades. Biden presented himself as among the most centrist of the candidates in the race, but after the primaries he adopted more progressive policies in a coordinated show of party unity with former rival Sen. Bernie Sanders. This year the primaries were mostly a formality and Biden was not challenged to show policy ambition. Additionally, Biden took office during the pandemic, and his advisers counseled him to spend aggressively to avoid the mistakes of former President Barack Obama’s response to the 2008 financial crisis. He not only had a political imperative to go after big policies, but an economic one — neither of which he had coming into this campaign. Biden will from time to time discuss policies he favors, but they generally take the form of vague and technocratic incrementalism, rather than a discernible and coherent vision. Americans can intuit that there are threats to their freedom beyond Trump, embedded in the way our political and economic systems operate. Given how badly inflation battered how ordinary Americans experienced and perceived the economy during his term, it is political malpractice not to propose headline-generating and coalition-building policies that will help Americans’ feel optimistic about the economy. What happened to Biden’s support for a public option, which has the potential to set in motion a revolution in reforming our barbaric and exorbitant health care system? Better yet, why not shoot straight for Medicare for All? What about aggressively lobbying for a higher minimum wage? What universal policy ideas does Biden have on issues like the cost of housing and higher education that can speak to the electorate’s desire for sweeping change? If Biden wants to do the right thing, excite progressives and show bold foreign policy vision, he should chart an independent course from Israel and stop subsidizing its brutal military operation in Gaza. What about tapping into widespread disenchantment with an increasingly radical Supreme Court by promising Supreme Court reform? Biden’s struggles in communicating clearly are only exacerbating his agenda problem. At the debate, Biden brought up a great policy — an enhanced child tax credit — multiple times. But he spoke in rushed, incomplete sentences and was often barely audible. He did not explain how it works in simple, clear and attractive language. He did not sell this idea as part of a package of exciting proposals tied to economic freedom, but instead jammed it into a rushed list of policies that are hard for nonpolicy wonks to follow as he scrambled to play defense against Trump. One can’t help but feel that the Biden campaign is sleepwalking. Just as Biden is out of touch with voters’ widespread doubts about his ability to serve another term, he is also out of touch with how to renew their faith in him as someone who can deliver a better future. A future worth organizing for, funding and mobilizing to make into a reality. If Biden does not step aside — and he’s adamant that he won’t — then becoming assertive and ambitious on policy is maybe the only thing he can do to re-engage with a public that’s dangerously cool on him. It may not be enough to save him. But Americans deserve a better campaign than, “Hey, at least I’m not a fascist.”
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer for MS NOW. Sign up for his newsletter. 
