A string of victories on Super Tuesday last week left former President Donald Trump the presumptive GOP nominee, making semiofficial what had been apparent for months. While the rapidity of his pre-coronation is concerning for the country, it did free up President Joe Biden to use his State of the Union address Thursday to take some early whacks at Trump, though without naming him directly. “As president, my predecessor failed the most basic presidential duty that he owes to the American people: the duty to care,” Biden said. “I think that’s unforgivable.”
It was an energized — and energizing — speech that Biden will be using as a springboard to launch into the general election at full throttle. Already, new plans announced by his campaign are a marked contrast from the “sleepy” vibe that marked the early days of his re-election bid. Taken together, these moves underscore the campaign’s desire to shift the narrative ahead of November from concerns about Biden’s age to one that emphasizes the stakes for November.
It was an energized — and energizing — speech that Biden will be using as a springboard to launch into the general election at full throttle.
According to a poll CNN conducted immediately after the State of the Union, 62% of respondents agreed that the policies Biden proposed would move the country forward, up from 45% who said as much before the speech. (It’s worth noting that the State of the Union tends to attract more viewers who support the president than those who prefer to tune him out; it was also slightly lower than when the same question was asked before and after Biden’s previous State of the Union speeches.) The campaign still has no intention of wasting any momentum. The weeks after the speech are generally used to promote the president’s themes and messages, but his schedule over the next few weeks is truly packed, as Politico reported:
In what it has dubbed a ‘Month of Action,’ the Biden campaign announced that the president, Vice President Kamala Harris, first lady Jill Biden and second gentlemen Doug Emhoff will stump in every battleground state in March, kicking off with Biden’s events in Pennsylvania and Georgia on Friday and Saturday. Biden will also appear in New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Michigan next week, while Harris will head to Arizona and Nevada. The campaign is also hiring 350 new staffers and opening 100 campaign offices across swing states over the next month.
That cross-country sprint is paired with a new $30 million TV and digital ad buy, his campaign announced on Friday. It’s a big push for this early in the election season, made possible thanks to Biden’s big fundraising advantage over Trump. As of last month, the president’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee had $130 million in the bank, while the Republican National Committee and Trump had roughly $65 million in cash between them.
And in a pleasant surprise for me, personally, the campaign isn’t just focusing on Trump’s personal flaws and legal troubles or framing the threat he poses to democracy as some kind of nebulous attack on an ideal. Instead, Semafor reports, the campaign and its allies are also taking aim at the policies that a second Trump administration would enact. Directly in their crosshairs is “Project 2025,” a massive conservative wish list for Trump’s second term put together by the Heritage Foundation and dozens of other conservative groups.








