President Joe Biden wanted to use his Thursday State of the Union address to make a compelling case for his reelection by delivering an inclusive and uplifting vision for Americans across the country.
But earlier in the week, the Biden campaign sent White House reporters a brass-tacks memo laying out their case for winning reelection. The memo, penned by campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon and campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez, argued that Donald Trump enters the general election as a "cash-strapped, beleaguered" candidate dogged by "a host of external issues" and "running on an extreme agenda that is already proving to be a significant liability."
The memo cited polling showing that upward of 10% of the electorate remains undecided and that 31% of all voters weren't even certain Trump would be the nominee.
"These undecided voters are also the least tuned in to politics of any group," they noted. "As the general election ramps up, the campaign will aggressively engage these undecided voters, highlighting the stakes of this election to secure their votes in November."
While there are a million unknown factors waiting in the wings over the next eight months, here's what we do know about the state of play at the moment.
1. Biden hopes to expand his coalition by appealing to voters on two levels: protecting freedom and helping average Americans with cost-cutting measures on health care, prescriptions drugs, and student loans. The kitchen-table issues will be an explicit appeal to working-class voters across the spectrum.
But Biden will also be working to motivate his Democratic base and suburban voters on preserving democracy and safeguarding American freedoms.
This focus was exquisitely laid out by The New Yorker's Evan Osnos in this excerpt about Biden campaign strategist Mike Donilon.
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 imperilled 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."
He sees a parallel to the race between George W. Bush and John Kerry, in 2004. At the time, Donilon was working on television ads for Kerry. “The Democratic Party didn’t want to believe it was a 9/11 election,” he said. Instead, the Party tried to focus on an array of issues—the war in Iraq, the economy, hostility to Bush. But, shortly before the election, a new video of Osama bin Laden was released that dredged up memories of 9/11. Bush won, and Donilon vowed not to repeat the error: “I decided, after the election, I would never be part of a Presidential campaign that didn’t figure out—with clarity—what it wanted to say and stick to it.”
2. Trump isn't trying to expand his coalition, which seems clear enough from his endless mockery of Nikki Haley, her supporters, and anyone who hasn't bought into the MAGA cult.
So if Trump is whittling down his coalition, how does he plan to win in November? Conservative commentator Scott Jennings argued on Hacks on Tap that Trump planned on replacing those squishy suburban Haley voters by picking up disaffected members of the Biden coalition, particularly working-class Latino and Black voters.
"Does he have to court them?" Jennings said of Haley's voters. "No. He needs to replace them. I think that's what they think they're doing is, 'I'm going to replace these college-educated people who hate me and like Nikki Haley. I'm going to replace them with working-class voters who think the Democrats have left them behind.'"
Jennings cited the latest New York Times/Siena poll that found Trump winning Latino voters over Biden, 46% - 40%.
Latino voters, who aren't a monolith, are a complex and frequently misunderstood voting cohort. But the notion that Trump is winning them by 6 points is laughable on its face. In 2020, Biden won the group by 30-plus points, 65% - 32%, according to exit polls.
As pollster and political science professor Matt Barreto pointed out regarding the poll's Latino sample, the Times conducted 97% of the interviews of Latino voters in English. Just 3% were done in Spanish.
"Are people frustrated? Yes," Barreto wrote. "Is Trump +6. ZERO CHANCE. But let's look at their brilliant Latino methodology: 97% English."
Here's the bottom line: Yes, Team Biden has work to do shoring up his working-class voters from 2020. But if Trump's main strategy is alienating Haley's high-propensity voters and replacing them all with Latino voters, that sounds like a recipe for disaster.
3. Trump's ceiling is likely 47%—he didn't clear that percentage in either 2016 or 2020. In theory, it's possible Trump could over-perform except that, as Jennings noted, he's not even trying to expand his coalition and seems perfectly content to write off the one-time suburban voters who have swung increasingly Democratic in the last several election cycles.
4. Trump has consistently underperformed his primary polling and no one knows exactly why, but the streak continued on Super Tuesday.
5. Democrats have consistently won special elections over the past couple of years—usually by a lot, while over-performing expectations.
The pattern is unmistakable:
This list is long, including abortion rights ballot measures, state and federal elections, and judgeships, even though they haven't traditionally been framed in partisan terms. In 2023, 538 found Democrats had overperformed polls by 11 points in 30 different special elections that year.
Biden's task this year is to rebuild his 2020 coalition and hopefully pull in a few more slices of the electorate. That effort began Thursday evening with his State of the Union appeal to voters.
At the moment, Trump, who’s perfectly happy to repel anyone who isn't one of his diehard cultists, appears poised to help Biden. The proposition that Trump can make up for his losses among high-propensity suburban voters with working-class Black and Latino voters sounds questionable at best.
A host of third-party insurgents who will appear on various ballots across the country remain the biggest threat to Biden’s reelection. In a contest where many Americans do not like their options, some of those disenchanted voters will inevitably go third-party or simply stay home. For that reason, a huge part of Biden's successful reelection effort will include a sizable education campaign warning that a protest vote in November might actually be the last meaningful vote one ever casts.
Yet despite the media's addiction to Biden doomsday reporting, Democrats have good reason for cautious optimism—coupled with a heavy dose of clear-eyed work ahead.
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