What Biden Needs To Do To Win

The president looks vulnerable but there is a path to a second term.

U.S. President Joe Biden at the White House, January 22, 2024. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images.)

As the seeming inevitability of another Trump nomination becomes clearer—his primary victory in New Hampshire all but clinching what was long obvious—a sense of dread has begun setting in for Democrats. The fear is that President Biden’s stubbornly dreary poll numbers—his approval rating at this point in his first term is lower than for any president in decades—mean disaster in November. Calls have been proliferating, even in mainstream media, for Biden to step down for the good of his party and let another candidate succeed him.

But the Democrats’ pessimism misses a couple of key points. First, as our increasingly polarized politics have produced ever-closer results in presidential elections, candidates today can expect to have a high floor of support regardless of their perceived strength or weakness. Second, there are still a little over nine months until Election Day, and a lot can change between now and then. As Trump re-enters the daily lives of many Americans who have tuned out of politics since he left office, Biden has a chance to draw a clear contrast between himself and his predecessor—and remind voters why they chose him the first time. There is a path to victory, but Biden will have to make significant changes to his strategy as he charts it.

Follow the Blue Wall

A key part of Biden’s victory in 2020 was his ability to flip the three “Blue Wall” states in the industrial Midwest: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Of the five states he wrested from Trump, these three are older and whiter, but they also went for him by the largest margins.

In some Democratic circles, however, several southern states seem to be sexier targets these days, as they are younger and more diverse—in other words, more reflective of what many observers see as the future of the party. That list includes Arizona and Georgia, both of which Biden also flipped in 2020, though he won them by less than a half-point each. Both previously voted Republican at the presidential level from 2000 to 2016, a sign that they are not yet as reliable for Democrats as the Blue Wall. The Biden campaign has also indicated it could target states like Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio as part of its path to victory in 2024, though all three backed Trump twice.

As tempting as it may be to look to the South, Biden’s team should not lose sight of the bigger picture. The Blue Wall is a more tried-and-true path, as his campaign itself recognized in 2020 with its dialed-in focus on those states. If he secures the three Blue Wall states while carrying all of the other states that already lean his way, he will hit 270 electoral votes—the minimum number required to win the Electoral College. At that point, winning additional states such as Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada is just icing on the cake.

Focus on the Working Class

In 2019, Biden kicked off his campaign at a union hall in Pittsburgh, PA, indicating his commitment to American workers. During his speech, he championed several policies aimed at benefiting the working class, including raising the federal hourly minimum wage to $15, ending non-compete clauses for lower-wage workers, and easing licensing requirements for some jobs. Research has shown that working-class voters are attracted to candidates who focus on kitchen-table issues and employ economically populist rhetoric. The success of candidates like John Fetterman offers concrete proof of this.

So it is a bit perplexing that Biden’s re-election campaign has decided to primarily emphasize another topic: protecting democracy. There’s no question that sustaining America’s democracy through and beyond the Trump era is of the utmost importance, especially as the former president employs increasingly alarming rhetoric. However, Biden also can’t take his eye off the ball. Voters continue to identify economic issues as a far more important problem than democracy. Recent polling in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania found that some of the constituencies that will matter most to Biden’s re-election—black voters, independents, and young people—highlight the twin issues of “the economy” and “the cost of living” as the most urgent problems facing the country.

Democracy protection is of course important, and voters who care about it (alongside other animating issues like abortion) will likely show up in substantial numbers to vote for Biden. But to get over the hump and win, he’ll also need a positive message detailing what his administration has been doing to tackle voters’ top concerns.

Treat Voters of Color as Persuasion Targets

One of the most self-defeating impulses in progressive politics is to treat voters of color as monoliths. The source of this temptation is clear: towards the turn of the century, many political observers came to believe in the idea that “demographics are destiny.” The thought here was that non-white Americans, who were steadily growing in number, were reliable Democratic voters who would eventually bring about a permanent Democratic majority. Barack Obama’s two wins and Hillary Clinton’s narrow loss seemed to solidify this theory for many on the left: over 90 percent of black voters backed Obama and Clinton while roughly two-thirds of Hispanic and Asian voters did so as well.

But, in contemporary American politics, few trends that seem enduring stay that way for long. When Trump ran for re-election, he confounded political experts by actually gaining ground with both black and Hispanic voters. Two years later, both groups as well as Asian voters swung rightward. Some projections show Democrats’ advantage with working-class voters of color on track to decline again this year. Recent polling has told a similar story, as Biden’s approval rating with racial minorities has consistently lagged his 2020 performance. For example, a January USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll found that just 63 percent of black voters approved of Biden’s job performance, and about one in five was considering voting third party this year. The poll also showed Trump leading Biden among Hispanic voters by five points—a group Biden won by 23 points last time.

Some of this erosion may be due to the fact that pluralities of non-white voters identify as ideologically moderate and thus might be turned off by more extreme elements on the left. It could also be that issues that historically tied some of them to the Democrats (such as support for immigration among Hispanics) have become less potent, opening them to the idea of voting Republican. Regardless, Biden cannot take any of these voters for granted, and his campaign seems to understand as much, releasing a new round of ads focused on black and Hispanic voters. In the months ahead, the campaign must treat non-white Americans as persuasion targets who need to be communicated with as opposed to a reliably safe bloc that just needs to be mobilized.

Find Opportunities to Break from the Far Left

An underrated moment in the 2020 campaign occurred in August, when protests over the police shooting of a black man in Kenosha, WI, turned violent. Much of the left was reluctant to condemn the rioting and looting, and prominent media outlets with substantial liberal readership even platformed voices defending this behavior. Biden, however, did not equivocate: he forcefully condemned the violence, saying, “I want to be very clear about all of this … It’s lawlessness, plain and simple. And those who do it should be prosecuted.”

Biden’s approach deprived Trump of a potential wedge issue, and it also showed independents and Republicans who had soured on Trump that Biden could stand up to extreme elements on his own side. He may need to take a similar step this year. According to a Morning Consult poll, the share of Americans who believed that the Democratic Party was “too liberal” rose from 40 percent to 47 percent between 2020 and 2023. By contrast, the share who thought Republicans were “too conservative” remained unchanged at 38 percent.

One way to show his independence is to continue to put distance between the Democratic Party and some of the most radical voices on the left over the issue of Israel and Palestine. For instance, Biden could make a public statement calling out protesters who block traffic or those who disrupt events in sacred spaces. He could also come out more forcefully in favor of border security. Though his administration has made record numbers of arrests at the border and increased deportations of undocumented immigrants, public approval of his handling of immigration recently hit an all-time low, and polls show this is a top issue for voters.

We have evidence that bucking the left flank of their party won’t necessarily hurt Democratic candidates. Senator Fetterman expressed support for Democrats negotiating with Republicans to secure the southern border, and he has unequivocally supported Israel throughout its conflict with Hamas, going so far as to say he does not share typical “progressive” beliefs on that issue. Far from hurting him with his base, a recent Quinnipiac poll found that a whopping 80 percent of Pennsylvania Democrats approved of his job performance against just 10 percent who disapproved. Pennsylvania serves as a telling microcosm of America, meaning Biden may find it prudent to follow Fetterman’s template.

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This election is likely to be close no matter what, and Biden has little room for error. His poll numbers have been abysmal, but he still has time to turn his fortunes around and prevent another Trump presidency. To do that, he will need to find a smart strategy and execute it with precision.

Michael Baharaeen is a DC-based political and election analyst. He is a native of Kansas City and writes the Checks and Balances newsletter on Substack.

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