If Joe Biden wins a second term later this year, he will have challenged one of the most complex political environments for a president seeking re-election in years.
At home and abroad, he faces the kind of headwinds that would normally cast serious doubt on his chances of convincing voters that they should put him back in the White House.
Biden’s difficult dynamics were evident in an exclusive interview with CNN this week, in the swing state of Wisconsin, where he only won by around 20,000 votes in 2020 and which could be decisive again in November.
The president faces wars in the Middle East and Ukraine that pose a constant threat of escalation and repeatedly pose challenges to his credibility as a leader.
At home, Biden is beset by university protests triggered by the Israeli offensive in Gaza and by an uprising among some progressive and young voters, vital to his coalition. More broadly, the electorate is still not buying into its “renewal”.
They are suffering from high prices and interest rates that confound their assurances that the economy is in great shape and mask a strong legislative record that bears comparison with any recent president. Then there is the challenge of being the oldest president in history, running for a second term that would end when he is 86 years old.
Biden’s saving grace, however, may be that Donald Trump — his opponent in a 2020 election rematch that Americans have repeatedly said in polls they don’t want — may be overwhelmed and with even more vulnerabilities than he does.
Trump spent this week in a Manhattan court hearing embarrassing testimony about an alleged liaison he had with an adult film star in 2006, who is now at the center of a bribery trial.
New York prosecutors say he falsified business records to hide a payment to Stormy Daniels in an initial act of election interference in 2016. He has denied the case and pleaded not guilty.
Trump also has a habit of alienating core suburban voters who are likely to decide which of two single-term presidents gets a second chance in November. His recent warnings that he could not rule out violence after the 2024 elections, and his refusal to say he would accept the result, have revived dark memories of his attempt to overturn the 2020 elections and highlighted the fundamental threat to democracy.
Trump’s voter base has no problem with either his criminal trials or his false claims that the election was stolen. But the most recent midterm and presidential elections suggest he scares large swaths of the general electorate.
Trump has also put himself in a tough spot on abortion — one of the few issues on which Biden outperforms him and which Democrats believe could excite their voters and produce the kind of turnout that could derail the former president in November.
Trump’s role in building a generational conservative majority on the Supreme Court is coming back to haunt him after the justices struck down the constitutional right to abortion. While Trump insists the issue should be left up to the states, this is offering Democrats an opening whenever a Republican legislature or conservative court issues a new extreme anti-abortion measure or ruling.
Israel may be far from the biggest concern for the Trump campaign
Polls consistently show that voters care most about the economy. And the president’s assessments on the matter are submerged.
A survey of the CNN in April showed that Biden had a 34% approval rating on the economy – and 29% on inflation – as voters say economic concerns are more important to them in choosing a candidate now than they were in each of the last two elections presidential. And voters who say the economy is very important to their vote prefer Trump (62%) to Biden (30%).
This deficit for the president comes despite three years of solid growth and job creation numbers.
But inflation, a corrosive political force that can ruin political careers and that only voters who remember the early 1980s have ever experienced, bequeathed a period of high interest rates. This is proving punishing for home and car buyers, for example. And many Americans are still surprised every time they go to the supermarket.
In your interview with CNN, the president rejected the notion that the economy is in bad shape, while also expressing some understanding for the suffering caused by high prices. But he was still defensive on the issue — reminiscent of some previous presidents who seemed angry that voters weren’t appreciative of their efforts.
Asked when he would restore consumer confidence, Biden replied: “We have already turned the situation around.”
He later added: “The polling data has been wrong all along. Do you do a poll on CNN. How many people do you need to call to get a response? The idea that we’re in a situation where things are so bad… we’ve created more jobs. We’ve done it – we’re in a situation where people have access to well-paying jobs.”
Biden also rebuffed Trump’s efforts to evoke nostalgia for the economy in his first term — before jobs and growth went into free fall during a once-a-century pandemic.
“Let me say it this way: when I started this government, people said there would be a collapse of the economy. We have the strongest economy in the world. Let me repeat, in the world”, said the president.
But telling voters things are great when they don’t feel like they are is a questionable political strategy.
Anytime a president appears out of touch with the realities of voters’ lives, he is on dangerous ground.
In 1992, for example, President George HW Bush was running for re-election. He was asked in a campaign debate: “How can you find a cure for the economic problems of ordinary people if you have no experience of what ails them?” Bush got off to a bad start by looking at his watch, making it seem like he would rather be anywhere else in the world.
He then offered a hesitant and confused response that ended with, “Of course you feel that way when you’re president of the United States and that’s why I’m trying to do something about it.”
His rival, Bill Clinton, then stood up and gave the national audience a taste of his fiery “I understand you” political talent.
He addressed the questioner directly, said that, as governor of Arkansas, he knew by name many of the people who had lost their jobs, and told the nation: “This decision better be about what kind of economic theory you want. Not just people saying I want to fix this.” A few months later, Clinton was in the White House.
Biden has more time than Bush to convince voters that better economic times are ahead, and it would be helped considerably if the Federal Reserve (Fed), the US central bank, began to ease rates in the summer.
He has been contrasting his own humble origins with Trump’s billionaire lifestyle in recent weeks, trying to dispel the idea that the former president cares most about American workers while warning that his predecessor would destroy Affordable Care Act if he returned to the Oval Office.
“I look at it from a position — not facetiously — from a Scranton perspective,” Biden told CNN. “He looks at it from Mar-a-Lago’s perspective. He wants to give more significant tax cuts to the super rich.”
And Biden is fortunate to face a rival with his own enormous vulnerabilities, rather than a rising young star with a knack for coining a middle-class economic narrative like Clinton.
Biden’s path becomes even more complex
But in reality, the president’s path to re-election is becoming even more complicated. He is now embroiled in a confrontation with Israel’s prime minister – always a treacherous proposition for US leaders. This crisis risks contributing to Trump’s claim that the world and the nation are out of control and need a strong man to solve the problem.
The break with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu occurred after the president warned in an interview with CNN which would suspend the transfer of some weapons to Israel if it proceeded with a major offensive on the city of Rafah, in Gaza.
Biden has been under enormous pressure from progressive activists, supporters on Capitol Hill and Arab-American voters in the key swing state of Michigan to rein in Netanyahu following the deaths of many thousands of Palestinian civilians in Israel’s war against Hamas following the September 7 terrorist attacks. October that killed 1,200 people.
The protests on college campuses, meanwhile, have put Biden in danger among young, progressive voters, who are furious about his support for Israel in the war, and moderates, who may be susceptible to his predecessor’s narrative of chaos.
It’s unclear whether Republicans’ heated attacks on Biden over Israel on Thursday will have any resonance with their own voters. But the tone of the criticism reinforced a broader Republican narrative that Biden is weak and incapable of stabilizing an increasingly restless world.
“This is a failure of leadership. This is cowardice, this is responding, trying to make a political calculation here that will help you get out of the water,” said Republican Senator Thom Tillis.
Missouri’s counterpart in North Carolina, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, added: “That’s the message to our allies that, you know, if it’s politically inconvenient for the president to send you guns, then, you know, sorry, you he is alone.”
Biden tried to isolate himself from the political impact of the protests on centrist voters, arguing that, although the right to demonstrate is constitutionally guaranteed, any material damage caused by students occupying university buildings is unacceptable.
And in a speech at the Capitol in memory of Holocaust victims earlier this week, he condemned examples of anti-Semitism reported at some of the protests. He warned that many people were “denying, minimizing, rationalizing and ignoring the horrors of the Holocaust and 7/11”.
Still, polls show that the Israel-Hamas conflict is far down the list of issues that most concern voters — including the young voters most often cited as abandoning Biden in droves over the conflict.
But in an election that could result in thousands of votes cast in some states, the potential for defections or no-shows from angry Democratic voters is alarming for the president.
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