Biden Uses Incumbency Against Former President

Election Day is less than six months away, and voters have a familiar choice of Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Unless it’s The Godfather Part II, sequels rarely live up to the hype. Although it may look like a 2020 repeat, the stars are competing in a different game and under different rules. This series, Judgment Day: Why 2024 rematch won’t be any old sequel, investigates the key differences from 2020. Part Four is on Biden’s pivot from running as challenger to incumbent.

President Joe Biden likes to encourage prospective voters to compare him to former President Donald Trump and not the “Almighty” as he tries to avoid November’s general election becoming a referendum on him and his administration.

But seeking reelection is in itself an invitation to voters to evaluate his first term, from the COVID-19 pandemic to the Israel–Hamas war.

When Biden, 81, ran for president for the third time in 2020, he may have spent the past half-century in public life, but he campaigned as a change agent against his predecessor, Trump, 77. Now, four years later, Trump has the opportunity for his comeuppance as he challenges his successor, Biden, on his record.

PART ONE: ‘NO ROOM FOR ERROR’ ELECTORAL MAP HAMPERS BIDEN’S REMATCH WITH TRUMP

PART TWO: BIDEN ONCE BACKED PROTESTS ON WAY TO 2020 WIN. NOW, HE’S THEIR TARGET

PART THREE: DEMOCRATS BANK ON ABORTION TO CARRY BIDEN AS GOP ADJUSTS STRATEGY

“We basically have two incumbents running against each other in 2024, which is so exceedingly rare — it hasn’t happened for over a century,” Northeastern University political science department Chairman Costas Panagopoulos told the Washington Examiner. “It is hard to figure out which, if any, of the factors that have shaped previous campaigns and election outcomes apply. It’s a whole new ballgame.”

That last former president to challenge an incumbent was Grover Cleveland, who took on Benjamin Harrison in 1892 to become the first and, to date, only commander in chief to serve two nonconsecutive terms.

One political dynamic Biden has to be mindful of is that voters have a tendency to remember past presidents more “fondly” with time, according to Panagopoulos.

“It seems to me that Biden has to do his best to remind voters that some things were not so great during the Trump years,” he said.

Biden’s reelection argument rests on his trillion-dollar American Rescue Plan Act, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. That legislation ranges from funding his pandemic recovery proposals and brick-and-mortar infrastructure projects to placing a cap on the price of insulin for seniors and introducing gun control measures.

Biden has also embraced Trump asking voters whether they are better off now than they were four years ago when the U.S. was locked down because of COVID-19. The president cites employment and consumer price index data, in addition to other liberal policy achievements on issues such as the reclassification of marijuana, as he criticizes the former president for his “extreme” conservative positions, including on abortion and the border.

Simultaneously, Trump is campaigning on his economic policies and approach to the border, among other conservative issues, as he scrutinizes Biden for his respective record on inflation, immigration, crime, and foreign policy.

Traditionally, incumbents have had an advantage over their opponents because they can use the presidential bully pulpit to promote themselves and their agenda before fundraising off of it, according to Daniel Franklin, Georgia State University political science professor emeritus.

But the problem for Biden and Trump is that most voters have already made up their minds about them, with the principals and their campaigns having very little power of persuasion to change them.

Instead, what they can and will do is try to turn their supporters into voters while at the same time attempting to suppress their opponent’s turnout by attacking them or their record, the former strategy being easier than the latter, per Franklin.

“What makes this election different is that the traditional political party coalitions seem to be fraying at the edges,” Franklin told the Washington Examiner. “Trump has lost possibly 15% to 20% of his base due mainly to the fact that character does matter to a lot of Republicans and his policies are not always traditionally conservative.”

For instance, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who suspended her own presidential campaign in March after Super Tuesday, received double-digit support this month in Maryland and Nebraska’s Republican primary elections, as well as 9% of the vote in West Virginia.

Biden also lacks support from all members of what has become known as the “big tent” Democratic coalition, in part, because of his response to the Israel-Hamas war and third-party and independent candidate options on this year’s ticket. Franklin, however, contended Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would have consequences for Biden’s and Trump’s campaign.

“Biden has the advantage of picking up modern women who would normally vote Republican on the abortion issue and on Trump’s character,” he said.

For Democratic strategist Mike Nellis, Biden’s record was at risk of being analyzed more than Trump’s because his is more immediate, but he predicted Trump’s would have a “serious airing out too” as the campaigns proceed.

“Biden does have a really strong record to run on though,” Nellis told the Washington Examiner. “He has some real, significant accomplishments, and while the economy has been tough, I would argue Biden has navigated it really well compared to how Trump handled the economy during the COVID years.”

“There’s lots of race to run here and things like the debates and the conventions are going to matter,” he said.

Six months before Election Day and with Trump averaging a 3 percentage point lead over Biden in five-way national polling, which asks respondents about third-party and independent candidates, the former president and his campaign appear optimistic. They underscore Biden’s average net negative 17-point approval rating, down from his net positive 20-point approval, shortly after his inauguration, which is worse than that of Trump at this point of his administration. Similarly, Biden has worse favorability ratings than Trump.

“Joe Biden is losing on every issue from the economy to the border, and Americans feel worse off under his absent leadership,” Republican National Committee spokeswoman Anna Kelly told the Washington Examiner. “After nearly four years of failure, voters see Biden for who he is: a weak, dishonest shell of a president who isn’t up to a second term — which is why they’ll cast their ballots for President Trump on Nov. 5.”

Trump has tried to amplify his record by contrasting it with that of Biden, holding rallies around different policies, from the economy in Minnesota last week to the border in Michigan in March.

“On day one, we will throw out Bidenomics, and we will reinstate MAGAnomics,” Trump told a crowd this month in New Jersey. “We are going to bring manufacturing, tourism, and other industry back. … Instead of a Biden tax hike, I’ll give you a Trump middle class … lower class … big tax cut.

“On day one of my new administration, I will seal the border, stop the invasion … and send Joe Biden’s illegal aliens back home where they belong,” he said. “We will shut down deadly sanctuary cities, such as Newark and Philadelphia. … On day one, we will begin the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”

Meanwhile, Biden has also tried to contrast himself with Trump, reminding Democrats of the “progress we’ve made so far.”

“We have to make constant and crystal clear the choice here,” he told donors during a February fundraiser in California. “I am often quoted as saying what my dad would say: ‘Don’t compare me to the Almighty; compare me to the alternative.’ … But, look, time and again, Republicans show they’re part of a party of chaos and division.”

Despite describing Biden as “truly trying to be a fighter for the middle class” and praising the president’s infrastructure spending, Charlie Comfort, an Iowa Democrat, said the “biggest pitfall” of Biden’s record is him being a Democrat.

“In the area where I live in rural Iowa, rural America, the Democratic Party has fallen so far out of favor with voters that it is almost a fatal thing to have that ‘D’ next to your name,” the at-large member of Iowa’s Oskaloosa City Council and vice president of its school board told the Washington Examiner. “The president, in my opinion, has been poorly served by messaging staff across the board, not just his team, but maybe the entire party. Quite frankly, I think the party is on life support in this area of the country because of how poorly of a job [the messaging staff is doing].”

“The true values of the Democratic Party have been messaged in this area [as] a bunch of socialists who want to take your guns away and spread the wealth, and that, quite simply, isn’t true,” he said. “But there has never been a strong fighter willing to counteract that. Not to say the president is not a strong fighter, but nobody has really risen to project his message effectively.”

But one of those Democratic communicators, Biden campaign spokesman Charles Lutvak, remained confident in the president after Politico-Morning Consult polling from earlier this month indicated that participants do not credit Biden with, at least, many of his infrastructure provisions.

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“As president, Joe Biden has created 15 million jobs, brought down healthcare costs, and protected our fundamental rights and freedoms,” Lutvak told the Washington Examiner. “Donald Trump earned the worst jobs record of any president in modern history, tried to send healthcare costs through the roof, and attacked our fundamental rights and freedoms.”

“The choice in this election is between a president in Joe Biden who will continue fighting for middle-class Americans and a vengeful wannabe dictator in Trump who will continue fighting only for himself,” he said.