President Joe Biden is asking the public to reelect him so he can “finish the job,” but critics contend what he has done was damaging enough during the first two years of his administration.
Despite the naysayers, Biden will underscore his legislative and policy record during his reelection campaign. Yet he is simultaneously poised to run on a platform of a continued focus on infrastructure, jobs, climate, healthcare, NATO, and democracy and refocusing on childcare amid the renewed abortion debate.
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As Biden embarks on his reelection campaign, the Republican National Committee has amplified the president’s average 43%-54% approval-disapproval and 41%-53% favorability-unfavorability ratings, as well as current 25%-64% right track-wrong direction polling.
“In Biden’s America, real wages are down, incomes are down, and savings are down,” RNC spokesman Tommy Pigott wrote in response to Biden’s reelection announcement. “In Biden’s America, the middle class is footing the bill for Democrats’ destructive agenda.”
“In Biden’s America, U.S. energy production is under attack,” Pigott said. “In Biden’s America, we do not have ‘operational control‘ of our own border. In Biden’s America, students and parents are taking a back seat to far-left teachers union bosses. In Biden’s America, crime is rampant in our cities. In Biden’s America, Democrats are pushing one of the most extreme abortion agendas in the world. In Biden’s America, our adversaries see us as weak.”
Although Biden was elected in 2020 to address what he described as four crises: the COVID-19 pandemic, the related economic downturn, climate change, and racial inequity. His pandemic management has been criticized, his economic policies are still being scrutinized, he had to compromise on his climate proposals with an evenly divided Senate, and the same body has similarly blocked measures concerning policing reform and voting.
Meanwhile, Biden framed his reelection campaign as a moment in which the country has “to defend democracy, stand up for our personal freedoms, and stand up for our right to vote and our civil rights” in his launch video after the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and the Supreme Court overturned abortion precedent Roe v. Wade last year.
“MAGA Republicans are trying to take us backwards,” Biden told supporters the next day during a grassroots phone call. “But together, we’re not going to let them do that. Instead, our agenda is going to bring us forward and build on the progress we made to finish the job.”
“Look, we keep growing the economy from the middle out and the bottom up, not from the top down,” he said. “Let’s protect a woman’s right to choose. Let’s get Roe v. Wade … Look, let’s protect our children from gun violence, keep lowering the prescription drug cost. Let’s protect Social Security and Medicare. We’ve gotten so much done, but there’s so much more to do.”
Biden’s reelection campaign is broadly about undermining “the extreme right movement” that has “dominated” the Republican Party and is “clearly not committed to democracy,” according to Democratic strategist Christopher Hahn.
“Mainstream Republicans have failed to rid their party of [former President Donald] Trump so it is incumbent upon Biden to deal him one final defeat,” the Aggressive Progressive podcast host and former Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) aide said.
Former Democratic operative Sandy Maisel recommended Biden’s priorities for a hypothetical second term start with reasserting the country’s role internationally “as a nation on whose word and standing one [can] depend.”
“In my view, he has largely done that, but work remains,” the Colby College visiting politics instructor and the one-time candidate said during Russia‘s ongoing war in Ukraine and China‘s steady rise. “Second, he [needs] to get the economy right. He would argue he is making progress, but there is more to be done. In my view, it is on that promise that the electorate will judge him unless Trump is the nominee, and then Trump remains the key issue.”
Biden’s average approval-disapproval on the economy is 38%-58% amid slower-than-expected growth during the first three months of the year as interest rates and inflation keep ticking upward, though persistent consumer spending and a strong jobs market has continued amid fears of a recession. As an aside, his foreign policy approval-disapproval is 41%-56%.
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“Third, he [wants] to restore civility to American politics,” Maisel said. “There is clearly much work to be done on that. Again, in my view, he has done his part — and the electorate have begun to do their parts by delivering stunning rebukes to Trump wannabes in 2018, 2020, and 2022.
Trump has an average 28 percentage point advantage over undeclared Republican presidential candidate Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) in early primary polls, 51%-23%. Trump has less than a point edge over Biden in general election polling, 44%-43%, while DeSantis has a two-point advantage over the president, 44%-42%.
