Biden’s campaign shifts strategy to let the president be himself

WASHINGTON – He’s wearing sunglasses and baseball caps. Visit ice cream shops and steakhouses and ask to meet influencers who can post pictures of you on TikTok and Instagram.

Talk to reporters more often and answer questions about the Middle East, Republicans and, of course, your age.

None of this is a coincidence.

While the president Joe Biden faces what polls show as significant concerns about his 81 years and a very close election against his likely opponent, Donald Trump, The White House’s strategy is to break out of the protective bubble and directly address voters’ concerns.

The issue heated up last month when Biden angrily defended himself from a special counsel report that described him as a “well-meaning old man with a bad memory.”

The president has quickly become a favorite joke of late-night talk show hosts, angering his allies who recognize that while Biden can’t turn back time, he can at least try. Restore the image that voters have of him.

“I’ve been saying to the campaign for several months, ‘Please let it be Joe Biden,’ and many others have said the same thing,” Democratic Senator Chris Coons, a close ally of the president, commented in an interview.

“It’s not just good for the countryside. It’s good for him and it’s good for the country that Joe Biden has the opportunity to step off the podium and be less like President Joe Biden and More Joes”.

To that end, Biden is expected to raise the age issue to his advantage by highlighting his legislative achievements in his State of the Union address Thursday evening.

The thesis he will support, according to his collaborators, is that his successes as president could have passed unnoticed for politicians with less experience.

Part of the White House strategy, which has been in place since the beginning of the year, is to focus Biden’s trips outside Washington more on social media and one-on-one experiences with voters.

This year the White House started inviting local residents and content creators meet Biden during campaign stops, where the president usually spends a few minutes introducing himself.

Scope

Some of Biden’s top advisers, such as Rob Flaherty, deputy campaign manager, and Anita Dunn, who oversees Biden’s communications strategy, believe that social media influencers and local people the president meets during his visits have the ability to introduce Biden to younger, more diverse audiences who might not otherwise have known him.

(When Biden visited family in North Carolina in January, a TikTok made of the visit by one of his guests picked up four millions of views, according to metrics shared by the Biden campaign).

In an interview, Flaherty said Biden usually sends a barrage of requests to aides who work in digital media for the campaign.

Last week, when Trump compared himself to Alexei Navalnythe late Russian opposition leader, the president asked his aides to give him an iPad and posted a video on TikTok reacting to Trump’s comment.

“This came out of his brain,” Flaherty said.

The president sometimes rewrites tweets at will and improvises his own video responses, Flaherty added.

“It has more demands than I am willing to handle sometimes.”

The White House’s official position is that removing the president from his bubble has less to do with voters’ concern about his age and more to do with putting him in front of the people in an election year.

“We have always known that the most effective way to reach the American people is to hear President Biden express his ideas directly and authentically,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said Tuesday.

Biden’s close allies say that whatever the official statements, it is essential that the president proves himself prepared for the task of campaigning and for a second term, starting with his speech on Thursday.

“You have to put to rest the fear of being on your last legs,” said Sen. Dick Harpootlian, D-South Carolina and a longtime Biden supporter.

The president and his advisers, he said, “have been more direct in addressing the issue, and he should be more direct in addressing the state of the Union.”

In a poll conducted by the New York Times and Siena College late last month, 56% of Democrats nationwide considered Biden too old to be an effective president.

“Is this a problem?

Of course it is.

Nobody is perfect in terms of their biography,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, a progressive Democrat from California. Khanna added that presenting the country with a forward-looking agenda is as important as trying to calm concerns about the president’s age.

“Campaigns must be about the future. They have to be exciting. They have to be bold, they have to have new ideas. And I think if I did that, I would leave the age question aside.”

Last section

Biden campaign officials say that once the election becomes a choice between Biden and Trump, who is just four years younger, age will no longer be a concern among Democratic and independent voters.

The race will not depend on Biden’s mental health, they argue, but on issues related to Trump’s.

Joe’s idea of ​​being Joe comes from there of the president himselfaccording to his aides and people who know him.

“At the end of the day, I don’t think anyone should think that Joe Biden isn’t doing what Joe Biden wants to do,” said John Morgan, a Democratic donor.

Members of Biden’s family, including his son Hunter; His wife, Jill, and his sister, Valerie Biden Owens, also maintain that Biden is himself, despite their shared concern about the wear and tear of the presidency.

Morgan said he has noticed an increase in Biden’s activity and appearances lately, including the president’s comments about his annual physical last week, joking that the doctors who examined him “think he looks too young.”

Morgan said addressing the issue directly was the best way for Biden to do so in such a high-level presence.

“I think it’s always smart to face the obvious truth,” Morgan said.

“I think he does it with humor, and then I think he means it.”

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