President Joe Biden’s campaign is building up its operations heading into the 2024 election year, laying the groundwork in key battleground states and sharpening its argument against former President Donald Trump.
A campaign strategy memo shared first with CNN shows how Biden plans to make the threat to democracy posed by Trump a central focus of his campaign, similar to the arguments he made in 2020. But it comes as the president is grappling with tough polling in hypothetical matchups against his predecessor and some signs of strain in his own coalition.
The crux of that argument, campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in the memo: “The choice for voters next year will not simply be between competing philosophies of governing. The choice for the American people in November 2024 will be about protecting American democracy and the very individual freedoms we enjoy as Americans.”
The campaign is planning and expecting that GOP primary front-runner Trump will be the Republican nominee, something officials have called an “eventuality.” The memo, sent to interested parties, said the campaign will spend its next year convincing voters that Trump poses an “existential threat to democracy” through his “ability to incite political violence and wage attacks on our democracy and freedom.”
To make that case, the campaign is building its infrastructure and organization — including plans to have its battleground state leadership in place by the middle of next month; telegraphing the key issues where it will focus its messaging; and gearing up for the president and vice president to start hitting the campaign trail early next year. “Thousands of staff” are expected to be in place by early summer, Chavez Rodriguez writes.
Biden has posited the battle between the world’s democracies and autocracies as the central question of his presidency. And while he’s referring to autocratic governments like Russia and China, his campaign is now making the case that it is also at stake here at home as he takes on Trump.
Chavez Rodriguez wrote that the American people rejected Trump in the 2020 election but the threat Trump poses to democracy “has only grown more dire” since then.
“He is running a campaign on revenge and retribution — and at the expense of Americans’ freedoms,” she said. “We are treating this election like it will determine the fate of American democracy — because it will.”
The Trump campaign fired back, with spokesman Steven Cheung telling CNN, “Crooked Joe Biden is an existential threat to democracy by weaponizing lawfare and disenfranchising voters on a wide scale, not just on a national scale, but in these states. What they’re doing is taking democracy out of the hands of the public in order to interfere in an election.”
The White House has maintained it is not involved in the numerous court cases the former president is facing.
A series of recent polls have suggested a 2024 Biden-Trump rematch will be a close race. A New York Times and Siena College poll out Tuesday indicated there is no clear leader. Polling in key battleground states in recent months has shown Biden trailing his predecessor in hypothetical head-to-head matchups.
The Biden campaign has recently stepped up its attacks on Trump, saying that the former president’s rhetoric about immigrants at a recent Iowa rally “parrots Adolf Hitler.” Biden himself told donors at a fundraiser that Trump’s use of the word “vermin” to describe his political rivals recalls “language you heard in Nazi Germany in the ’30s.”
At official campaign events, the president and vice president are expected to draw those contrasts with Trump while also emphasizing issues like abortion, the economy, combating gun violence; LGBTQ+ rights; Social Security and Medicare; and the Affordable Care Act.
And right out of the gate, Harris will take that abortion contrast on the road, launching a “reproductive freedoms tour” across the country in battleground Wisconsin. The campaign has pointed to abortion rights as an energizing issue for its base and for independent voters, and one that will be a “central pillar of the campaign moving forward,” campaign communications director Michael Tyler said.
The White House is also contending with a series of major issues and crises beyond Biden’s immediate control that could affect turnout from key constituencies. Congressional negotiations over a supplemental funding package for Ukraine, Israel, and border security pushed Biden into an uncomfortable place within his own party. And despite strong economic indicators, public polling continues to show stubborn pessimism about the economy.
Those crises have played a role in Biden’s approval rating dropping in the past 12 months. Biden started the year with a 45% approval rating; it now stands at 37%, according to a CNN survey conducted last month. But while some Democrats fret about the low numbers, the campaign is unperturbed. Officials often note Biden was underestimated in 2020 after poor finishes in the early primary contests only to have a campaign turnaround after South Carolina.
The coalitions Biden needs, officials argue, will “come home” when the election gets closer and voters begin paying attention. And it’s still early — a November Marquette Law School poll suggests about 1 in 5 voters have not made up their mind in a race between Trump and Biden.
“There’s been no lack of coverage on polls about Joe Biden,” Chavez Rodriguez said in the memo. “The out-of-touch MAGA agenda will only become more prominent and salient in voters’ minds next year, as they have been cycle after cycle.”
Biden gets ready to hit the trail
While the president has largely embarked on official travel organized by the White House in recent months, expect Biden, Harris, and other surrogates to deploy for campaign-focused travel and events in the new year, Chavez Rodriguez wrote.
And the Wilmington, Delaware-based campaign expects to scale its operation in the coming months with the goal of “operating at full steam” by “early summer — when we expect voters to be thinking about the election more,” Chavez Rodriguez said.
Some Democrats have griped about the slow start to building battleground operations. But in recent weeks, the campaign has announced leadership hires in key battleground states, including Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin, as well as South Carolina, the first state in the Democratic primary calendar.
Chavez Rodriguez announced in her memo that there will be state leadership teams announced in every battleground state “by mid-January,” which, she said, “will supplement the hundreds of state party staff.”
A hiring spree is coming
The campaign has hired more than 70 full-time staff members and is also working in lockstep with the Democratic National Committee and state parties across the country, marking a shift to how the political committee was used in the past.
While former President Barack Obama built his own political operation, Organizing for America, Biden embraced the DNC early on, including sharing his 2020 campaign’s fundraising and supporter data in 2021. Biden’s reelection effort has leaned on the DNC for help in organizing and setting up joint fundraising agreements with the party and all 50 states to boost Democrats’ campaign coffers.
Officials argue a 2024 campaign is going to look different from previous years, in part due to changes in voter behavior. Officials believe that the traditional brick-and-mortar field offices are no longer a smart use of resources at this stage in the race. If voters want to buy Biden yard signs, they’re going to the campaign’s website. Phone banking is often done virtually — and often by text message.
The campaign’s state program is planning a “hyper-localized approach,” and there will be organizing efforts to tap into voters’ “personal networks of friends and influencers,” Chavez Rodriguez said.
“Our team is already piloting programs focused on Black, Latino, women, and young voters in key battleground states, emphasizing new resources and tools that are helping supporters and staff share our message in ways that will break through to our key coalition of supporters,” she said, adding that those organizing efforts “will coexist alongside traditional door knocking and organizing programs.”
She also noted that paid media will scale up in the coming months as the election approaches, “with a specific eye toward cementing the choice in this election for the American people with placements aimed at high-impact television moments and programming, digital ads, and sustaining our investments into African American and Hispanic media.”
Coalition strains
Still, there are some strains within Biden’s political coalition. Progressive and immigration advocates are frustrated over the president’s border policy concessions as he looks to build support for Ukraine aid. Young voters, who backed Biden by double digits in 2020, have shown signs of discontent, including over the administration’s handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Among voters younger than 30, Biden’s approval rating stands at 26% overall and 20% on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to the recent Times/Siena poll.
“There’s a portion of the electorate who is very passionate about this issue and wants to see the administration shift its policy positions,” said Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, president of NextGen America, a youth voting organization that has endorsed Biden. “I think it’s critical that the administration listen to them to be able to secure and win their votes.”
Biden’s embrace of stricter border policy could have its advantages with more moderate constituencies. Polling from Democratic public opinion research group Blueprint indicates there is the need for Biden to “course correct” on immigration and foreign policy issues.
“Voter perception of the president’s positions on these issues compared to Donald Trump’s positions are a political problem and electoral problem for Joe Biden,” said Evan Roth Smith, lead pollster for Blueprint, suggesting that striking a deal on border security would have a “considerable political upside” with groups like Black voters, independent voters, Trump-skeptical Republicans and Hispanic voters.
Changing minds on the economy
Biden is also struggling to move the needle on sour voter perceptions of the economy, which remains the top issue for voters heading into 2024. The president himself has flashed signs of impatience behind the scenes as some of the projects funded by the legislative accomplishments he’s trying to tout are slow to materialize.
Seven in 10 Americans believe economic conditions in the US are poor, a recent CNN poll found, with a third approving of the president’s handling of the economy.
That’s despite emerging bright spots in the economy, including cooling inflation, low unemployment and rising wages. The White House celebrated data showing an uptick in consumer confidence in December along with recession fears beginning to ease.
Officials acknowledge those changes could take time to sink into the American psyche, with many people still reeling from the economic shock of the pandemic.
“People don’t live their lives in a mess of economic statistics waiting for data to tell them how they feel. People live their lives in the context of what they earn every week and what goes out of their pockets in spending… but the lived experience of the American people is now changing,” said Seth Harris, a former top labor policy adviser to Biden, citing lower prices on items such as food and gas.
Along with explaining how the economy has improved because of Biden’s work, Seth Harris said setting up a contrast with Trump’s economic record, including tax cuts for the wealthy and a renewed pledge to repeal the Affordable Care Act, will be key.
“Another equally important task is to remind people what it looked like under the other guy the last time and what it’s likely to look like under the other guy if there’s a second time,” said Seth Harris, now a senior fellow at the Burnes Center for Social Change. “The contrast with Trump is going to be retrospective and prospective – what it’s going to look like in the future.”
The Biden campaign this week leaned into putting that contrast front and center, holding a call with reporters Wednesday to preview Trump’s tax policy in a prospective second term.
Voters, Chavez Rodriguez said, “have been clear.”
“They will not accept the existential threat to democracy that Donald Trump represents. They will not vote for his extreme policies and ‘dictator on day one’ approach to control their daily lives. They’ll be clear again next November,” she said.