US President Joe Biden is set to launch his reelection campaign on Tuesday, with a call to Americans to choose him again to save democracy. This comes less than three years after his defeat of Donald Trump was supposed to restore normality and unite the country. Biden's quest for a second term will be amidst challenging circumstances, with his approval rating low and the country exhausted by successive crises.
Polls show that a majority of voters, including Democrats, do not want him to run again. Furthermore, a rematch with the 45th president, who is the current frontrunner in the Republican primary race, is also not something the country appears to want. However, Trump's strength inside the GOP is the core rationale for Biden's campaign. The incumbent believes that he is the best bet Democrats have to prevent his predecessor from winning a second term that would be even more chaotic than the first.
Biden will begin his final campaign from a familiar position of low expectations. Nevertheless, he has repeatedly defied conventional political wisdom and connected with swing voters by standing as the antidote to Republican extremism. Although much of his party seems to wish it had an alternative, Biden appears sufficiently strong to ward off the emergence of any significant primary challengers.
The president is expected to ignite his reelection bid with the release of a campaign video on Tuesday. The same motivation that underwrote his 2020 White House run, Trump's threat to US democratic institutions and values, will be the foundation of his reelection bid.
The 2024 race will reflect the country's polarized and unsettled state, and will likely challenge political institutions and American unity. The possibility of a race between an incumbent who would be 86 by the end of his second term and a challenger who would be 82 at the same point is a unique situation. The oldest combined matchup in US presidential history would probably be welcome for Biden as the optics of a match-up against a younger challenger could alter the feel of the race.
Trump's political longevity is another anomaly in 2024. Presidents defeated after only a single term usually fade into retirement and do not return to challenge their vanquisher. But Trump is still the most dominant figure in a Republican Party he ripped from its corporate foundations and turned into a populist vessel for conservative culture wars.
As Biden claims to have defended democracy at home, he is also sure to compare his revival of the Western alliance in defense of Ukraine to Trump's continuing hero worship of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Democrats will also seek to exploit the overturning of the constitutional right to an abortion by a conservative Supreme Court majority built by Trump and the continuing conservative drive to eradicate the procedure entirely.
Ultimately, the president knows his fate will come down to the same swing states that put him in office with narrow margins – including Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, and Pennsylvania. While Biden will have to run on his record like any other incumbent, he's sure to anchor his campaign around Trump, even if he's not the Republican nominee.