Policy analyst Amy Walter and political strategists Waleed Shahid and Sarah Longwell spoke on the challenges faced by incumbent U.S. President Joe Biden as he seeks reelection this year during an Institute of Politics (IOP) event on January 9. The event, called “The Imperiled Incumbent: Biden on the Ropes,” was moderated by New York Times politics reporter Reid Epstein.
The speakers discussed the centrality of Biden’s age to voters’ perception of him.
“Republican voters think that Joe Biden is being spoon-fed oatmeal in the White House because he is not sentient,” said Longwell, who is a publisher of the center-right publication The Bulwark, which opposes Trump’s candidacy. “They are sure that Donald Trump can beat him because Joe Biden is barely functional in their universe.”
Shahid, spokesperson for the progressive organization Justice Democrats, said he believed worry around Biden’s age was shared across the aisle. “Even for Democratic voters, their number one concern is also [Biden’s] age,” he said.
Biden is currently 81 years old and the oldest person to serve as president. Former President Trump, who is the clear favorite for the Republican nomination, is 77.
Epstein also asked for the panelists’ perspectives on how economic concerns could influence Biden’s reelection efforts.
“Joe Biden’s economic message is that things are great, and voters think that things are not just bad but catastrophic,” Longwell said. “That has to ease for Biden to win.”
Longwell said she believed Biden’s campaign could benefit from increased messaging around abortion, an issue she found voters had strong opinions on. Some analysts have theorized that opposition to the overturning of Roe v. Wade was largely responsible for Democratic candidates’ performance in the 2022 midterm elections, which exceeded Democrats’ expectations.
“The urgency and depth of feeling about [abortion] was so high, which told me: talk about this all the time,” Longwell said.
Longwell spoke on the looming shadow Trump casts on Biden’s campaign. “You are not building a pro-Biden coalition. You are building an anti-Trump coalition in this election,” Longwell said. “What unites that coalition is that Trump is absolutely unacceptable.”
“I’m of the belief that the best thing that Biden has going for him is Trump being in the spotlight more,” Walter, who is editor-in-chief of the Cook Political Report, said. She theorized that once voters were reminded of Trump and his role in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, they would turn away from the former president.
Shahid said the Biden administration’s public alignment with the far-right Israeli government throughout the war in Gaza could hurt Biden’s efforts to portray himself as a candidate fighting for democracy against the U.S. far-right.
“In states like Michigan, Georgia, and Virginia, there are Muslim and Arab Americans who I don’t think buy President Biden’s story as anything other than self-serving when there are bombs dropping with U.S. financing on Gazans,” Shahid said.
In disagreement with Shahid, Longwell said she thought Muslim Americans would not support Trump over Biden. As president, Trump signed executive orders banning travelers from numerous predominantly Muslim countries. Longwell also emphasized her belief in the importance of maintaining an anti-Trump stance despite disagreements on other issues.
“If anybody is going to let their anger over any given policy issue, no matter how frustrated they are by it, put Trump back in the White House, it is both an action against self-interest as well as a deeply selfish thing to do in the face of the threat of Trump,” Longwell said to applause from many attendees of the talk.
When Epstein asked the others about their ‘freaking out level’ around Trump potentially winning the presidency a second time, Shahid said he was at a nine, while Longwell said she was at a 10.
“I think Joe Biden can win,” Longwell said. “I think the level of the threat that Donald Trump poses is such that we should all exist at a 10. Not a 10 like ‘it’s a fait accompli, we should give up,’ but a 10 like ‘we gotta get started, we have to have urgency, we gotta go now.’”
Matthew G. Andersson, '96, Booth MBA / Jan 17, 2024 at 4:14 pm
The reason David Axelrod resigned from the IOP was to (effectively) undertake the DNC 2024 presidential retail candidate project. Biden will not run for office again; the new candidate will be announced in the first half of this year. It is not surprising who it is. She will, however, be in a likely unexpected level of cross-party scrutiny that may not be overcome without tactical, programmatic suppression of the competing party candidate. These media events are part of a public relations program to transition to the new DNC candidate based on a gradual, gentle disqualification of Biden, within his own party.