A string of victories on Super Tuesday last week left former President Donald Trump the presumptive GOP nominee, making semiofficial what had been apparent for months. While the rapidity of his pre-coronation is concerning for the country, it did free up President Joe Biden to use his State of the Union address Thursday to take some early whacks at Trump, though without naming him directly. “As president, my predecessor failed the most basic presidential duty that he owes to the American people: the duty to care,” Biden said. “I think that’s unforgivable.”
It was an energized — and energizing — speech that Biden will be using as a springboard to launch into the general election at full throttle. Already, new plans announced by his campaign are a marked contrast from the “sleepy” vibe that marked the early days of his re-election bid. Taken together, these moves underscore the campaign’s desire to shift the narrative ahead of November from concerns about Biden’s age to one that emphasizes the stakes for November.
It was an energized — and energizing — speech that Biden will be using as a springboard to launch into the general election at full throttle.
According to a poll CNN conducted immediately after the State of the Union, 62% of respondents agreed that the policies Biden proposed would move the country forward, up from 45% who said as much before the speech. (It’s worth noting that the State of the Union tends to attract more viewers who support the president than those who prefer to tune him out; it was also slightly lower than when the same question was asked before and after Biden’s previous State of the Union speeches.) The campaign still has no intention of wasting any momentum. The weeks after the speech are generally used to promote the president’s themes and messages, but his schedule over the next few weeks is truly packed, as Politico reported:
In what it has dubbed a ‘Month of Action,’ the Biden campaign announced that the president, Vice President Kamala Harris, first lady Jill Biden and second gentlemen Doug Emhoff will stump in every battleground state in March, kicking off with Biden’s events in Pennsylvania and Georgia on Friday and Saturday. Biden will also appear in New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Michigan next week, while Harris will head to Arizona and Nevada. The campaign is also hiring 350 new staffers and opening 100 campaign offices across swing states over the next month.
That cross-country sprint is paired with a new $30 million TV and digital ad buy, his campaign announced on Friday. It’s a big push for this early in the election season, made possible thanks to Biden’s big fundraising advantage over Trump. As of last month, the president’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee had $130 million in the bank, while the Republican National Committee and Trump had roughly $65 million in cash between them.
And in a pleasant surprise for me, personally, the campaign isn’t just focusing on Trump’s personal flaws and legal troubles or framing the threat he poses to democracy as some kind of nebulous attack on an ideal. Instead, Semafor reports, the campaign and its allies are also taking aim at the policies that a second Trump administration would enact. Directly in their crosshairs is “Project 2025,” a massive conservative wish list for Trump’s second term put together by the Heritage Foundation and dozens of other conservative groups.
It makes sense that Biden is choosing to hit the ground running against Trump rather than holding off until later.
It makes sense that Biden is choosing to hit the ground running against Trump rather than holding off until later, as his former boss, President Barack Obama, did against Mitt Romney in 2012. For one, Trump is currently hemorrhaging campaign funds to pay for his numerous legal problems, including four criminal cases against him. He’s only just now able to start tapping into funds for the general election, and his campaign has reportedly been reining in costs, likely in hopes of avoiding the cash crunch that his 2020 bid experienced in its final weeks. (Even worse for Trump, the somewhat shady automatically recurring donations he’s relied on are facing much sharper scrutiny this time around.) There’s no shame in Biden using the cash gap to kick him while he’s financially down.
It’s also the time to capitalize on good economic news. Biden emphasized in his address on Thursday that the post-Covid comeback is the “greatest story never told,” seemingly attributing to a lack of media coverage the fact that so many Americans are still skeptical of the state of the economy. But there are growing signs that this could change as inflation wanes, hiring remains robust, and Biden starts taking corporations to task for keeping prices high.
Finally, kicking into high gear now helps calm Democrats who have been fretting about whether Biden has the rizz necessary to seal the deal against Trump again this fall. As my colleague James Downie pointed out last week, we’ve seen an intriguing string of polls come out that suggest Biden is erasing any lead that Trump might have on him. If we can see the same Biden who showed up at the State of the Union between now and the convention, it should put to rest any idea of replacing him on the ticket.
Yes, the general election is a marathon and not a sprint. A lot can change between now and November that could upset the dynamics of the race. But given how close the polls are, how dangerous Trump is, and how malleable the state of play is, it makes all the sense in the world to strike while the iron is hot. The time to lay down the foundation for a win on Election Day is now, when things are going Biden’s way.
