Prof. ST Hsieh
Director, US-China Energy Industry Forum
626-376-7460
December 25, 2023
President Biden’s reelection bid is in deep trouble and time is short, especially he will have to balancing the job of governing with his reelection bid. The first challenge facing Biden is his senior age and his weak physical condition. Being the President of the USA is a full-time job, wining a second term is another full-time job. The US public has spoken, Biden’s approval ratings for his first term have been consistently below average. So, it is futile for Biden now, as he will be part-time, to tackle the Abortion issue and the Economy issue, if he could not deliver in the past three years when he was the full-time President of the US.
Biden has been laser focused attacking Trump, which is purely a negative campaign strategy. Even if Biden were to defeat Trump in 2024, all the domestic and global challenges to the US will stay as they were. Four more years of Biden only means another four years of the same failed policy as judged by the opinion polls.
Trump II is a serious concern, but Biden is behind in public opinion polls now. On other hand, Trump is almost vulnerable to any democrat candidate other than Biden. It is time for Biden to support a younger democrat for the next US president now. Give everyone a break!
5 critical issues Biden must tackle to win reelection
Brett Samuels
Mon, December 25, 2023 at 3:36 AM PST The Hill
President Biden will spend the next 11 months balancing the job of governing with his reelection bid, traveling the country as he seeks to term convince voters he deserves a second.
The president has already signaled what key issues will be consistent parts of his pitch to voters, and he has in many ways already set his sights on former President Trump, the GOP primary front-runner, as his likely opponent next November.
Here are five key issues critical to Biden’s reelection bid.
Abortion
Protecting abortion rights has been a driving force behind Democrats’ election wins since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, and the Biden campaign will look to replicate that success in 2024.
Biden himself has highlighted the abortion issue in speeches to donors, and he has rolled out executive actions intended to protect abortion access.
The economy
If abortion is Democrats’ biggest driver of turnout, the economy is what may swing the election for independent voters.
Biden and his team have for months argued the president’s economic plan has produced results. They have cited the unemployment rate dropping below 4 percent after it spiked during the pandemic. They have pointed to the economy growing faster than anticipated and defying experts’ predictions of a looming recession.
Officials have boasted that inflation has steadily declined over the past year. Data released Dec. 12 showed the annual inflation rate had fallen from 9.1 percent in June 2022 to 3.1 percent as of November 2023.
Biden and his team have acknowledged there is more work to do, but they feel good about the direction of the economy. The question is whether voters will agree.
Trump’s threat to democracy
Biden’s reason for running in 2020 was his belief that then-President Trump posed a grave threat to American democracy, and the same concern is once again at the core of his reelection campaign.
At recent fundraisers, Biden has called Trump an “election denier in chief” who is “determined to destroy American democracy.”
“American democracy — I give you my word as a Biden — I believe, is at stake,” Biden said during a recent trip to Massachusetts, where he also suggested he may not have run again if Trump weren’t also running.
The risk, strategists warn, is that voters either become numb to Trump’s rhetoric or are willing to overlook it.
“I think the Biden campaign planned on running an entire campaign against Trump and his indictments and calling him an authoritarian, and I don’t think either of those resonate with the electorate,” one Trump-aligned operative said.
Legislative achievements
One of Biden’s core arguments will focus plainly on his ability to do the job and get results, particularly at such a polarizing time.
Biden has racked up a healthy list of legislative accomplishments, chief among them the Inflation Reduction Act, a law passed with Democratic votes that the president frequently touts as an economic driver to lowering prescription drug costs and energy bills for families. The legislation also makes investments in clean energy industries.
Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act, which invests billions of dollars in domestic semiconductor manufacturing to boost the economy and make the U.S. less reliant on foreign supply chains.
And the White House has allocated hundreds of millions of dollars for projects across the country funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which Biden signed in 2021.
US leadership on global stage
Biden used his first address to a global audience in 2021 to declare, “America is back.”
While foreign policy typically does not play an outsized role in domestic elections, Biden and his team are likely to lean into the idea that he provides steady, reliable leadership on the world stage in a way Trump does not.
Biden managed to rally a coalition of support for Ukraine in its war against Russia, and he has sought to walk a careful line in backing Israel in its fight against Hamas while warning against “indiscriminate bombings.”
The Israel conflict in particular, however, could pose problems for Biden the longer it drags on, especially given divisions among Democrats on the issue.
Biden struggled to win new support from Congress for Ukraine in December, but he and his team believe their positions will contrast favorably with those of Trump in the eyes of voters.
Biden has emphasized the domestic and international reasons to support Ukraine in its war against Russia, while Trump has indicated he would pull back American support.
Biden frequently retells the same anecdote of telling a group of allies after he took office, “America is back,” with one leader responding, “For how long?” It is a story likely to be repeated on the trail as Biden warns that the U.S. and its allies can’t afford four more years of Trump.