Biden’s team ready for bruising rematch
President Joe Biden is zeroing in on an expected rematch against Donald Trump after this week’s New Hampshire primaries, eager to sharpen the contrast with his predecessor.
Ten months from election day, Biden’s write-in victory in a New Hampshire race he didn’t formally contest put a fork in any plausible path to deny him a second turn at the Democratic nomination.
Now Biden and his team want to clarify the choice voters will face, believing the stakes of the election, and Trump’s solidifying grip on the GOP, will appeal to voters in the centre and reinvigorate his base.
While many in the country have hoped for different choices in November, Biden decidedly is not one of them.
He sees a rematch with Trump as both his easiest path to re-election and a validation of his decision, at 81, to seek another fouryear term.
Biden wasted no time trying to anoint Trump as his head-on rival after the Republican’s decisive victory in the New Hampshire primary, which came on the heels of a romp in the Iowa caucuses a week earlier.
Presidential historian Julian Zelizer of Princeton University said the Biden campaign believes it can paint Trump as a real threat because of the Republican’s past record in the Oval Office. “He’s not an incumbent, but he was president,” said Zelizer.
“You have a traditional incumbent saying Opponent X is dangerous for the country, it’s all theoretical. “Here, you’re talking about someone who’s been in the White House.” Biden faces no shortage of headwinds going into the general election season — low approval ratings, widespread concern about his age, multiplying tensions abroad and plenty of discontent at home, including from disenchanted young people and minorities who were key to his first victory. But his campaign has crafted a rejoinder to each count — the answers often circling back to Trump himself.
Indeed, Biden’s team has long anticipated the upcoming contest would be an even more bruising rematch of the 2020 race and they have largely ignored other GOP White House aspirants.
While Biden’s team sees Trump’s coalition as fraying, they’re focused on stitching together their own coalition around issues such as abortion access, healthcare and gun control.
They’re also hoping fears about Trump returning to power will paper over real differences on issues like Biden’s support for Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.