Granted, some questionable assumptions now underlie any theory of how the 81-year-old president would pull out a victory this fall over his predecessor, Donald Trump.
Chief among them is whether Biden can demonstrate he is sharp and vigorous enough to quiet doubts that he is up to another four years in the job. A test will come Thursday evening, when the president holds a rare solo news conference. He cannot afford a shaky performance.
Though Biden has been steadfast in his insistence that he will not step aside, elected officials, major donors and other influential figures in his shaken party are deeply divided over whether their chances would be better if they gambled on a new standard-bearer at the top of their ticket. The palpable fear is that Biden will not only go down to defeat, restoring Trump to the Oval Office, but also take the Democrats’ Senate majority and their hopes of regaining the House with him.
Public polling since the June 27 debate has shown little movement in the race, which perhaps indicates how deeply entrenched and immovable Democrats and Republicans are.
The Biden campaign’s internal numbers, I’m told, show that some slippage has occurred since the debate. It has been largely among what Biden strategists refer to as “engagement targets.” They include younger, non-White and female voters who were with Biden in 2020 but have been less enthusiastic this time around. The decline in their support since the debate has been within the margin of error, officials say, and there is no sign yet that they are moving toward Trump.
These voters are also less likely than intense and attentive partisans to have actually watched the entire debate, which means most of their perceptions of what happened there are coming from news accounts and clips on social media.
But there is also a silver lining for Biden — or perhaps, given the fragility of the current moment, it would be more accurate to call it a foil one. The debate has put many of the president’s grass-roots supporters on high alert. The campaign says $38 million poured into its coffers between the Thursday night of the debate and the following Sunday, and legions of new volunteers are signing up.
What that shows is that his most ardent supporters believe Biden deserves an opportunity to make the case that what Americans saw on the debate stage in Atlanta was an aberration.
What the campaign now must do is redirect the focus that has been almost entirely on their candidate ever since. “This election is about Trump. It’s our job to make that case,” said a senior adviser.
Hence, you hear them talking constantly lately about Project 2025, an initiative overseen by right-wing Trump allies and the conservative Heritage Foundation that details a policy blueprint for the next Republican president.
Major media organizations, including The Post, have been reporting since last year about the radical proposals, such as militarized mass deportations, sharp limits on abortion and handing the White House greater influence over the Justice Department. But the political resonance of Project 2025, which gives substance to Trump’s authoritarian rhetoric, did not become apparent to the Biden campaign until a few months ago, when it noticed a sharp rise in chatter about Project 2025 among liberal political influencers on TikTok.
It didn’t hurt that even the name Project 2025 carries a whiff of dark, conspiratorial plotting. The Democratic National Committee has begun placing billboards about the project. And Biden campaign officials are planning to focus on it in the advertising they expect to run during next week’s Republican National Convention.
That the attacks are having an impact is evidenced by the fact that Trump is distancing himself from the proposals for his next term in office. He wrote on his Truth Social platform that he knows “nothing about Project 2025” and has “no idea who is behind it.”
What hasn’t changed since the debate, Biden campaign officials insist, is that this is going to be a close election. And they believe they have built an operation that is better equipped for an outcome that could be decided by fewer than 100,000 voters in seven states. They have a far greater presence than Trump on the ground, with 1,200 staffers in the battleground states, and are investing heavily in voter registration, as well as ensuring that their supporters not only vote but that their ballots are counted.
In their meme-filled headquarters 100 miles from the turmoil that is going on in Washington, Biden’s campaign is putting its efforts into what it still has the power to control. What is out of their hands is whether Americans can still have confidence in their candidate.
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