Inside Biden’s anti-Trump battle plan (and where Taylor Swift fits in)

WASHINGTON – As former president Donald Trump speeds towards the Republican nomination, United States President Joe Biden is moving quickly to pump energy into his re-election bid, kicking off what is likely to be an ugly, dispiriting and historically long slog to November between two unpopular nominees.

After months of languid build-up, in which he held only a single public campaign event, Mr Biden has thrown a series of rallies across battleground states, warning that democracy itself is at stake in 2024.

He sent two of his most trusted White House operatives to take the helm of his reelection campaign in Wilmington, Delaware, after Trump seized control of the Republican primary race more rapidly than Mr Biden’s advisers had initially expected.

And other Biden aides are drafting wish lists of potential surrogates, including elected officials, social media influencers and the endorsement of their wildest dreams: global superstar Taylor Swift.

“It’s game on, the beginning of the general election,” said Representative Ann McLane Kuster of New Hampshire, chair of the New Democrat Coalition, a group of 97 centrist House Democrats. “We’ve got to win this.”

In a race without historical parallel – a contest between two presidents, one of them facing 91 criminal charges – Mr Biden is making an extraordinary gamble, betting that Trump remains such an animating force in American life that the nation’s current leader can turn the 2024 election into a referendum not on himself but on his predecessor.

Resurrecting a version of the argument that worked for them in 2020, Mr Biden’s team and his top allies plan to paint Trump as a mortal threat to American government and civil society, and are banking that fears of another turbulent Trump administration will outweigh worries about Mr Biden’s age and vitality.

Polls have shown Mr Biden trailing Trump in a head-to-head contest, with many Democratic voters reluctant to back him again.

The president’s aides plan to couple a direct assault on Trump with a heavy focus on abortion rights, casting the issue as symbolic of larger conservative efforts to restrict personal freedoms.

They believe that the more the public sees and hears Trump, the less people will be inclined to vote for him, and the more the Biden campaign will be able to use his words on issues like abortion and healthcare against him.

Mr Biden’s aides argue that voters remember the events of Jan 6, 2021, all too well, making the day a touchstone akin to the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. They think an anti-Trump message about democracy can persuade Democratic voters to line up behind Mr Biden and win over independents who backed Trump in 2020 but disapprove of his behaviour since.

Democrats have successfully wielded a Trump-centric message even with the former president out of office, including in the 2022 midterms and more than two dozen elections in 2023. Now that he looks likely to return to a presidential ticket – and as he continues to shape the direction of Republican politics – top Biden allies see an opening to draw a sharp contrast.

“Once again,” said Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, chair of the Democratic Governors Association, there is a “binary choice: democracy, freedom versus extremism and chaos. Real kitchen-table issues that affect people or just nonsense things that they dream up”.

Yet, the election will not be about Trump in a vacuum.

Many Democrats continue to worry that training their attention on him will fail to energise voters who are already pessimistic about Mr Biden.

Polling shows that some of the Black, Latino, young and suburban voters who lifted him to victory in 2020 have since turned on him, in part over misgivings about his age, economic record and support for Israel.

Campaign aides and top officials largely brush off those concerns, believing that attitudes on the economy, at least, will change as it shows more signs of improvement.

Tapping the Swifties

To rally the growing number of voters who do not consume news through traditional media, the campaign is trying to reach them on social media, with videos from influencers and even those with smaller followings.

During a stop in North Carolina in January, Mr Biden made an hour-long visit to the home of a supporter who had his student loans cancelled through a federal programme. The man’s son later posted a video of Mr Biden’s visit on TikTok, which drew millions of views – a template for how the campaign hopes to reach voters in new ways.

The campaign has begun discussions with celebrities and social media stars about promoting Mr Biden on Instagram and TikTok.

When Mr Biden took a fundraising swing through Southern California in December, the campaign carved out time to meet influencers to pitch them on posting pro-Biden content. There are also plans, first reported on Jan 28 by NBC News, to hold a fund raiser with two Democratic former presidents: Mr Bill Clinton and Mr Barack Obama, according to two people familiar with the discussions.

The biggest and most influential endorsement target is Ms Taylor Swift, 34, the pop sensation and NFL enthusiast, who can move millions of supporters with an Instagram post or a mid-concert aside.

She endorsed Mr Biden in 2020 and, in 2023, a single Instagram post of hers led to 35,000 new voter registrations. Fundraising appeals from Ms Swift could be worth millions of dollars for Mr Biden.

Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, a key Biden ally, said Democrats needed to press an affirmative case for the president, reminding voters that tangible changes to their lives – a cap on insulin costs, a road or bridge repaired for the first time – could be tied to the administration’s accomplishments.

In the 2020 campaign, Mr Clyburn said, “people were voting against Trump. Our job this time is to convince people to vote for Biden”.

“We just can’t rely on this anti-Trump stuff because Trump’s supporters are going to turn out big, because they are emotionally tied to Trump,” he went on. “We’ve got to get our voters emotionally tied to Biden.”

Deploying the big guns

To help assuage those Democratic anxieties, Mr Biden dispatched Ms Jennifer O’Malley Dillon and Mr Mike Donilon, two top White House aides, to Wilmington to devote their entire focus to the campaign.

For months, donors and other allies had expressed frustration with an arrangement in which the top decision-makers in Mr Biden’s campaign were still in their White House roles while top officials in Wilmington were left to carry out orders.

The campaign has also answered gripes about its slow pace of hiring by bringing on a slew of new staff members. It now has more than 100 staff members, with teams on the ground in six battleground states and South Carolina, which will hold the first recognised Democratic primary on Feb 3.

Yet, many new hires are working jobs roughly similar to what they did at their state parties.

In Wisconsin, the six new Biden campaign staff members all came from the state’s Democratic Party, and they are all still working in the same offices and conference rooms.

The spokesperson for a super political action committee behind the push to write in Mr Biden’s name on Democratic primary ballots in New Hampshire will be the campaign manager for Mr Biden in the state.

Ms O’Malley Dillon, who managed Mr Biden’s 2020 campaign, is widely viewed as a stabilising force and will arrive in Wilmington with decision-making authority that was not afforded to the campaign manager, Ms Julie Chavez Rodriguez.

Mr Kirk Wagar, a Democratic donor who served as ambassador to Singapore during the Obama administration, said: “Having 100 per cent of a mind like Jen O’Malley’s thinking about the campaign can’t be anything other than a great thing.” NYTIMES