President Biden’s low approval ratings and various political headwinds have led to comparisons with another one-term Democratic president, Jimmy Carter, and the challenges he faced in his 1980 reelection bid. I’m there. Many Republicans are thinking about Biden’s loss at the hands of Ronald. President Reagan is also bullish that Donald Trump has what it takes to oust the struggling incumbent.
While it’s true that the 2024 race is shaping up to be a kind of 1980 reenactment, there are important developments. A more important comparison is with Mr. Trump and Mr. Carter and their difficulty in persuading voters, as well as with Mr. Biden and Mr. Reagan’s attempts to address age questions (which have flared up again for him). there is a possibility. .Biden.
Certainly, the comparison between Carter and Biden is true. Biden’s average approval rating in his third year in office was the lowest of any sitting president since Carter, and Americans were dissatisfied with the direction of the economy and the country under both men.
But throughout 1980, it became increasingly clear that voter support for Mr. Carter had its limits. Voters had already decided they did not want to give him a second term. As of the end of March, Carter’s confirmation of his appointment was close to 41% of the vote in November.
In this year’s election campaign, Mr. Trump is most similar to Mr. Carter in the most important respects, including the ceiling on political support.
First, the most divisive and divisive people in 1980 and today were Mr. Carter and Mr. Trump. Like Carter, most voters have strong opinions about Trump. His ability to inspire his base is matched only by his ability to alienate the rest of the electorate—as evidenced by the Republican Party’s crushing losses in the 2018, 2020, and 2022 elections.
In the end, Mr. Carter was unable to attract enough people to increase his share of the electorate. Trump faces the same challenge this year. By contrast, Mr. Reagan benefits from the Reagan Democratic Party, and Mr. Biden may gain votes from anti-Trump Republicans. This is especially true if Trump was convicted of a felony before the election.
No doubt Mr. Biden hopes these vulnerabilities will hurt Mr. Trump. But Biden needs to do more. One of the lessons learned from the 1980 presidential campaign was that dissatisfaction with a candidate alone is not enough to seal a candidate’s fate if that candidate does not meet voters’ standards of acceptance. That means no. To be reelected, Mr. Biden will need to meet the same standards as Mr. Reagan.
In 1980, voters continued to have doubts about Mr. Reagan’s age and temperament throughout much of the campaign, but given their concerns about Mr. Carter, they continued to lower the bar for what they wanted from Mr. Reagan in order to win their support. .
It was after the debate between the two men on October 28 that Mr. Reagan was finally able to convince the nation that he was worthy of the presidency. Before the debate, Mr. Reagan led Mr. Carter by 8 points among registered voters and 3 points among likely voters, according to Gallup. Immediately after the debate, Mr. Reagan had a three-point lead with voters, and a week later he won a landslide victory over Mr. Carter.
It wasn’t so much that Mr. Reagan won the debate, but that he did enough to reassure voters that he could carry out the job of president. He needed to close the deal.
A similar task awaits Biden. Like Mr. Reagan, the president must overcome deep doubts about his age and his ability to get his country back on track over the next four years. Moreover, despite having a different political base than Mr. Reagan, Mr. Biden is attracting the same swing groups that Mr. Reagan did to win in 1980: college graduates, independents, and moderate suburban voters. must be appealed to. Mr. Biden won with these groups in 2020 (he won narrowly among suburban voters, similar to Mr. Reagan’s narrow margin among moderate voters).
To replicate Mr. Biden’s success with these key groups and other voters, Mr. Biden will need to do more than just attack Mr. Trump. Biden’s biggest challenge at the moment is not Trump but himself. Will he be able to convince voters, like Mr. Reagan, that he can serve as president at an age when most people are retired?
And there are growing concerns about Biden’s age. An NBC News poll conducted in late January found that 76% of respondents were concerned that Biden lacked the physical and mental health necessary to serve a second term. I answered. The poll was taken before the release of Special Counsel Robert K. Hur’s report, which described Mr. Biden as a “well-meaning old man with a poor memory.”
If Mr. Biden is to stabilize his campaign and overcome doubts that Mr. Even if you have Mr. Reagan’s communication skills, pretending it’s not a problem or trying to make jokes about it won’t work. Rather, Mr. Biden should emphasize that age is not the only thing that matters. That is the wisdom of his ideas. And contrast Trump’s positive views on climate change, abortion rights, and reasonable gun control with his negative views on these issues.
Biden also needs to change his current economic message, which is inconsistent with how the majority of Americans feel about life. As he talks about his plan, he needs to acknowledge the economic challenges facing many of his constituents, many of whom are still feeling the aftershocks of the highest inflation rates since the early 1980s.
Finally, Biden has not fully utilized the powers of the presidency to tout his accomplishments during his time in office. His presidency lacks a clear narrative to tell the story to voters. It’s a story about trying to make the most of his strengths while neutralizing his weaknesses.
By contrast, Mr. Reagan built his 1980 presidential candidacy and campaign schedule around his strengths, such as his optimism, confidence, and charisma for the United States, and his less specific but positive outlook. We combined them with the story. Given concerns about his age, his looks were just as important as what he said. That’s why some of the key moments of his campaign featured him working on a ranch or riding horses, rather than speeches or formal events.
Biden’s schedule should be built around his strengths: connecting with people, not set pieces that speak from a podium. Like Mr. Reagan, Mr. Biden should not have a busy schedule. That’s because Mr. Biden’s performance is uneven when he’s tired, as Mr.
Biden will have time to make his case during what could be the longest general election campaign in modern history. However, if we are to increase our poll numbers, we need to have a sense of crisis. Trump appears to have an advantage nationally and in key battleground states. This is largely due to declining support for Biden rather than rising enthusiasm for Trump, which could put voters’ support at a ceiling similar to Carter’s.
Voters will be told every day for the next nine months how chaotic the next four years will be if Trump is elected. Ultimately, it will depend on whether Biden can sufficiently convince voters that he can serve as president into his mid-80s. If he can’t do that, it doesn’t really matter what the country thinks about Trump.
Doug Sosnick served as a senior advisor to President Bill Clinton from 1994 to 2000 and has advised more than 50 state governors and U.S. senators.
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