Seven months before the US presidential elections, Joe Biden faces a steep road to re-election. His 39.4% approval rating makes him the most unpopular president since World War II and he is still behind Donald Trump in six of seven swing states, according to a poll published by The Wall Street Journal. . Criticisms over aging and inflation are compounded by divisions within his party over maintaining military support for Israel during the Gaza offensive and protest votes in numerous primaries, led by Arab citizen groups, young and progressive.
Faced with the “threat to democracy” that Trump’s return would pose, in his words, the democrats are trying to join forces in a common front. Last week, former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama gave us an unprecedented image: they accompanied Biden to a fund-raising event for his campaign in New York, which pocketed the record figure of more than 26 million dollars in just one night A few days earlier, Obama met with Biden at the White House to devise a plan to beat Trump and, after four hours of meeting, told the media that it was time for “everyone” in the Democratic Party to “pull a line.” “needle”.
It is common for a candidate to turn to the political capital of a former president to gain support. Clinton was vocal in the presidential campaigns of his wife, Hillary Clinton, in the 2008 primaries – which she lost to Obama – and in 2016, when she won the nomination of her party, but was defeated in November by Trump. And in 2020 Obama was another important asset for the victory of Biden, who was the vice president, and he is again taking center stage this election.
Nevertheless, the powerful image of three Democratic presidents in the same scenario “is something unprecedented and significant”, says Hunter Walker, author of The truce: progressives, centrists, and the future of the Democratic Party. “As election day approaches, we will see more of Obama and his wife, Michelle, who are still very popular among the Democratic electorate,” predicts the journalist, who sees Clinton’s star appearance as his “return” to political life after the defeat of his wife in 2016.
In his book of investigative journalism, which reveals never-before-seen conversations within the Democratic Party, Walker recounts the urgency felt by its various segments after Trump’s victory in 2016 to park their differences and sign a truce, which give the strength to win in 2020. During the magnate’s presidency, “Obama was haunted by the idea that the strong division between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders had allowed the rise of Trump”, and, therefore, in 2020, when the party apparatus rejected the candidacy of the progressive, “he worked between bambolines to build a bridge between Sanders and Biden that united the progressive and moderate electorate”. Then, “his calls played an important role” in terms of the design of the joint policies of the working groups formed by the two candidates, which gave rise, among other proposals, to the green new deal.
Despite the fact that these internal disputes are still there, and are clearly visible, for example, among congressmen critical of Israel, “the existence of Trump is the glue that holds them together”, and Clinton’s return to the political scene stages it: the former president campaigned against Obama in 2008 and against Sanders in 2016, and now supports Biden, who has tried to position himself among centrists and progressives to “transcend the divisions”, Walker notes in a interview with La Vanguardia.
The president can benefit from the legacy of the two presidents, who left the White House with high approval ratings – Clinton with 59% and Obama with 51.7% – to compensate for vulnerabilities. “Obama is particularly popular among the young and progressives, who do not feel challenged by Biden and tend to participate less”, the journalist assesses, while “Clinton seduces the older, white and center voter”, so that the combination of both is “a really interesting deployment of strength and muscle, and also of political strategy”.
Strategy, in American politics, has a lot to do with money. And, in this field, Biden does have an advantage over Trump, who is suffering to pay for the two civil convictions and his defense in four criminal trials, the first of which begins on April 15 in New York. The president has saved during the primaries, without any relevant opposition and, now that Trump has confirmed himself as his rival in November, he still has a 100 million dollar advantage over the Republican in the new electoral phase. Four years ago, at this time, the Trump campaign surpassed him by 187 million, despite the fact that Biden entered more during the final stretch.
Fundraising was the main purpose of Thursday’s joint event, which brought in 26 million in one day, with tickets starting at $250 and reaching 500,000. Although some analysts downplay financial muscle in an election between two well-known candidates, Walker says the advantage could be decisive for Biden’s comeback.
“There is an important logistical component to campaigns: flying the team to the rallies, hiring security, producing T-shirts, putting up posters and putting on television ads… All of this is still essential despite the transformations that have assuming social networks”, he declares, and gives importance to another issue in which, precisely, Michelle Obama is very involved: voter registration. With the independent organization When We All Vote, the former first lady promotes participation.
Biden, Clinton and Obama have differences on several issues related to college debt or universal health care, but they publicly display the urgency to unite in the face of Trump’s extremism, which promises to eliminate Obamacare, close the Department of ‘ Education, reversing climate policies and increasing oil and gas drilling, among other controversial measures.
The two former presidents, in continuous communication with Biden, will monopolize headlines until November; it remains to be seen to what extent their common front is enough to defeat Trump, who is very prominent in polls that, as the primaries have shown, tend to overestimate his support.
