In an effort to rally support for his 2024 campaign, President Joe Biden will deliver a major speech on Friday, highlighting the persistent danger to democracy posed by Donald Trump, on the three-year anniversary of the US Capitol attack on January 6.
Whether lagging behind or in a closely contested position with Trump in recent polls, the 81-year-old Democrat will use an address near the historic US independence war site of Valley Forge in Pennsylvania to depict his likely Republican competitor as a menace to the nation.
Due to an impending winter storm, the speech was moved up a day from Saturday to align with the third anniversary of the Capitol assault by a pro-Trump mob attempting to overturn Biden’s 2020 election victory.
The initiative to fortify Biden’s struggling campaign by depicting him as a defender of democracy is set to unfold on Monday as he visits a South Carolina church where a white supremacist, in 2015, fatally shot nine Black parishioners.
Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Biden’s campaign manager, stressed that Biden’s assertion four years ago about leading a “battle for the soul of America” holds even greater relevance today.
“The threat Donald Trump posed in 2020 to American democracy has only grown more dire in the years since,” she said in a statement.
The venues for Biden’s first speeches of 2024 are deliberately symbolic — especially the first, at a school near Valley Forge, where George Washington, the first US president, regrouped American forces fighting their British colonial rulers nearly 250 years ago.
‘We chose Valley Forge as George Washington united the colonies there,’ said principal deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks.
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‘Then he became president and set the precedent for the peaceful transition of power — something that Donald Trump and Republicans refused to do.’
The early 2024 initiative follows critiques from certain Democrats who argue that the Biden campaign has encountered a sluggish beginning.
Biden faces challenges in convincing voters of economic improvement, even with promising statistics, as Americans continue to grapple with soaring food and housing costs.
Migration across the Mexican border remains a substantial challenge, contributing to internal party disagreements over his stance on Israel’s conflict with Hamas, and facing hurdles in Congress for securing additional funds for Ukraine.
Opting not to address Trump’s multiple criminal cases to steer clear of any suggestion of influencing the judiciary, Biden has also foregone the use of one of his most impactful political strategies.
But perhaps Biden’s biggest vulnerability is his age: as America’s oldest-ever president, he has suffered a series of trips and verbal slips.
Biden lags behind Trump, the man he beat in 2020, in a series of polls, and also has the worst approval rating of any modern president in the December before an election.
‘If the election were held tomorrow, President Biden would lose,’ William Galston, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told AFP.
Despite previous approaches, the Pennsylvania and South Carolina speeches signal a deliberate move by the Biden campaign to depict the election as a decisive binary between him and the twice-impeached former president.
Even though the fight for the Republican nomination won’t commence until the Iowa caucuses on January 15, the campaign is already framing Trump as the expected contender.
Trump is being singled out by Democrats, who are focusing on issues such as abortion access and healthcare.
Biden’s opening TV ad for the year sounds the alarm on an “extremist” peril to democracy, weaving together images from the Capitol attack with intense musical accompaniment.
‘It was a sight that was horrific,’ White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Thursday.
‘The president is going to continue to speak about this and continue to be very vocal about this.’