Joe Biden announces 2024 re-election bid, and tries to steal the Republicans’ traditional ‘freedom’ message

Joe Biden’s announcement that he will seek re-election contained an unusual detail that hints at how the unpopular president intends to win.

US President Joe Biden has formally announced he will seek re-election in 2024, setting up a potential rematch with his vanquished opponent from 2020, Donald Trump.

In a three-minute-long video, posted on his social media channels on Tuesday morning, US time, Mr Biden framed next year’s election as a battle between supporters of “freedom” and “extremists” who want to curtail it.

“Freedom. Personal freedom is fundamental to who we are as Americans. There’s nothing more important, more sacred,” he said.

“That has been the work of my first term, to fight for our democracy, to protect our rights, to make sure that everyone in this country is treated equally and everyone is given a fair shot at making it.

“But you know, around the country, MAGA extremists are lining up to take on those bedrock freedoms. Cutting social security that you’ve paid for your entire life while cutting taxes for the very wealthy. Dictating what healthcare decisions women can make. Banning books, and telling people who they can love. All while making it more difficult for you to be able to vote.

Joe Biden speaks in his re-election announcement video.

Joe Biden with his Vice President, Kamala Harris.

“When I ran for president four years ago, I said we are in a battle for the soul of America. And we still are. The question we’re facing is whether, in the years ahead, we have more freedom or less freedom, more rights or fewer. I know what I want the answer to be, and I think you do too. This is not a time to be complacent.

“That’s why I’m running for re-election. Because I know America. I know we’re good and decent people. I know we’re still a country that believes in honesty, respect, and treating each other with dignity. That we’re a nation that gives hate no safe harbour. We believe everyone is equal, that everyone should be given a fair shot to succeed.

“Every generation of Americans has faced a moment where they have to defend democracy: stand up for our right to freedom, stand up for our right to vote and our civil rights. And this is our moment.

“Let’s finish this job. I know we can.”

An unpopular president

Mr Biden’s announcement is not a surprise – he had repeatedly signalled that he intended to seek re-election – but it does defy murmurs within the Democratic Party that he was too old and unpopular. He is already the oldest president in history, with an approval rating stuck in the low forties.

Every generation has a moment where they have had to stand up for democracy. To stand up for their fundamental freedoms. I believe this is ours.

That’s why I’m running for reelection as President of the United States. Join us. Let’s finish the job. https://t.co/V9Mzpw8Sqypic.twitter.com/Y4NXR6B8ly

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) April 25, 2023

Mr Biden is unlikely to face a serious challenge for the Democrats’ presidential nomination. At present, the only other declared candidates are the author Marianne Williamson, who ran unsuccessfully four years ago, and anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

On the Republican side, former president Donald Trump announced his candidacy late last year, having lost to Mr Biden as the incumbent in 2020. Polls show him well ahead of every other declared candidate for the Republican nomination, including former UN ambassador Nikki Haley and former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who won re-election to his job in a landslide last November, is widely seen as the most viable challenger to Mr Trump. Both he and former vice president Mike Pence have yet to make a decision.

Another Biden-Trump election would not be a welcome contest for most Americans. Recent polling showed a whopping 70 per cent of the country, including half of Democrats, did not want Mr Biden to run again, while 60 per cent of the population, including a third of Republicans, said the same for Mr Trump.

Biden’s counterintuitive campaign theme

The President’s campaign announcement re-introduced him to voters with an interesting message. By framing himself as the “freedom” candidate, he is appropriating a theme that is normally at the heart of Republican campaigns.

His argument is that “Make America Great Again extremists”, as he labels them, are threatening to restrict “bedrock freedoms”. Of particular note are his allusions to abortion and “book banning”.

In mid-2022, the US Supreme Court overturned its ruling in the landmark 1973 case Roe vs Wade, which had stopped state governments from banning abortion outright before “viability” (the time at which a foetus can realistically survive outside the womb, at about 23 or 24 weeks of pregnancy).

That ruling was made possible by Mr Trump’s presidency. During his term in the White House, the former president appointed three conservative justices to the court, one of whom replaced the late progressive justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In doing so, he shifted the balance of the court decisively to the right, giving the conservative justices a 6-3 majority.

Roe’s nullifcation enabled state governments across the US to impose much more severe restrictions on access to abortion. More than a dozen Republican-governed states now ban it completely, with no exceptions for cases of rape or incest.

Other states have banned it from six weeks of pregnancy, a point at which many women don’t know they’re pregnant, while a handful have set a more lenient threshold at 15 weeks.

It remains legal, as before, in about half of America’s states.

Abortion is a complicated issue, and most Americans do support some restrictions, but the bans imposed after Roe’s reversal have tended to stray into territory that’s deeply unpopular at a national level. The issue was seen as a key motivation for Democratic voters in the 2022 midterm elections, which saw Republicans underperform expectations in the House of Representatives and go backwards in the Senate.

Clearly, Mr Biden hopes it will continue to resonate.

Another shot from Joe Biden’s announcement video.

His reference to book banning concerns conservative efforts, at state and local level, to restrict the books and other materials available to school students.

PEN America, a non-profit group that describes itself as a defender of free expression and literature, has recently reported a 30 per cent spike in attempts to ban book titles from school districts and libraries. The organisation says the main books targeted are those written by or about people of colour or the LGBTQ+ community.

“I never thought I’d be a president who is fighting against elected officials trying to ban, and banning, books,” Mr Biden said in remarks on Monday.

“Empty shelves don’t help kids learn very much. And I’ve never met a parent who wants a politician dictating what their kid can learn, and what they can think, or who they can be.”

In Florida, governed by Mr Biden’s potential 2024 rival, Mr DeSantis, the war over education came to a head last year when the state government enacted the Parental Rights in Education law, labelled the “Don’t Say Gay” law by critics.

The measure prohibits the discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in schools.. It initially applied only to young primary school students, but was recently extended and now covers pupils all the way through to the end of high school.

Mr Biden’s announcement suggests he will try to paint his Republican opponent, who would normally claim to represent small, unintrusive government, as a champion of government overreach into voters’ lives.\

It’s a counterintuitive gambit. He’s attempting to steal one of the other side’s traditional political strengths, and to make it his own.

Originally published as Joe Biden announces 2024 re-election bid, and tries to steal the Republicans’ traditional ‘freedom’ message