When President Joe Biden delivers his second State of the Union address to a packed House of Representatives chamber on Tuesday, it will be his last chance to sell his message — and his imminent candidacy for reelection — to an American public that has proven stubbornly immune to his charm offensives.
Although Mr Biden’s Democratic allies fared far better in last year’s midterm elections than expected of an incumbent president’s party by picking up a Senate seat and losing their House majority by just a handful of seats, the 46th president remains under water in most major opinion polls.
An ABC News / Washington Post poll of 1,003 adults taken at the end of last month showed just 42 per cent of respondents approve of his performance, with a majority of Americans — 53 per cent — saying they either “strongly” or “somewhat” disapprove of how Mr Biden has conducted himself in office.
Another recent poll from the Associated Press showed 41 per cent of Americans approve of Mr Biden’s work as president, just two percentage points lower than the previous month’s result. More than three quarters of Democrats polled by the AP, 77 per cent, said they approve of how Mr Biden is handling his work, while nearly all Republican respondents — 91 per cent — said they disapprove.
Among Democrats, that 77 per cent approval number is just about the same as one year ago. But members of the president’s own party appear unenthused about the prospect of Mr Biden, the oldest man ever to serve as America’s chief executive, seeking a second term.
While 52 per cent of Democrats wanted him to be a candidate in next year’s presidential election when asked as part of AP poll taken just before last year’s midterms, only 37 per cent polled last month said they want him on a presidential ballot in 2024.
Yet Mr Biden appears to be gearing up for a reelection campaign that could once again pit him against the man he defeated in the 2020 election, former president Donald Trump.
Over the weekend, the Democratic National Committee formalised the end of Iowa and New Hampshire’s traditional kickoffs to the primary season by green-lighting South Carolina — the state where Mr Biden’s victory sealed an unprecedented comeback after he lost both earlier contests in 2020 — as the first-in-the-nation Democratic contest next year. That change, which Mr Biden had endorsed, is an acknowledgment of the power held in the party by the Black voters who overwhelmingly supported him as he took on Mr Trump.
The president also appears ready to use his remarks to the nation on Tuesday to tee up a 2024 campaign announcement, in part by using the Republicans who took over the House of Representatives last month as a foil.
While speaking to reporters at Monday’s White House press briefing, National Economic Director Brian Deese said Mr Biden will highlight his economic policies as an “area of contrast” with the GOP.
“He wants this economic conversation to focus on how we can keep reducing costs for the American people, and doing things like cutting taxes for the very wealthiest people in the country and increasing the deficit as a result of that, not only are bad economic policy, but they don't speak in any way to that core issue,” he said.
Mr Biden spent most of the weekend at Camp David surrounded by the advisers and speechwriters who are helping him craft his message to the nation.
In a tweet posted on Monday, he said he was “getting ready” and included a photograph showing the first page of his remarks.
White House aides and others close to the administration say the president will use those remarks to highlight his victories over the last two years and lay out his plans for the next two — and beyond.
Biden confidantes are hopeful that the vast audiences who typically tune in to the State of the Union — 38 million people across 16 networks last year — will be swayed by how he lays out his record over the last two years and begins to open his case for four more.
Zac McCrary, a partner in the polling firm used by Mr Biden, Impact Research, told The Independent in a phone interview that he believes Mr Biden will “continue to build step by step” a “narrative of momentum”.
“This is a country with economic momentum, financial momentum, a country where … we’ve been able to turn the corner on Covid,” he said. “I think the President is going to really be focused on three things: the economy, the economy, the economy”.
He said Mr Biden is “very good” at “talking about the good news that is out there,” but he added that the president would also acknowledge that it is “still harder than it should be to get ahead” for some.
“The State of the Union is not going to change things overnight, but starting to build that narrative becomes really important as we're now into a presidential cycle,” he said.
Mr McCrary also predicted that Mr Biden would highlight the bipartisan wins he has racked up over the last two years, including the massive infrastructure bill he signed into law last year, and highlight his approach to reaching across the political aisle with the Republicans who control the House and who will seek to unseat him in 2024.
“What we hear from President Biden is not just a commitment, not just a symbolic gesture, to bipartisanship, but to trumpeting the work that has been done across party lines. And … using that as a real contrast with the current state of the Republican Party, a Republican Party that now as much as ever is … is still very much in thrall to Donald Trump, to Trumpism, to the Maga movement,” he said.
In the wake of last year’s surprisingly positive results for the Democrats in the midterms, many pundits and observers pointed to Mr Biden’s defence of democracy and pointed criticism of the Trump-era GOP as reasons for that success.
Biden confidantes say Mr Biden will keep pressing home that message in a way that highlights his own contrasts with his GOP opponents, and pointed to his frequent admonition to compare him “to the alternative” rather than “to the almighty”.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre alluded to that potential strategy at her briefing on Monday, telling reporters: “When you think about a record 12 million jobs, when you think about unemployment at the lowest that has been in 54 years, when you think about the 800,000 manufacturing jobs, and how important the Chips and Science Act is going to continue to be as we see manufacturers coming back to the US, those are real data points,” she said.
“That's why the State of the Union, we see it as an important moment … for the President to lay out how he sees the country moving forward and also to remind folks … what he has done the last two years”.
