Biden campaign speeds up efforts to get voters to pay attention to the presidential race
With the end of Trump’s criminal trial, the Biden team now sees a new window of opportunity to try and accelerate efforts to draw in disengaged voters.
WASHINGTON — For months, President Joe Biden’s advisers have promised anxious Democrats that once checked-out voters begin to engage, he will gain the advantage over former President Donald Trump. And for months the presidential race has remained stagnant.
With the end of Trump’s criminal trial, the Biden team now sees a new window of opportunity to try and accelerate efforts to draw in disengaged voters, using its growing campaign infrastructure to ramp up voter outreach while sharpening its pitch to voters: that Trump is more focused on himself than them.
“The thing that this campaign is very focused on doing is reminding the American people — and the voters we have to mobilize and persuade — of the incredibly important choice they have, and the clear and present threat that Trump presents,” a senior campaign official said. “That threat for a lot of people isn’t front and center. And we view it as obviously our imperative to put that front and center.”
Joe Biden at George Mason University in Manassas, Va., on Jan. 23, 2024.Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images fileThe campaign’s goal is to lay the groundwork for the first Biden-Trump debate on June 27 by driving issue-specific messages around key events and milestones. In some cases, it will be Biden himself driving the message, as with a major speech planned in France this week on threats to democracy. But consistent with the campaign’s soft touch toward hard-to-reach voters, the effort will also involve key surrogates and what Biden aides refer to as “trusted messengers” — local officials and community leaders — to highlight issues like threats to women’s reproductive rights and the president’s economic vision.
“Our task at this point is engaging them when they don’t want to engage with us,” a Biden campaign pollster said of voters. “Not waiting for them to tune in, but instead sort of being there with a persistent message.”
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