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      Joe Biden and the Not-So-Bad Economy

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      Joe Biden has, to nobody’s surprise, formally announced that he is seeking re-election. And I, for one, am dreading the year and a half of political crystal ball gazing that lies ahead of us — a discussion to which I will have little if anything to add.One thing I may be able to contribute to, however, is the way we talk about the Biden economy. Much political discussion, it seems to me, is informed by a sense that the economy will be a major liability for Democrats — a sense that is strongly affected by out-of-date or questionable data.Of course, a lot can change between now and November 2024. We could have a recession, maybe as the delayed effect of monetary tightening by the Federal Reserve. We might all too easily face a financial crisis this summer when, as seems likely, Republicans refuse to raise the debt ceiling — and nobody knows how that will play out politically.Right now, however, the economy is in better shape than I suspect most pundits or even generally well-informed readers may realize.The basic story of the Biden economy is that America has experienced a remarkably fast and essentially complete job market recovery. This recovery was initially accompanied by distressingly high inflation; but inflation, while still high by the standards of the past few decades, has subsided substantially. The overall situation is, well, not so bad.About jobs: Unless you’ve been getting your news from Tucker Carlson or Truth Social, you’re probably aware that the unemployment rate is hovering near historic lows. However, I keep hearing assertions that this number is misleading, because millions of Americans have dropped out of the labor force — which was true a year ago.But it’s not true anymore. There are multiple ways to make this point, but one way is to compare where we are now with projections made just before Covid struck. In January 2020 the Congressional Budget Office projected that by the first quarter of 2023 nonfarm employment would be 154.8 million; the actual number for March was 155.6 million. As a recent report from the Council of Economic Advisers points out, labor force participation — the percentage of adults either working or actively looking for work — is also right back in line with pre-Covid projections.In short, we really are back at full employment.Inflation isn’t as happy a picture. If we measure inflation by the annual rate of change in consumer prices over the past six months — my current preference for trying to extract the signal from the noise — inflation was almost 10 percent in June 2022. But it’s now down to just 3.5 percent.That’s still above the Fed’s target of 2 percent, and there’s intense debate among economists about how hard it will be to get inflation all the way down (intense because nobody really knows the answer). But maybe some perspective is in order. The current inflation rate is lower than it was at the end of Ronald Reagan’s second term.Or consider the “misery index,” the sum of unemployment and inflation — a crude measure that nonetheless seems to do a pretty good job of predicting consumer sentiment. Using six-month inflation, that index is currently about 7, roughly the same as it was in 2017, when few people considered the economy a disaster.But never mind these fancy statistics — don’t people perceive the economy as terrible? After all, news coverage tends to emphasize the negative: You hear a lot about soaring prices of gasoline or eggs, much less when they come back down. Even amid a vast jobs boom, consumers report having heard much more negative than positive news about employment.Even so, do people consider the economy awful? It depends on whom you ask. The venerable Michigan Survey still shows consumer sentiment at levels heretofore associated with severe economic crises. But the also well-established Conference Board survey — which, as it happens, has a much larger sample size — tells a different story: Its “present situation” index is fairly high, roughly comparable to what it was in 2017. That is, it’s more or less in line with the misery index.And for what it’s worth, both the strength of consumer spending, even in the relatively soft latest report on G.D.P., and the failure of the much-predicted red wave to materialize in the midterm elections look a lot more Conference Board than Michigan.Again, a lot can happen between now and the election. But what strikes me is that consumers already expect a lot of bad news. The Conference Board expectations index is far below its “present situation” index; consumers expect 4 to 5 percent inflation over the next year, while financial markets expect a number more like 2. If we either don’t have a recession or any recession is brief and mild, if inflation actually does come down, voters seem set to view those outcomes as a positive surprise.Now, I’m not predicting a “morning in America”-type election; such things probably aren’t even possible in an era of intense partisanship. But the idea that the economy is going to pose a huge problem for Democrats next year isn’t backed by the available data.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Biden’s Highest Hurdle Isn’t Age, It’s Passion

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      Joe Biden is officially running for re-election, and his candidacy will put some Democratic voters — those not only skittish about his age but also about his passion for policy — in a vise: They recognize the threat from the leading Republican candidates, but they’ve been underwhelmed by Biden, who’d be 82 at the start of a second term.The age question is a major concern for Biden, according to political advisers I’ve spoken to recently — and according to the chatter on cable news and online. And the sense that he has underwhelmed is particularly problematic for Biden when it comes to young voters. According to an Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School poll of 18-to 29-year-olds released Monday, just 36 percent of young Americans approve of Biden’s job performance. That number has steadily dropped over the course of his presidency.Though young voters were only 17 percent of the 2020 electorate, they’ll probably be a key to another Biden win, since he won about 60 percent of the 18-to-29 vote last time around. Younger voters can also be barometers of how much a candidate’s passion factors into his appeal.I reached out to several voting rights advocates and political organizers to discuss Biden’s bid, and the overall impression settles somewhere between cautious optimism and dampened enthusiasm, not so much about Biden’s age, but how voters, including younger voters, look at his policy priorities. As Clifford Albright, the co-founder and executive director of the Black Voters Matter Fund, told me, although younger voters would generally like to see younger candidates, “the age thing can be overcome if you’re talking about the right issues.”Albright mentioned the presidential candidacies of Senator Bernie Sanders, who’s about a year older than Biden. As a contender for the Democratic nomination, he said, Sanders was held aloft by young voters because he vociferously championed issues that they cared about. They felt that he was fighting for them.It’s on those issues where some activists seemed to think Biden had left an opening for voter disappointment. They weren’t naïve about the structural obstacles in the way Congress operates that made legislative progress difficult, if not impossible, but they simply didn’t believe that Biden went down fighting on some of the initiatives that younger Democratic voters cared about most.One that sticks in their craws, undoubtedly because they deal with voting rights, was a sense that Biden didn’t fight hard enough for the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.Nse Ufot, the founder of the New South Super PAC, chastised Biden for speaking about the voting rights bill at the Atlanta University Center — home to four historically Black colleges and universities, in a state where both senators were already committed to voting for the law — ahead of a push to the pass the bill, knowing there weren’t enough votes to pass it. Biden “should have been in West Virginia,” said Ufot, he “should have been in Phoenix, Ariz., because those are the people who need to hear it.”She said it seemed almost like a coach coming to the sideline to console a team in defeat even though there was still time left on the clock and the game was still being played. It just didn’t feel like an all-out effort to go down swinging.Ufot, channeling the rapper Ice Cube, said of Biden: “I need you to put your back into it!”But both Ufot and Albright considered the hesitation about Biden’s age a bit of a red herring. For them, policy and voter engagement — and the time and resources put into both — will be more determinative.On the policy front, Albright believes that the polling for Democrats, particularly in the fall of 2022, ticked up not only because the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, but also because Biden finally took action on student loan forgiveness, the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act with the most significant climate provisions in American history and the passage of relatively narrow, but still significant, federal gun legislation. A half year later, these Democratic wins can feel like old news, but they were agenda items that Democratic voters, including young voters, cared deeply about.So if Biden made gains on some of the issues that young voters care about, why are the activists still concerned?Biden’s challenge when it comes to younger voters isn’t so much his age, but his posture, they say. He was elected in part as an antidote to the chaos of the Donald Trump years. But, as Albright sees it now, “some of that stability that he offers, some of that comfort or whatever that he offers some folks, that has actually been, from our perspective, part of the problem.”“When you’re in a moment like what we’re in,” Albright said, “you have to recognize that this is not a time for the normal, the traditional, the nostalgia or whatever, and that you need something different.”Ufot buttressed that sentiment more bluntly, saying, “People are trying to appear to be elder statesmen when the country is,” in effect, on “fire.”In a certain sense, Biden’s age becomes a proxy for other dissatisfactions voters may have with him. Trump is just four years younger than Biden, but he has convinced his followers that his venom is a marker of virility.Biden has to demonstrate more fight for more progressive policies. Even if he loses the battles, he has to show the scars. Positioning himself as the last line of defense against the return of Trump or the rise of an equally dangerous Republican isn’t sufficient.He has to show that he is more bulldog than bulwark.As Tram Nguyen, co-executive director of the New Virginia Majority, put it, in the next year and a half leading to the election, “I think you’re going to see more — at least I hope we’re going to see more — of that fight, because I think at the end of the day, voters want to vote for someone who they believe will fight for what is needed.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More

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      How Much Do Voters Really Care About Biden’s Age?

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      The evidence suggests it may end up mattering less to voters than their responses to polls indicate.Many Americans say they do not want President Biden to run for re-election, and his age is a big reason. In an NBC News poll released last weekend, 70 percent of adults said Mr. Biden, who is 80, should not run again. Asked if age was a factor, 69 percent of them said yes. Other recent surveys detect a similar lack of enthusiasm, with many voters — including around half of Democrats — calling him too old to seek the White House again.Taken at face value, it’s easy to imagine that his age could undermine the re-election campaign he formally announced on Tuesday. Mr. Biden, already the oldest president in U.S. history, would be 86 at the end of his second term. Republicans have amplified video of his verbal miscues — he also has a stutter — and suggested they reflect cognitive decline. Mr. Biden’s age is a frequent punchline on late-night television.But a review of the polling and academic research paints a surprisingly mixed picture. With the obvious caveat that a serious age-related gaffe or health crisis could change things, there are good reasons to think that Biden’s age may matter less than some polls suggest.1. Theory vs. practiceAmericans often express concern about aging leaders, but that hasn’t stopped them from voting for older candidates.In a recent USA Today/Suffolk University survey, half of Americans said that the ideal age for a president was between 51 and 65. Another quarter said they preferred candidates to be 50 or younger. But five of the last eight presidential nominees, including Mr. Biden in 2020 and Donald J. Trump (twice), have been well over 65. In several cases, voters chose them over much younger primary opponents. And dozens of senators or representatives over 80 have been elected in the past century.Concerns over age are also more nuanced than they may first appear. While most voters favor age limits for politicians, they disagree over what that limit should be. Many voters also say older lawmakers bring valuable experience and shouldn’t be barred from serving if they remain in good health.That doesn’t mean Americans who say they’re concerned about age are lying. Their voting choices may reflect the available options. “There’s nothing inconsistent about people saying no one in their 80s should be president and then voting for someone in their 80s if that’s the only choice they’re given,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster.It’s also not clear that age is a disadvantage for older candidates. Older leaders tend to have lower approval ratings than younger ones, according to a 2022 study co-authored by Damon Roberts, a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Colorado Boulder. But in his research, voters expressed relatively equal openness to supporting hypothetical candidates who were 23, 50 or 77.There are also just a lot of old politicians in office these days. “I don’t think that Biden in particular looks super out of place in the political scene right now,” Mr. Roberts said.Still, no one Mr. Biden’s age has ever sought re-election to the presidency, and other experts doubt he will blend in so easily. “The presidency is fundamentally different,” Mr. Ayres said. “The visibility is so much greater.”2. Party above allPolls do suggest that voters discern bigger issues for Mr. Biden than past older candidates (although pollsters seem to have asked about past candidates’ ages less often). But in a polarized era, party loyalty is far likelier to determine voters’ choice.“In the final analysis, we’re going to vote for the ‘D’ or the ‘R,’ ” said Karlyn Bowman, an emeritus fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who studies public opinion polling. “Partisan loyalty is so strong at this point that that will trump the other concerns.”Perceptions of Mr. Biden’s fitness also track with partisanship. Republicans — who are unlikely to back any Democratic candidate, no matter how spry — are the most apt to say that Mr. Biden is too old to run. His age also hasn’t stopped the vast majority of Democrats from deeming his presidency a success (though younger Democrats have expressed less eagerness to see Mr. Biden run again).“People are thinking about the election through the lens of other things,” said Margie Omero, a principal at GBAO, a Democratic polling firm. “Biden’s record, Trump’s record, what they see as the future of the country, legislative accomplishments, the fight for abortion rights.”Mr. Biden’s age may ultimately matter most to swing voters who are open to backing either party, giving them outsize clout to pick the winner. “It’s a very small slice of the population now, but still, it’s a very consequential one,” Ms. Bowman said.3. Just a numberThat brings us to whether Mr. Biden will be able to influence voters’ views about his fitness for office. In February, Ms. Omero and her colleagues at Navigator Research, a Democratic polling firm, recruited a small group of swing voters to watch Mr. Biden’s State of the Union address. Before the speech, just 35 percent of them described him as “up for the job of president.” After the address — which featured an impromptu back-and-forth with congressional Republicans over Social Security and Medicare — 55 percent rated him that way.Mr. Biden could also try to dodge the issue by continuing to limit his public appearances. Mr. Ayres worked on the 1996 Senate re-election campaign for Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, then 93, at a time when he was reportedly experiencing cognitive decline. “We tried to keep him as invisible as possible,” Mr. Ayres said.Past presidents, including Dwight Eisenhower and Mr. Reagan, have overcome questions about their age to win re-election decisively.But Mr. Biden is older than they were during their re-election campaigns. “The issue is not so much what he is like today,” Mr. Ayres said. “The issue is what he would be like in 2028.” The president may have to bank on voters overlooking any longer-term concerns about his age.4. The Trump factorMr. Trump, who will be 78 on Election Day, appears best positioned to win the 2024 Republican primary. He leads his closest potential competitor — Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, 44 — in national polls and endorsements from other Republicans.Though the similar ages of Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump could make the issue a wash, for now voters say they’re more concerned about Mr. Biden’s age. And if Mr. Trump aggressively attacks Mr. Biden’s fitness, he may draw more scrutiny to it than a younger but more restrained challenger could.But it’s also a message Mr. Trump has used before (see: 2020’s “Sleepy Joe”) in a matchup he didn’t win. At some point, all the talk about Mr. Biden’s age may start to feel to voters like old hat. More

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      How Joe Biden Can Win in 2024

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      In 2024, the fate of the Democratic Party will rest in the hands of an 81-year-old incumbent president whom a majority of the country disapproves of and even many Democratic voters think should step aside rather than run for re-election.In the past, the conventional wisdom would be that President Biden faces an uphill battle to win a second term. But in today’s volatile, polarized political environment — in which Mr. Biden’s predecessor and potential general election opponent, Donald Trump, became the first ex-president to be criminally indicted and Democrats posted a history-defying midterm performance — he opens his re-election campaign in a stronger position than many would expect.He can make a compelling case for his first-term accomplishments, his steady leadership and a vision of the country fundamentally different from what is on offer from Republicans — of freedom of opportunity and opportunity of freedom for all Americans.A number of factors have worked in his favor. Because of his age, Mr. Biden has been dogged by speculation about his re-election plans. But no major candidate has stepped up to challenge him in the Democratic primary, which will allow him and his campaign team to focus their time, efforts and resources on the general election.For months, Democrats have been frustrated with the gap between Mr. Biden’s accomplishments and the public’s awareness of them. Despite a flurry of big-ticket legislation that the president signed into law in 2021 and 2022, a February poll showed that 62 percent of Americans — including 66 percent of independents — believed that the Biden administration has accomplished either “not very much” or “little or nothing.” The administration has already begun chipping away at this perception deficit, with the president, vice president and cabinet officials fanning out to battleground states and other parts of the country to spotlight these accomplishments.The timing is right, because these programs are starting to have a big impact on the lives of many Americans. In March, Eli Lilly became the first major drug company to announce that it would cap out-of-pocket insulin costs at $35 a month, matching the Inflation Reduction Act’s cap on insulin costs for seniors. The administration says it has financed over 4,600 bridge repair and replacement projects across the country. And the private sector has committed over $200 billion in manufacturing investments since the passage of the Chips and Science Act, including $40 billion to build new semiconductor factories in Arizona and $300 million to manufacture semiconductor parts in Bay County, Mich.Mr. Biden has even made gains in mitigating voters’ concerns about his age. First, there was his lively, 73-minute State of the Union address, where he sparred ably with heckling Republicans, baiting them into backing his positions on Social Security and Medicare. And his surprise trip to Ukraine, which was the first time in modern history that a president visited an active war zone outside of the control of the U.S. military, received expansive coverage.But Mr. Biden’s biggest advantage might not come from anything he has done. Instead, it might come from the chaos among Republicans. This is welcome news for the president, who is fond of telling voters, “Don’t compare me to the almighty; compare me to the alternative.”There has been talk among many Republican leaders and donors about moving on from Mr. Trump — most recently, in the weeks after the 2022 midterms — but the base isn’t following their lead. Since his indictment by a Manhattan grand jury, his grip on the party, at least based on recent polling evidence, has grown tighter. That may be good news for his campaign, but he has significant vulnerabilities in a general election.And Mr. Trump is just the beginning of the G.O.P.’s problems. In recent years, the electorate has become more supportive of abortion rights. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, election after election has provided evidence of that. Yet Republicans have not come up with an answer — and in some ways, they seem to be making the problem worse. This month, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed into law a six-week abortion ban, which would prohibit the procedure before many women even know they are pregnant. Candidates and likely contenders including former Vice President Mike Pence, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina and former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas have endorsed extreme anti-abortion measures that would be effected nationally — upending years of Republican claims that abortion should be “left to the states.”There are no signs that abortion is letting up as a top issue for voters. This month, liberals won control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court for the first time in over a decade after Judge Janet Protasiewicz ran a campaign focused on abortion rights and extremism on the right and secured an 11-point victory.A key part of Mr. Biden’s appeal for Democrats is that he doesn’t provoke the sort of divisiveness that Mr. Trump does. Despite Mr. Biden’s sagging approval ratings, in the 2022 midterms, we saw that voting against the president was not a big motivator for many Americans (compared with 2018, when casting a vote against Mr. Trump was a substantial motivator).If these trends continue, Democratic voters will continue to be motivated to vote against an extremist Republican Party — and Democrats will stand a good chance of winning the critical independent bloc.President Biden and his team still have work to do to firm up his support before the election. First up is navigating a debt-ceiling showdown with Speaker Kevin McCarthy in the House, where Republican gamesmanship threatens the nation’s credit rating and could spike Americans’ mortgage, student loan and car payment rates. The issue is tailor-made to play to Mr. Biden’s core strength — that he is a competent, steady hand in an otherwise chaotic political system.The Biden team will also need to increase their messaging to voters about what he has been able to achieve in his first term and what’s at stake over the next four years. That effort will focus in particular on swing-state voters in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia, and will highlight progress in critical areas like infrastructure, manufacturing and job creation.Mr. Biden’s announcement video provides a preview of what we’ll be hearing from him over the next 18 months, and the subsequent four years if he’s re-elected: He is a defender of democracy and a protector of Americans’ personal freedoms and rights, including the rights of Americans to make their own decisions about reproductive health, to vote and to marry the person they love. The video juxtaposes chaotic images of Jan. 6, abortion protests outside the Supreme Court and Republican firebrands like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene with wholesome videos of Mr. Biden hugging and holding hands with Americans from every walk of life.The message is as subtle as sledgehammer: Do you really want to hand the country over to the Republicans and relive the chaos of the Trump years?Ultimately, if Joe Biden emerges victorious in November 2024, it will be because voters preferred him to the alternative — not to the almighty.Lis Smith (@Lis_Smith), a Democratic communications strategist, was a senior adviser to Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign and is the author of the memoir “Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Voters Are Wary of Biden. Here’s Why He Might Win Anyway.

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      Diana Nguyen and Rachel Quester, Patricia Willens and Dan Powell and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicPresident Biden has announced that he will seek another term in the Oval Office, despite the fact that he will be 81 on Election Day 2024.Not everyone is overjoyed about that prospect — more than half of Democrats don’t want him to run again. Nonetheless, the party’s leaders are increasingly confident about his chances. Jonathan Weisman, a political correspondent for The Times, explains why.On today’s episodeJonathan Weisman, a political correspondent for The New York Times.Although President Biden has to some extent lowered the temperature in Washington and worked at times with Republicans, the United States remains deeply polarized.Doug Mills/The New York TimesBackground readingMr. Biden has acknowledged that he has not accomplished all he wished to. But that, he maintains, is an argument for his re-election.Although his poll numbers remain low, structural advantages have Democrats insisting that Mr. Biden is better positioned than his Republican rivals.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Jonathan Weisman More

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      An Early, Early Look at Biden’s 2024 Prospects

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      Almost every recent poll shows a highly competitive presidential race.In 2024 polling, President Biden narrowly leads Donald J. Trump and trails Ron DeSantis.Michael A. McCoy for The New York TimesWith Donald J. Trump indicted, Ron DeSantis faltering in the polls and Democrats still basking in their strong midterm showing, some might feel that President Biden’s re-election is all but a done deal.But as Mr. Biden announced his re-election bid Tuesday, it’s worth noting something about the early 2024 polling: The race looks close.Almost every recent survey shows a highly competitive presidential race. On average, Mr. Biden leads Mr. Trump by 1.4 percentage points so far this year. Mr. DeSantis even leads Mr. Biden, by less than a point.Now, to be clear: I don’t think you should put a lot of stock in general election polls quite yet. But no one should be terribly confident about the outcome of a general election at this early stage either. If there were any case for early confidence, it ought to be reflected in the early polls. If Mr. Trump is doomed, why isn’t he getting trounced in the polls?At the very least, Mr. Biden seems to have his work cut out for him. His job approval and favorability ratings remain stuck in the low 40s. This makes him quite a bit weaker than in 2020, when polls showed that voters generally had a favorable view of him. Or put differently: While the 2020 election was decided by voters who liked Mr. Biden and didn’t like Mr. Trump, today it seems the 2024 election could be decided by voters who dislike both candidates.Why is Mr. Biden faring so poorly? The causes of his weak ratings have been up for debate since they tanked in August 2021. The withdrawal from Afghanistan, the surging Delta variant of the coronavirus, a stalled legislative agenda and the beginnings of inflation were all seen as possible theories. Today, all of those explanations seem to be in retreat — the story line of support for Ukraine against Russia has supplanted Afghanistan; the trend line on inflation shows some promise; Covid deaths are at their lowest point in three years — but Mr. Biden remains unpopular.At this stage, three basic possibilities remain. One is that the overall political environment remains unfavorable, presumably because of persistent inflation and partisan polarization. If so, any president in these straits would have low approval ratings and struggle until voters felt their economic fortunes were improving.Another possibility is that Mr. Biden’s early stumbles did unusual and lasting damage to perceptions of his leadership competence, probably related to his age (80). If this is true, he may not find it easy to restore the nation’s confidence as long as he doesn’t look the part.The final possibility is that the conditions may be in place for Mr. Biden’s ratings to rebound. It would not be the first time: Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and even Mr. Trump (before coronavirus) saw their approval ratings increase from the low 40s in the two years before re-election. In this scenario, Mr. Biden’s ratings would increase as a crucial segment of voters judged him against the alternatives, rather than in isolation. His re-election campaign would offer a more forceful and energetic defense of his performance, perhaps against the backdrop of low unemployment and fading inflation.Historically, the third possibility seems more likely. Mr. Biden’s age shouldn’t be understated as a legitimate factor, but he won despite his age last time, and incumbent presidents usually win re-election. The large number of voters who dislike Mr. Trump and once liked Mr. Biden create upside. The direction of the economy will be a crucial variable, of course, but at least for now the combination of low unemployment and slowly fading inflation would seem to provide enough ammunition for Mr. Biden to make his case. Still, his ratings are low enough today that they could improve markedly without securing his re-election.Three kinds of voters appear to loom large as Mr. Biden tries to reassemble the coalition that brought him to the White House in 2020: young voters, nonwhite voters and perhaps low-income voters as well. In the most recent surveys, Mr. Biden is badly underperforming among these groups. Overall, he could be running at least a net 10 points behind what he earned in 2020 among each of these groups, helping to explain why the early general election polls show a close race.Mr. Biden has shown weakness among all of these groups at various times before, so it is not necessarily surprising that he’s struggling among them again with his approval rating in the low 40s. Still, they crystallize the various challenges ahead of his campaign: his age, the economy, and voters who won’t be won over on issues like abortion or democratic principles. In his announcement video on Tuesday, Mr. Biden devoted almost all of his attention to rights, freedom, democracy and abortion. He’ll probably need a way to speak to people who are animated by more material, economic concerns than abstract liberal values.A final wild card is the Electoral College. Even if Mr. Biden does win the national vote by a modest margin, Mr. Trump could assemble a winning coalition in the battleground states that decide the presidency, as he did in 2016.In 2020, Mr. Biden won the national vote by 4.4 percentage points, but barely squeaked out wins by less than one percentage point in Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin. To win, he needed one of the three.At the moment, there’s a case the Electoral College will be less favorable to Mr. Trump, relative to the national vote, than it was in 2020. In the midterm elections, the gap between the popular vote for U.S. House and a hypothetical Electoral College result based on the House vote essentially evaporated, down from nearly four points in 2020. It’s possible this was simply a product of unusually poor Republican nominees at the top of the ticket in many of the most competitive states, but there are plausible reasons it might also reflect underlying electoral trends.The renewed importance of abortion, for instance, might help Democrats most in relatively white, secular areas, which would tend to help them more in the Northern battlegrounds than elsewhere. “Democracy” may also play well as an issue in the battlegrounds, as these are the very states where the stop-the-steal movement threatened to overturn the results of the last election. Meanwhile, Mr. Biden’s relative weakness among nonwhite voters, who are disproportionately concentrated in noncompetitive states, might do more to hurt his tallies in states like California or Illinois than Wisconsin or Pennsylvania.Given the idiosyncratic and localized nature of last year’s midterm results, it would be a mistake to be confident that the Republican Electoral College advantage is coming to an end. If that edge persists, the modest Biden lead in national polls today wouldn’t be enough for him to secure re-election. More

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      As Biden Runs Again, the Map, Issues and Incumbency Favor Democrats

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      Nearly seven in 10 Americans believe their country is on a “wrong track.” The incumbent president will be 81 on Election Day 2024. More than half of the voters in his own party don’t want him to run for re-election.Yet as President Biden embarks on his campaign for a second term, Democratic officials firmly believe he is beginning his bid on Tuesday from ground that is far more solid than his personal standing indicates. Democratic unity has stifled even the hint of an intraparty insurgency. The issues dominating the nation’s politics have largely worked in the Democrats’ favor. And a battleground that has narrowed to only a handful of states means, at least for now, that the 2024 campaign will be waged on favorable Democratic terrain.“I’m always going to be worried because we’re a very divided country, and presidential races are going to be close, no matter who is in it,” said Anne Caprara, who helped lead Hillary Clinton’s super PAC in 2016 and is now chief of staff to Illinois’s Democratic governor, J.B. Pritzker. “But for the first time in my career, I think Republicans have painted themselves into a terrible position. They’re losing and they can’t seem to see that.”Without doubt, Mr. Biden’s personal liabilities are tugging at the Democrats’ well-worn worry strings. Despite low unemployment, a remarkably resilient economy and an enviable record of legislative accomplishments in his first two years, the octogenarian president has never quite won over the nation, or even voters in his party. A new NBC News poll has Mr. Biden losing to a generic Republican presidential candidate, 47 percent to 41 percent.“President Biden is in remarkably weak shape for an incumbent running for re-election,” said Bill McInturff, a veteran Republican pollster who co-directs the NBC News poll.Republicans plan to play on those uncertainties, harping on Mr. Biden’s age and frailty and painting him as the weakest incumbent president to run for re-election since Jimmy Carter tried 44 years ago. The campaign of former President Donald J. Trump is already looking past the coming Republican nomination fight to contrast what it sees as the strength of personality of an aggressive challenger against a vulnerable incumbent.“This is a choice between Joe Biden and Donald Trump,” said Chris LaCivita, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, adding, “If they think that is their greatest strength, they are going to have a long, miserable year.”But the political fundamentals look significantly better than Mr. Biden’s personal approval.By avoiding a serious primary challenge, Mr. Biden will not be spending the next year fighting with members of his own party on difficult issues like immigration, crime, gender and abortion in ways that might turn off swing voters. Instead, he can bide his time attending ribbon cuttings and groundbreakings for roads and bridges, semiconductor plants, electric vehicle manufacturers and solar energy projects that stem from his three biggest legislative achievements — the infrastructure bill, the “chips and science” law and the Inflation Reduction Act, with its huge tax incentives for clean energy.President Biden and the first lady, Jill Biden, attending a ceremony at the White House on Monday, the day before he formally declared his candidacy for a second term. Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe mere presence of Mr. Trump in the Republican primary race is helping the Democrats make the 2024 campaign a choice between the two parties, not a referendum on the incumbent, a far more difficult challenge for the party in power, said Jim Messina, who managed the last successful presidential re-election campaign, Barack Obama’s in 2012. Early polls, both in key states like Wisconsin and nationally, have Mr. Biden holding onto a slim lead over Mr. Trump, but even with or behind Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.The Republicans’ narrow control of the House has also given Mr. Biden a foil in the months before a Republican presidential nominee emerges, just as the Republican Congress helped Mr. Obama.And then there is the map.The 2022 midterms should have been a disaster for a president with low approval ratings. Instead, in two critical states — Pennsylvania and Michigan — the Democratic Party greatly strengthened its hand and its electoral infrastructure, with victories in the governors’ races in both states, the Pennsylvania House flipping to the Democrats and the Michigan Legislature falling to complete Democratic control for the first time in nearly 40 years.At the outset of the 2024 campaign, two-thirds of the Upper Midwestern “Blue Wall” that Mr. Trump shattered in 2016 and Mr. Biden rebuilt in 2020 appear to favor the Democrats.As partisanship intensifies in Democratic and Republican states, battlegrounds like Florida, Ohio and Iowa have moved firmly toward Republicans, but other battlegrounds like Colorado, Virginia and New Hampshire look reliably Democratic.That has elevated just a handful of states as potentially decisive next year: Wisconsin, the third brick in the “Blue Wall”; Georgia, once reliably Republican; Arizona; and Pennsylvania, especially if the political winds shift in the Republicans’ favor. If Mr. Biden can lock down Pennsylvania, he would need to win only one of the other big battlegrounds — Wisconsin, Georgia or Arizona — to get the necessary Electoral College votes in 2024. Even if he lost Nevada, he would still win as long as he secures New Hampshire and doesn’t split the Electoral College votes of Maine.Wisconsin had a split decision in 2022, with the Democratic governor, Tony Evers, winning re-election while the Republican senator, Ron Johnson, also prevailed. But this month, an expensive, hard-fought State Supreme Court race in Wisconsin went to the Democratic-backed candidate by 11 percentage points, a remarkable margin.Democrats won the governorship in Arizona in 2022. And while they lost the governor’s race decisively in Georgia, they eked out the Senate contest between the incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock and the Republican, Herschel Walker.Those recent electoral successes point to the other major factor that appears to be playing in the Democrats’ favor: the issues. The erosion of abortion rights in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade has continued to dominate electoral outcomes in key states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. And abortion is not fading, in large part because the socially conservative core of the Republican electorate keeps driving red states and conservative judges forward on abortion restrictions.The tragic drumbeat of mass shootings has kept gun control high on the political agenda as well, an issue that Democrats believe will help them with suburban voters in key swing states and will trap Republicans between a base of voters who want no compromise on gun rights and a broader electorate that increasingly favors restrictions.Republicans have issues that could favor them, too. Crime helped deliver House seats in New York and California, which secured the narrow House majority for the G.O.P. And transgender politics might help Republicans with some swing voters. A poll for National Public Radio last summer found that 63 percent of Americans opposed allowing transgender women and girls to compete on teams that align with their gender identity, while broader support for L.G.B.T. rights has only gained ground.But a hotly contested primary is likely to drag the eventual nominee to the right, even on issues that could otherwise favor his party. Mr. DeSantis, widely seen as Mr. Trump’s most serious challenger, signed a ban on abortion in his state after six weeks, a threshold before many women know they are pregnant.And at some point, Republicans’ drive against transgender people and their fixation on social issues may appear to be bullying — or simply far afield from real issues in the lives of swing voters, said Ms. Caprara, the chief of staff for the Illinois governor.“There’s this toxic soup between abortion, guns, gay rights, library books, African American history,” she said. “It just comes across to people as, ‘Who are these people?’”The biggest issue, however, may be the storm cloud on the horizon that may or may not burst — the economy. In 2020, Mr. Biden became one of the few presidential candidates in modern history to have triumphed over the candidate who was more trusted on the economy in polls.Since then, the surge of job creation from the trough of the coronavirus pandemic has shattered monthly employment records, while unemployment rates — especially for workers of color — are at or near their lowest levels ever. Inflation, which peaked near 10 percent, is now at about 5 percent.Yet Mr. Biden continues to get low marks on his economic stewardship, and those marks could deteriorate as the Federal Reserve continues to tamp down inflation with higher interest rates, warned Mr. Messina, the former Obama campaign manager. A new poll for CNBC found that 53 percent of Americans expect the economy will get worse, compared with 34 percent when Mr. Biden took office.“Today, I’d rather be Joe Biden,” Mr. Messina said. “But I wish I knew where the economy is going to be, because that’s the one thing hanging out there that nobody can control.” More

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      What Older Voters Say About Biden 2024: From ‘He’s Fine’ to ‘Oh, God’

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      In interviews, dozens of left-leaning older Americans wrestled with the prospect of a president in his mid-80s, reflecting on their own abilities and changes to their lives — and even their mortality.Over the last three decades, Americans have chosen presidents who felt their pain and channeled their anger, who shattered historical barriers or seemed like enjoyable beer-drinking companions.But if voters often desire leaders who reflect themselves and their struggles, President Biden’s potential bid for a second term, which he would conclude at the age of 86, is prompting exceptionally complicated feelings among one highly engaged constituency: his generational peers.Three years after older voters helped propel Mr. Biden to the Democratic presidential nomination, embracing his deep experience and perceived general-election appeal, his age is his biggest political liability as he moves toward another presidential run, which he could announce as soon as Tuesday. It is a source of mockery and sometimes misinformation on the right — though the now-indicted Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential poll leader who faces a morass of legal troubles, is just a few years younger — and one of widespread anxiety among Democrats.The issue is particularly personal, however, for older voters who are inclined to like Mr. Biden, but often view his age through the prism of their own experiences.They are aging. He is aging. They are not the president of the United States.Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the sex therapist, encouraged Mr. Biden to run again. But, she said, “one has to know one’s limitations.” Gabby Jones for The New York TimesIn interviews with about three dozen voters, political veterans and prominent Americans between 67 and 98 years old, broaching Mr. Biden’s age prompted not only electoral analysis, but also wide-ranging discussions of their own abilities and adjustments to their lives. Some bluntly wrestled with questions of mortality, and others veered into grandparent mode, admonishing the president to take care of himself.“I’m 72 and I’m a young whippersnapper here in The Villages,” said Diane Foley, the president of The Villages Democratic Club at the Republican-tilted mega-retirement community in Florida, who encouraged Mr. Biden to run again. “There are incredibly energetic, active people well into their 80s, and some 90s.”“One has to know one’s limitations,” advised Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer, 94, the famed sex therapist. She keeps busy these days with a project on the grandparent-grandchild relationship, but prefers to take meetings from home.“I would say the president should run again, but he should also not run up to a podium,” she added. “I don’t want him to fall.”And former Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York, who at 92 has a dark sense of humor about his future — “at my age, I don’t buy green bananas” — signaled that he would support a Biden run. But he is eager for a new generation of leaders.“Maybe I’m feeling so strongly because I’m leaving relatively soon and I want to see what’s going to follow,” Mr. Rangel said in an interview. “I truly believe that we should have more candidates, more than two old white men.”Former Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York, who is 92, said he wanted to see a younger generation step into political leadership. Johnny Milano for The New York TimesParty leaders overwhelmingly plan to support Mr. Biden if he runs. But recent polling has shown that while many Democratic voters rate him favorably, they also have reservations about another bid. An Associated Press/NORC poll released Friday found that poll respondents were concerned about his age.Other surveys found that older Democratic voters were more likely to favor another Biden run than younger Democrats, even as roughly 30 to 50 percent of Democrats over 60 preferred that he step aside.“I can’t go on television and say, ‘Let’s not talk about this, let’s pivot to the real issues,’ because people think age is a real issue,” James Carville, 78, the Democratic strategist, said last month.It was top of mind for several people who milled around a community center recently as a canasta game ended in Plantation, Fla.Doreen W., 78, a Democrat who declined to share her last name on the record, citing fear of causing problems for her husband at work, said she hoped Mr. Biden would run again. But she worried about whether he was up to it.“I know how tiring it is for me, and I’m not doing anything but retire,” she said. “I’m aware of his age and I’m concerned about that.”Informed that Mr. Biden was not 78, as she had thought, but 80, she groaned, “Oh, God.”“If I could just keep him at age 80 and active the way he is, I’d be more than happy,” she said.Nursing a canasta defeat nearby, Jacque Deuser, 67, said the way Mr. Biden sometimes walked reminded her of her late husband, who had dementia.“It kind of looks like he’s going to fall down,” said Ms. Deuser, who voted for Mr. Trump in 2016, backed Mr. Biden in 2020 and is inclined to support him again if Mr. Trump or Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida win the Republican nomination.Mr. Biden’s doctor recently reported that he was a “healthy, vigorous 80-year-old” fit to serve, while acknowledging that Mr. Biden had a “stiffened gait,” citing factors including arthritis. But the doctor said there were no findings “consistent with any cerebellar or other central neurological disorder.”Mr. Biden works out at least five days a week and does not drink or smoke, and his recent travel, including a covert trip to Ukraine, impressed some of his peers.Mr. Biden made a long trip to Ukraine in February, meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv.Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times“I don’t know if I could have been on my feet going to Ukraine and taking a 10-hour train ride,” said Peggy Grove, 80, the vice chair of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. But his public appearances have been uneven. While Mr. Biden has long been gaffe-prone, he has made several striking misstatements as president, and he can sound halting. Moments like a stumble on a stairway or a fall off a bike have attracted attention.“I enjoyed working with him. I watch him from a distance now and I get concerned,” said former Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, a 76-year-old self-described “not a Trumpian” Republican. “He’s lost a little of his sharpness.”The White House did not directly respond to Mr. Gregg.Several voters said Mr. Biden’s running mate would be important — and many Democrats have privately expressed concerns about Vice President Kamala Harris.But while health is unpredictable, some aging experts have said there are signs Mr. Biden could be a “super-ager.”Dr. John W. Rowe, a former president of the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics and a professor of health policy and aging at Columbia, said “super-agers” tend to live more of their lives without functional impairment. Dr. Rowe also said age could bring unexpected benefits.Older people, he said, are often better at resolving disputes, and “are less likely to do something imprudent.”“If you have, on the one hand, a super-ager, with no obvious evidence of something bad happening right now, and they bring along these other characteristics, I would feel pretty comfortable for the next four years,” he said, adding that he did not know Mr. Biden.Dr. Rowe, 78, a former head of Aetna, said he, too, had encountered occasional questions about retirement.“I do not feel that I’m functioning any less well than I was a couple years ago,” he said.He stressed that unlike 30-year-olds, older people vary greatly in their abilities.Some Democrats pointed to the differences in aging between Presidents Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter.Mr. Reagan, who announced in 1994 that he had Alzheimer’s disease and died a decade later at 93, long faced questions about his cognitive functioning. Mr. Carter — now in hospice care at 98 — remained active until recently.“I just try to always look at the individual, factor in age as one of many considerations,” said Gloria Steinem, the women’s rights activist, 89. “For myself, retrieval time is longer, but the choice of what to retrieve is richer.”As for Mr. Biden, she said, “I feel fine about re-electing President Biden, depending on both the alternatives and his health.”Mr. Biden and his allies stress his legislative accomplishments, including on issues affecting older Americans.Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said Mr. Biden had inherited and helped the country overcome “the worst crises in decades,” and was “now bringing manufacturing back from overseas, rebuilding our infrastructure, empowering Medicare to lower drug prices and standing up for the rights and dignity of every American.” He emphasized Mr. Biden’s experience, judgment and values in office.A recent gathering of the Broward Democratic Senior Caucus at a pub in Plantation, Fla. Many attendees said they were unworried about Mr. Biden’s age.Melanie Metz for The New York TimesAt a recent gathering of the Broward Democratic Senior Caucus at a pub in Plantation, attendees dismissed concerns about Mr. Biden’s age.“If his head is working, he’s fine,” Muriel Kirschner, 94, pointedly told a reporter. “My head is still working, honey.”Patti Lynn, who will turn 80 this year, retired after having a heart attack, deciding it was “time to have some fun.” But Ms. Lynn, whose phone background was a picture of herself with Mr. Biden, did not think he should do the same just yet.“Does he stumble and forget and have to get his words? I understand that perfectly,” she laughed. “Been there, done that. Oh well, I’m having a senior moment. But he’s respected worldwide, he is stable.”“How do you put him down — because he is old?” she added. “He worked hard to get that old. Me too. I worked hard to get this old.” More