Joe Biden is facing an uphill reelection battle.
He is desperate, and he should be. The world is an uglier and an uglier place under Biden. Nearly no one believes the country is moving in the right direction. Americans are deeply dissatisfied with the economy; America is experiencing an unprecedented illegal immigration crisis; and the world seems to be on fire, from the Middle East to Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Biden himself is clearly ailing; as comedian Shane Gillis recently said, "My favorite thing about Biden is anytime Biden finishes a speech, he transforms into a Roomba." This is clearly true. In fact, after Biden's recent diatribe against Donald Trump at Valley Forge, Dr. Jill Biden -- the greatest physician in all the land -- charged up on the stage like a shepherd attempting to pen in a wandering sheep, corralling the president toward the back of the stage.
So, what can Biden do?
He can pull out all the scare tactics he knows.
And that's precisely what he's doing, fully 10 months from the 2024 election.
His campaign is predicated on two main issues: Trump, and also Trump.
First, Biden argues, Donald Trump is apparently a threat to democracy. Biden stated at Valley Forge, "Donald Trump's campaign is obsessed with the past, not the future. He's willing to sacrifice our democracy, put himself in power." He said this in the middle of a speech about the evils of Jan. 6 -- while labeling Trump an insurrectionist, which presumably would disqualify Trump from the ballot. Biden's own Department of Justice has hit Trump with two separate federal criminal cases, one in Florida, the other in Washington, D.C.
It is, in other words, a tough case to make that Trump is the true threat to democracy, while Biden is democracy's defender.
Second, Biden argues, Donald Trump is a white supremacist. Biden stated at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina -- the site of a white supremacist mass shooting in 2015 -- that Trump's election denial represented a "second lost cause," somehow comparable to the Southern Lost Cause narrative that portrayed the loss of the Civil War as the death of a grand and glorious way of life at the hands of perfidious Yankees. Yes, Biden suggested, Trump was akin to the Confederates. And he, Joe Biden, would stand in their way.
Biden has made this case before. Against -- yes, really -- Mitt Romney. Back in 2012, Biden argued that Romney would put Black Americans "back in chains." Suffice it to say that Biden has little credibility trying to breathe new life into that political corpse.
Joe Biden requires Donald Trump. He needs him.
But he's still unlikely to beat him.
That's why Biden is steering so strongly to his left rather than toward the middle. At his speech in Charleston, pro-Hamas protesters began chanting for a ceasefire in Gaza, which would leave Hamas in power after the Oct. 7 massacre. Biden sheepishly replied, "I understand their passion, and I've been quietly working with the Israeli government to get them to reduce and significantly get out of Gaza."
Biden can't leave any stone, no matter how radical, unturned.
And that tactic will, in turn, drive away many moderate voters who are sick of the chaos the Biden era has ushered in.
In short, Biden is re-running his 2020 campaign. There's one big difference this time: This time, Joe Biden is the president. And we all know it.