Joe Biden’s in-person campaigning problem

President Biden’s low poll numbers mean he must actively campaign next year. Although public campaigning may seem a prerequisite for pursuit of the presidency, Biden was largely able to avoid it in 2020. As his two previous runs suggested, he did so for good reason. 

But in 2024 Biden will not have that luxury, making it the most overlooked of next year’s factors. 

Biden has run for president three times. Each time his public campaigning has gone poorly. His first run in 1988 ended after just three months, capped by a plagiarism scandal in which he quoted at length and without attribution a speech by U.K. Labour politician Neil Kinnock. 

In 2008, he torpedoed himself with a description of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” Biden finished fifth in the Iowa caucuses and dropped out.

As Biden pursued the Democratic nomination in 2020, he was again plagued by foot-in-mouth disease. Even before he started, he had called himself a “gaffe machine.” During the campaign, he claimed on several occasions that more than 100 million Americans had died of COVID-19, that he was running for Senate instead of the White House and that “poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.” The list goes on and on.

Unable to stop the “gaffe machine,” Biden’s team essentially stopped the campaigning. It would be the hallmark of Biden’s 2020 run. Four things allowed the campaign to pull it off.

First, COVID gave Biden an excuse to stay at home. Yet even early on, this was scrutinized. On April 25, 2020, the New York Times ran an article titled “A Candidate in Isolation: Inside Joe Biden’s Cloistered Campaign.”  

Second, Trump’s incumbency gave the campaign an agenda; reelections are a referendum on the president’s record. 

Third, the establishment media largely gave Biden a pass. 

Regardless, it was Biden’s large lead in the polls that gave him the ability. On April 8, the day Biden secured the Democratic nomination, Real Clear Politics’s average of national polling gave him a 6.3 percentage point lead over Trump. That comfortable cushion would exist throughout the summer, swelling to double digits on several occasions —10.2 points on June 23 and 10 points on Oct. 10. 

Now three years later, things have changed dramatically for Biden. First, COVID is over, and with it has gone Biden’s excuse for not publicly campaigning. Second, 2024’s agenda will include Biden’s record, which is replete with decisions Biden will have to defend. 

Foreign policy has been a liability for the administration from its very beginning. Its disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan set it on a bad trajectory that has arced through the Russian invasion of Ukraine to Hamas’s brutal terrorist attack on Israel. 

Since recovering from its 2020 implosion during COVID, the economy has bumped along in what has been at best mediocrity. And the Federal Reserve predicts that it will perform even worse next year. At the same time, inflation has raged, and at 3.7 percent it is still roughly twice the two-percent level the Fed declares to be acceptable. 

Regarding domestic safety, America’s southern border is porous while its inner cities are all too often chaotic. 

Third, with Biden the incumbent and his record the agenda, the establishment media will be unable to ignore him to the extent they did four years earlier. 

Yet, the most important reason Biden will have to hit the road is that his lead in the polls is gone. Polls show Biden and Trump running neck-and-neck, while Biden’s approval rating is 13 points underwater.

Taking to the campaign trail offers Biden big risks — risks that gutted two of his previous presidential campaigns and that threatened his third, had his team not put a stop to them. Nor is this liability something he has overcome — as his avoidance of press conferences continues to demonstrate. 

As the polls show, the 2024 race is already far tighter than the 2020 campaign ever was. And the 2024 race will be far tougher than 2020’s was for Biden because he will have to run it in person.

J.T. Young was a professional staffer in the House and Senate from 1987-2000, served in the Department of Treasury and Office of Management and Budget from 2001-2004, and was director of government relations for a Fortune 20 company from 2004-2023.