Can Biden win reelection solely by being the ‘alternative’?

After months of speculation, President Joe Biden announced this week that he will seek reelection in 2024, setting the stage for a likely rematch against Former President Donald Trump, who at this point is favored to win the Republican nomination.

To be sure, Biden would benefit from facing his 2020 foe. It allows Democrats to turn the race into a referendum on Trump and his brand of far-right “MAGA extremism,” rather than a referendum on Biden’s presidency — or to paraphrase one of the president’s favorite sayings, a campaign that is focused on comparing Biden to the “alternative,” not “the Almighty.”

Based on Biden’s announcement video, which was released exactly four years after he launched his 2020 bid, this will be the basis of his strategy. The president declares that the “fight for our democracy” is incomplete and urges Americans that “this is not a time to be complacent,” as “MAGA extremists” are threatening bedrock freedoms and civil liberties.

If the last three national elections are any indication, Biden may be able to win on this messaging alone, given how toxic the Republican Party’s brand has become with Trump and his supporters at the helm. Trump’s personal baggage is also back in the national spotlight, and his legal woes are compounding as the campaign progresses: He has been indicted in New York, and could soon face additional charges for attempting to subvert the 2020 election results in Georgia and prevent the peaceful transfer of presidential power by inciting the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol.

That being said, Democrats must understand that Biden is still entering the race as an underdog. A recent Gallup poll found that just 37 percent of voters nationally — including less than one-third of independents (31 percent) — approve of his job performance, the lowest number since he entered office. Biden also has one of the lowest approval ratings of all past presidents who sought reelection at this point in their presidency, per FiveThirtyEight.

And even though Trump’s focus is on avenging his personal grievances and appeasing his extremist base, the Republican Party will make every effort to turn this into an election about high inflation, the teetering economy and the border crisis, while also relentlessly casting doubt on Biden’s ability to endure the rigors of another four years in office — Biden would be 86 years old at the end of a second term — à la Trump’s “Sleepy Joe” moniker.

Further, the latest general election polls, while premature, suggest only a narrow advantage for Biden as he kicks off his campaign. He leads Trump by just 2 points in a recent Emerson College poll, and trails by 1 point in the latest Economist/YouGov survey. Further, two-thirds of registered voters express dissatisfaction with the prospect of this rematch, per Harvard-Harris polling.

It is also important to note that Biden shouldn’t just be focused on winning — he needs to win big, leaving no room for Trump and MAGA election deniers to again cast doubt on the results, as we now know that Trump’s attempted subversion of the 2020 election across multiple states, such as Georgia and Wisconsin, just barely failed.

Thus, in addition to running a negative campaign against Trump and “MAGA extremists,” Democrats also need to offer voters an actual alternative — that is, a vision for Biden’s second term that is responsive, optimistic and inclusive, if only to draw a contrast with the restrictive, extreme and authoritarian one Trump and his supporters are promoting.

In addition to continuing to advocate for individual freedoms and in particular abortion rights — which remains a very potent issue that plays to Democrats’ advantage — Biden’s second-term agenda should center on fiscal prudence, lowering daily costs, creating economic opportunity and common-sense crime and policing policies that get guns off the streets and make our communities safer.

Without a message to this effect, Biden could struggle against Trump and may have difficulty engaging groups that are absolutely crucial to the Democratic coalition, such as Black and Latino voters.

Even though Democrats did surprisingly well in the 2022 midterms, Black turnout, particularly with young Black voters, was “abysmally low,” as James Carville recently observed. Carville noted that, even in places where Democrats ran strong Black candidates against weak Republican opponents, turnout among this group was underwhelming.

This suggests that Democrats cannot engage Black voters solely by campaigning against Trump and “MAGA Extremists,” and that Biden needs to also speak directly to this group’s concerns. Carville also underscores the importance of Democrats engaging in outreach to Black voters to communicate the progress that the administration has made on issues impacting their lives.

A targeted message and outreach strategy to this effect is also necessary for Biden to court the all-important Latino vote. While not a monolith, this group has voted reliably Democratic for years but has trended more Republican in recent elections. This shift held in last year’s midterms, despite Democratic successes elsewhere: in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) won a majority of the Hispanic vote (58 percent), and in Arizona, nearly half of all Hispanic voters (47 percent) supported Trump-backed election denier Kari Lake.

A post-2020 election report by Equis Research and subsequent analyses have suggested the rightward shift of Latino voters is due largely to economic policy. The economy has been a notorious rough spot for Biden during his first term, and he must find a way during the campaign to bridge the fundamental disconnect between the historically strong macroeconomic trends he often touts — i.e., historically low unemployment — with voters’ negative feelings about the economy.

Ultimately, as the country gears up for the first presidential rematch since President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s second victory over Adlai Stevenson in 1956, I would urge the Biden campaign not to rely solely on an “alternative not Almighty” strategy. Because given the alternative, the Democratic Party can’t leave anything to chance in 2024.

Douglas E. Schoen is a political consultant who served as an advisor to President Clinton and to the 2020 presidential campaign of Michael Bloomberg. His new book is: “The End of Democracy? Russia and China on the Rise and America in Retreat.”