Why was Joe Biden’s re-election launch so boring?

The 46th president is hoping the threat posed by right-wing Republicans will count for more among divided voters than concerns over his age, writes Andrew Feinberg

(Getty/Joe Biden/The Independent)

As far as contrasts go, you’d have to work hard to find a greater one than the contrast between how President Joe Biden announced his candidacy in next year’s presidential election and the way the man he beat in 2020 signalled his entry into the Republican primary field last November.

That man, former president Donald Trump, had for months teased his intention to mount his third campaign for the presidency in as many election cycles when he strode into the ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago club to make it official on 16 November, just a week after Republicans had a disappointing showing in the midterm elections.

Mr Trump’s meandering, grievance-filled remarks mostly touched on well-trodden territory and often veered into outright falsehoods, with camera footage showing some of his supporters attempting to leave the room as the ex-president rambled on about the 2020 election.

And although it was meant to play to Mr Trump’s supposed strengths and show him rallying a boisterous crowd to his side from the same location that was searched by FBI agents as part of one of the myriad criminal probes into him months before, the twice-impeached, indicted ex-president came away from the event looking perhaps the weakest he’s ever looked since coming onto the political stage in 2015.

Mr Biden, who despite Mr Trump’s claims to the contrary handily beat the 45th president in November 2020, rolled out what will be his last political campaign much in the same way he did the last, with a video posted to his social media accounts.

The 46th President of the United States revisited the theme that powered his successful 2020 run, saying the contest remained a “battle for the soul of America” to protect personal freedoms from pro-Trump “extremists”.

Mr Biden, who would be 86 at the end of a second term, is hoping the threat posed by right-wing Republicans will count for more among divided voters than concerns over his age.

“The question we are facing is whether in the years ahead we have more freedom or less freedom, more rights or fewer — I know what I want the answer to be,” he said, as images of the January 6 attack on the Capitol played on the screen.

He said opponents were “dictating what health care decisions women can make, banning books, and telling people who they can love ... all while making it more difficult for you to be able to vote,” adding: “This is not a time to be complacent.”

Mr Biden also exhorted Americans to visit his new-look campaign website and closed by repeating a line that he unveiled in this year’s State of the Union address: “Let’s finish the job.”

In a way, the 46th president’s desire to “finish” his work is the same reason his predecessor is attempting to reclaim the office Mr Biden evicted him from on 20 January 2021.

In a series of videos released by his campaign, Mr Trump lays out what he describes as his second-term agenda.

In addition to the red-meat proposals that will be familiar to anyone who pays attention to what he and other Republicans are fond of talking about as of late — restricting the rights of transgender people, giving parents more power to keep their children from being taught anything they consider objectionable, and a general intention of reversing everything Mr Biden has done — the 45th president’s agenda is rife with grievance.

In one recent video, he said he would purge the nation’s law enforcement apparatus of anyone deemed disloyal — a not-so-veiled threat to defang the same police and prosecutors who are pursuing him for various crimes.

Yet while Mr Trump frequently describes the US as a “nation in decline,” Mr Biden’s announcement ends with his oft-repeated claim that he has “never been more optimistic” about America.

In 2020, he won in part by asking Americans to choose “light over darkness” and “truth over lies”. He’s hoping they’ll make the same choice again, and with Mr Trump as his foil, it’s a good bet.