President Biden should expect Republicans to boo him when he delivers his State of the Union address on Thursday, just as they did last year.
This is why.
Biden's campaign for a second term is in trouble. Her job approval rating, normally a reliable indicator of an incumbent's chances, is stuck below 40%.
So the stakes of the State of the Union address, usually a forgettable event, are unusually high.
The president and his advisers have received a tsunami of public advice from other Democrats, including strategists who worked for Presidents Obama and Clinton, on how to improve their prospects.
They say Biden needs to accomplish three goals: He needs to calm voters' concerns that at 81 he is too old to seek a second term. She needs to address, head-on, the issues that voters care about: high prices and immigration. And he needs to frame the election as a binary choice between him and former President Trump rather than a referendum on his first term.
For months, Biden has tried to joke his way out of voters' concerns about his age or, worse, reacted angrily to questions about it.
“It's crazy to think that if you don't talk about it, people won't think it's old,” Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod said recently. “You're not going to get an audience unless you at least acknowledge to people, 'Yeah, I get it.'”
Last week, Biden took a half-step in that direction, telling late-night TV host Seth Meyers that both candidates are old and voters should focus on the differences between them.
“Take a look at the other guy: He's about the same age as me,” the president said of the 77-year-old Trump. “It's about how old your ideas are. Look, I mean, this is a guy who wants us back. He wants us to talk about Roe v. Wade, he wants us to re-address a wide range of issues.”
It was a good start, but probably not enough.
“I don't think they've fixed it,” said Doug Sosnik, who helped Bill Clinton win a second term in 1996. “It's still a problem. You need to lean more forward on this issue… This is not an issue that is going to win; He just has to get to the point where he doesn't lose.”
“We will have to do it again,” acknowledged a Biden aide.
Biden is unlikely to raise the age issue in his State of the Union address. But simply by competent performance he can refute his opponents' claims that he is unfit for office.
In his speech a year ago, Republican fans gave him a minor win, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, whose boos and the back-and-forth that followed showed he can still be quick. The president should expect to receive more such aid again this year.
On the economy, his advisers say Biden will remember the accomplishments of his first three years, including bipartisan legislation on high-tech infrastructure and manufacturing.
On inflation, which is declining but still problematic, he will discuss his push to negotiate lower prescription drug prices for Medicare and his efforts to ban hidden “junk fees” charged by banks, hotels and other businesses. .
And he will repeat his demand for legislation to “make the rich and corporations pay their fair share,” meaning higher taxes on corporations and individuals earning more than $400,000 a year.
On immigration, he will ask Congress – again – to pass the bipartisan Senate border bill that has been blocked by House Republicans. He previewed that speech during his visit to Brownsville, Texas, last week, mischievously appealing to Trump to join him in support of the bill. With House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) sitting behind him, that part of the speech could set off fireworks.
He will also discuss a long list of other topics, including reproductive rights, including possibly the recent ruling by the conservative Alabama Supreme Court that had the effect of shutting down in vitro fertilization in the state.
The test of Biden's success will be whether he can turn a speech that too often devolves into a long list of priorities into a coherent narrative of what he would seek in a second term.
“You need a compelling, coherent narrative about where the country is and how it's going to get better,” Sosnik said. “You have to look to the future.”
Which brings us to the third goal: making the 2024 election a choice between two flawed candidates, not a referendum on Biden's first three years.
“Most presidents can't win a referendum, and Biden certainly can't, given the environment and the mood of the country right now,” Axelrod said on the podcast he co-hosts, “Hacks on Tap.” “If it is a referendum, it will go wrong. If it is an election, I think he has a chance of winning.”
Biden offered a preview of that theme in his appearance with Meyers, when he framed the election as a choice between two old men, only one of whom “wants us back.”
Given the protocol of a State of the Union address, he is unlikely to mention Trump by name, as he has been doing more often at campaign events: calling the former president “dangerous,” a “threat to democracy.” and, turning one of His favorite insults, they respond: “a loser.”
His rhetoric on Thursday will be loftier, but the underlying goal will still be to make the contrast clear.
One way to do that is in foreign policy, where he will pressure Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana to put his pending request for military aid to Ukraine to a vote. Biden is likely to remind Congress that defending U.S. allies against Russian President Vladimir Putin is a critical national security goal. The comparison with Trump, an unabashed supporter of Putin, will not need to be explained.
So here's a TV recommendation that's rarely been made before. This will be a State of the Union address worth watching, even if the president isn't lucky enough to be interrupted again.
