President Joe Biden hopes to win reelection in 2024 by defending his victories in 2020 battleground states — but also expanding the map into states like North Carolina and Florida that Democrats haven’t won since Barack Obama.
Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez argued in a state-of-the-race memo Thursday that Democrats have strengthened their hand going into the presidential election after a strong performance in last year’s midterm races and in special elections this year.
“Just as the results in special elections in 2022 provided a prescient window into the midterm results, these recent performances by Democrats — more than any polling or prognostication — point to the real strength we have going into 2024,” she said.
The memo, obtained by Bloomberg News, is Rodriquez’s first public assessment of the race since Biden announced his reelection campaign last month. A former senior adviser in the White House, she started in her new role on Tuesday.
Rodriguez portrays a Biden campaign buoyed by recent Democratic election victories and convinced that hard-line Republican stances on issues like abortion and election denial will continue to work in Biden’s favor.
Democrats have won statewide races in every one of the battleground states that Biden won in 2020 — in part by expanding their margins among suburban and rural voters, Rodriguez said.
County-by-county vote totals in key Senate races last year showed Democratic gains in rural counties compared to 2020. They include successful campaigns by Senator Mark Kelly in Arizona, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, John Fetterman in the Pennsylvania Senate race and Nevada Senator Catherine Cortez Masto.
Electoral strategies this early in a presidential campaign are often optimistic, but the Biden campaign is backing up its battleground map with early spending in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — all of which he won in 2020 over former President Donald Trump, who is again seeking the Republican nomination.
The Biden campaign is also spending in Florida and North Carolina, though roughly half as much as in top-tier swing states.
Rodriguez also suggested that the persuasion campaign won’t be won by television ads alone, promising a strategy to reach key Democratic constituencies — like women voters, young voters, Black voters, and Latino voters and organized labor — both online and offline.
The memo makes no mention of Biden’s Republican challengers or of the headwinds faced by an incumbent president seeking reelection in a time of economic turmoil. Bloomberg Economics projects a 97% chance of recession occurring as soon as this July.