Joe Biden’s moment: could presidential debate shift momentum in election campaign?

Joe Biden is retreating to Camp David as he prepares for the first presidential debate of the 2024 vote — a crucial chance for him to shift the momentum of his re-election campaign.

The US president is heading into the June 27 debate dogged by persistently low approval ratings and a succession of viral video clips that have highlighted his advanced age and triggered Republican attacks on his fitness for office.

With little more than four months before the November vote, Biden’s primary mission during the televised showdown with Donald Trump in Atlanta will be to prove that he is still up for the job at 81, while highlighting the contrast with the former president’s character and policies.

Biden’s first task will be “to show that he is not diminished and is capable of carrying out presidential duties in a second term”, said Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University.

His other objectives should be to offer a “vision for a second term”, to “correct misconceptions about the American economy” and “emphasise the dangers that Donald Trump poses to the rule of law and American democracy”, Lichtman added.

Biden received a boost this week when he took a narrow lead in the Fivethirtyeight.com national polling average for the first time this year, after chipping away at Trump’s previous polling advantage in recent weeks. Biden now leads by 0.1 percentage point nationally.

A Fox News survey released on Wednesday also showed there had been a seven-point shift in his favour since March; while Trump led by 5 points three months ago, Biden is now ahead by 2.

But the president has struggled to make broader gains that would put him in a more comfortable position heading into the Republican convention in July and the Democratic convention in August.

In the key battleground states of Michigan and Wisconsin, the race is essentially tied, and in Pennsylvania, Trump has a slight edge. In sunbelt swing states such as Arizona, Georgia and Nevada, Biden is further behind, according to Fivethirtyeight.com polling averages. Holding on to most of these states will be crucial to retaining the White House.

“[Biden] needs to shake things up,” said veteran US political analyst Charlie Cook. “Debates usually don’t, but certainly could. There are not many known potential inflection points in presidential races, but debates are certainly a possibility.”

In the 2020 campaign, Biden performed relatively strongly in debates against Trump, repeatedly hitting him with folksy lines including “C’mon man”. But while on some occasions, such as the State of the Union address in March, he has remained sharp, on others he has stumbled on his words. Despite Trump at times being more rambling and extreme in his comments, it is Biden’s fumbles that have been in the spotlight.

In a sign of the importance the Biden campaign is placing on the debate, the president travelled to his Camp David retreat on Thursday to prepare for the showdown with Trump. Ron Klain, the former White House chief of staff and longtime aide, will be coaching him for the event.

A campaign official said to expect an aggressive approach. “The president has gotten increasingly punchier in recent remarks about Trump and plans to carry that theme through to the debate, while still projecting himself as the wise and steady leader in contrast to Trump’s chaos and division,” the official said.

The main attacks on Trump will centre around his “ripping away reproductive rights, promoting political violence and undermining our democratic institutions, and doing the bidding of his billionaire donors to fund tax giveaways to the ultra-wealthy and corporations by hurting seniors and the middle class”, the official said.

The Trump campaign is taking aim at Biden over his age and ability to make it through the evening of the debate. “President Trump takes on numerous tough interviews every single week and delivers lengthy rally speeches while standing, demonstrating elite stamina,” Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Trump, told the Financial Times. He added that the former president did not need to “programmed by staff” or “shot up with chemicals” such as Biden.

Cook said that while the “three years and seven months” that separate Biden, who is 81, and Trump, who just turned 78, should not be “an issue”, “the age gap between the two looks greater than it actually is”, aggravating the Democratic president’s vulnerabilities on other issues, such as persistently high levels of inflation.

“For swing voters, it comes down to what bothers them more, Trump’s personality and behaviour, or Biden’s stewardship over the economy,” Cook said.

The Biden campaign has launched a new $50mn television advert campaign in the swing states ahead of the debate attacking Trump for being an “unhinged” felon. This comes in the wake of his criminal conviction in New York on charges of falsifying business documents to conceal hush money payments to porn actor Stormy Daniels.

This marks Biden campaign’s attempt to try to remind Americans of what it views as the fundamental flaws in Trump’s fitness for office that they are likely to keep hammering away in the run-up to the election.

But strategists say Biden cannot underestimate the opportunity of the debate to put him in a place where he can overtake his rival.

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“Biden needs the debate to shift momentum his way,” said Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist and adviser to Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential race at consultancy Penta Group in Washington.

“Winning campaigns always have a strong sense of momentum, and right now even Biden’s strongest supporters would admit the current sense is that Biden is on the defensive, playing catch-up,” he added.

This article has been amended to correct Joe Biden’s age