Biden hits the 2024 trail...but can he last the pace?

It became known as the “basement strategy”. As the coronavirus pandemic raged outside, presidential candidate Joe Biden addressed the nation from a makeshift studio under his Delaware home, avoiding off-the-cuff gaffes and allowing rival Donald Trump to self-destruct.

- David Smith

Three years on, with the US mostly back to a new version of normal, Biden knows speeches on glitchy Zoom calls or in empty auditoriums will not be enough. The president, who at 80 is the oldest in US history, is facing his most grueling campaign.

Last Saturday he kicked off his re-election bid in Philadelphia, in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania. Biden addressed trade union supporters, a vital part of his coalition, and touted economic achievements, including a manufacturing revival and record jobs numbers. “Wall Street didn’t build America – you did,” Biden told the crowd.

As his campaign gathers momentum, he can also make the case that he has been a human bulwark against the extremism of Trump’s Make America Great Again (Maga) movement while finding ways to do business with Republicans in Congress.

But after the sheltered campaign of 2020, he will have to prove his fitness for office all over again. “The principal stumbling block to a second term for Joe Biden is the widespread perception that he is simply too old to serve effectively for a second term,” said Bill Galston, a former policy adviser to President Bill Clinton. “He has to run a vigorous campaign.”

Biden will have plenty of opportunity, and obligation, to meet voters on the campaign trail, generating spontaneous moments that can be both a blessing and a curse given his history of verbal blunders.