WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden confirmed the Democratic presidential nomination on Tuesday, NBC News projects, is expected to win a majority of the necessary delegates and a bitter, hotly contested rematch with him Donald Trump.
The outcome was never in much doubt. Biden faced notable opposition from the party’s biggest names — Govs. Among them, California’s Gavin Newsom and Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer opted out of the race rather than challenge the president, who defeated Trump once.
By clearing the field for the 81-year-old Biden, Democrats believed he would remain the party’s best chance to defeat Trump once again. The November election will help determine whether that bet pays off. Some party activists have their doubts.
“He [Biden] forced upon us by the establishment, but he’s clearly not the same person he was even three years ago, and that’s made him less fit for office, even unfit,” Liano Sharon, a member of the Democratic National Committee from Michigan, said in an interview.
The general election campaign begins with Biden villain against an opponent who historians ranked as the worst president in the country’s history.
Age remains Biden’s glaring weakness, the poll shows. His State of the Union address last week was a chance to reassure voters of his readiness, and his performance quelled some of the voters’ doubts. Biden delivered his 68-minute speech with extraordinary brio, taking opportunities to go off script and chastise Republicans who had been bashing him throughout.
“They [the Biden campaign team] I had one of the most impressive opportunities to reset with the State of the Union,” said Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League and former mayor of New Orleans.
Biden’s challenge now is to energize Democratic and independent voters who don’t give him credit for a strong economy and a slew of bipartisan bills he’s introduced in Congress, eight months before the general election.
A new difficult political problem is the consequences of the war between Israel and Hamas. Biden’s strong support for Israel has divided his party. Instead of rewarding him with another term, some Democrats in Michigan and other battleground states are considering leaving the top of the ballot because of the war in Gaza, which has killed more than 30,000 people.
Touting his record did little to revive Biden’s sluggish approval ratings. Democratic allies want to see Biden attack Trump at every turn, warning that the former president poses a threat to the nation’s democracy and is hardly an inspiring, fresh-faced alternative to voters who fear Biden is too old at 77.
Biden is eager to comply. He previewed the upcoming attacks in his State of the Union address. Avoiding the unifying message, he referred to “my predecessor” more than a dozen times.
“Biden needs to go after Trump hammer and tongs, and he needs to be persistent about it,” former Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said in an interview.
While the Democratic primary season was largely a coronation, Biden’s victory is something he will savor. He has lost more presidential races than he has won. As he got older, the Oval Office seemed more and more out of reach. He ran for the party’s nomination in 1988 and again in 2008 and never gained traction with rank-and-file Democratic voters.
Grieving the death of her son Beau, she decided not to participate in the 2016 campaign after serving as Barack Obama’s vice president for eight years. Even if he chooses to enter the race, Obama and his political team have made it clear that their preferred candidate is Hillary Clinton, not Biden.
Biden lost badly in the first few contests of the 2020 term before bouncing back in South Carolina and reviving a seemingly flat-lined campaign.
Through sheer tenacity, he finishes his term as president while consistently wrapping up the second party nomination. Neither Hillary Clinton nor John Kerry nor Al Gore nor Edward Kennedy nor many of Biden’s peers ever got that far.
“Nobody told me that life in politics and public service would be easy; I never expected politics, like life, to be free of disappointment or heartache,” Biden wrote in his 2017 memoir, Promise Me, Dad. “But I’ve always believed it was worth the effort.”