Biden 2028?

Sep 05, 2024

By Eli Stokols, Ben Johansen and Lauren Egan

Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration and Harris campaign.

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For a moment, it seemed like Fox News White House correspondent PETER DOOCY was stroking out, noting to press secretary KARINE JEAN-PIERRE on Wednesday that President JOE BIDEN’s approval rating was “soaring.”

Unsurprisingly, Doocy was just setting up a characteristically confrontational question: “Does it bother the president that people are so pleased that he’s retiring?”

That, of course, isn’t exactly how the White House sees it.

After three years of Biden’s approval rating being stuck in the high 30s or low 40s, the sharp upturn is noteworthy — and without question driven in large part by his July 21 decision, under immense pressure from his own party, to end his reelection campaign.

And it’s not just one poll that’s improved in short order.

The latest USA Today/Suffolk University survey has Biden’s approval rating at 48 percent, up from 41 percent in June. A Quinnipiac University poll, also taken in late August, showed a 6-point improvement from July’s 39 percent approval number to 45 percent. A Gallup poll taken over the first three weeks of August found Biden with a 43 percent approval rating, 7 points higher than his abysmal 36 percent July number. And a Marist survey from the first week of August had Biden at 46 percent, up 5 points from July.

Still, a majority of Americans say they disapprove of Biden’s job performance. His average disapproval rating is 54 percent, according to RealClearPolitics, though that’s down from 58 percent in July, in the days after his disastrous debate.

Responding to Doocy’s question on Wednesday, Jean-Pierre asserted that the numbers reflected the public’s growing appreciation not just for Biden’s decision to pass the electoral baton to Vice President KAMALA HARRIS but for the work he’s done since taking office. “What the American people appreciate is what we’ve been able to do in the last several years,” she said.

That’s certainly one theory — and one Biden’s aides are eager to run with. Although the president and his team believe it’s important to cede much of the spotlight to Harris and her campaign over the next two months, the White House increasingly believes that Biden, if deployed selectively, can help the vice president, especially with working class voters in “Blue Wall” battlegrounds.

That’s the political background for Biden’s trip on Thursday to Westby, Wisconsin, a swing region within a swing state, where he spoke about how new investments in renewable energy were creating jobs and increasing America’s energy independence. On Friday, the president will return to the upper Midwest with a speech in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that will similarly focus on what the White House is calling its “Investing in America” agenda.

Inside the West Wing, top aides view the president’s improved standing with the public as the result of a changed media environment: Coverage has shifted away from his age and become far less political now that the 81-year-old president is no longer seeking reelection.

They are less willing to accept that it wasn’t the media’s coverage of Biden’s age but Biden himself — and his determination to seek a second term despite the growing apprehension from voters and numerous Democrats about his ability to do the job — that led to the media focus on his condition and poll numbers that were a reflection of the public’s deep concerns.

But without Biden’s age dominating the media, to say nothing of the coverage of his apparent electoral weakness against DONALD TRUMP, other stories have broken through. While Harris’ campaign has excited the Democratic base and improved the party’s chances of holding onto the White House, Biden has called for major reforms to the Supreme Court, touted the reduced cost of several popular drugs for Medicare recipients as a result of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and highlighted the economic benefits of his agenda for working families.

A number of other developments that should help any incumbent president have occurred at the same time: a decline in violent crime, illegal border crossings falling to the lowest level in four years, and consumer confidence rising to a six-month high while prices of gas and other goods have dropped.

All told, Biden’s improved standing, his team believes, should help him maximize the remaining months in office: If more of the public holds a positive view of his presidency, aides believe, more people will be receptive to his messages about what he’s accomplished and his calls for policy changes in the months and years ahead.

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POTUS PUZZLER

What did HARRY TRUMAN call the White House?

(Answer at bottom.)

CAMPAIGN HQ

DOUG JOINS THE POD: Second gentleman DOUG EMHOFF on Wednesday joined “Pod Save America,” where he talked adjusting to his wife being the presidential nominee, his budding relationship with BILL CLINTON and his bromance with Harris’ running mate TIM WALZ.

And, with the NFL season kicking off tonight, Emhoff made sure to bring up fantasy football — specifically, the 30-year-old league he’s been a part of with his University of Southern California law school buddies. The second gentleman, who shares his team with his son COLE (“Team Nirvana”), is on a 24-year drought, with their last win in 2000 (fantasy was a thing then??). Last year, he said, their team was on a heater, ranking first the entire season until the championship game.

“We got to the finals. I told the [other] team, ‘Just tank. Let us win. If you let us win, we’ll do next year’s draft at the White House.’ Didn’t work,” Emhoff told the Pod.

Potentially two historic wins coming up this fall for Doug.

CELEBS LINE UP: ~~LINUS CALDWELL~~ Actor MATT DAMON and Broadway musical creator LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA will headline a campaign fundraiser for Vice President Harris later this month in New York City, Bloomberg’s HADRIANA LOWENKRON and AMANDA L. GORDON report. Tickets to the Sept. 18 fundraiser in the Big Apple are going for $25,000 a person.

“It is all hands on deck to make sure democracy continues to exist in this country,” LUIS A. MIRANDA JR., Lin-Manuel’s father and the chair of Latino Victory who is co-hosting the event, said.

WILMINGTON BOUND: ALEXANDRA CAFFREY is joining the Harris campaign as deputy director of message events, our DANIEL LIPPMAN has learned. She previously was press secretary for Transportation Secretary PETE BUTTIGIEG.

The Oval

TAG-TEAMING UNGA: Harris is likely to join Biden in attending the United Nations General Assembly in New York City later this month, a person familiar with the planning told Eli. As first reported in Thursday’s edition of NatSec Daily, the annual meeting, attended by scores of world leaders, offers Harris a chance to get face time with key figures, burnish her foreign policy credentials and just maybe fit in a bit of fundraising on the side.

HE MEANT WHAT HE SAID: President Biden is sticking by his June pledge not to pardon his son HUNTER BIDEN, who submitted a surprise plea that would accept responsibility for tax evasion and other tax crimes on Thursday, our ADAM CANCRYN reports.

When asked aboard Air Force One if Biden would reconsider his vow, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre responded: “No ... It’s still no.” She also said the president would not seek to commute his son’s sentence prior to leaving office in January.

Hunter Biden now awaits sentencing after a jury convicted him on three felony gun charges in June. And he’s hoping his last-minute plea will help him avoid a second trial — due to begin in Los Angeles today — over allegations he committed a series of tax crimes.

HONORING THE CHAMPS: The UConn men’s basketball team and University of South Carolina women’s basketball team — the winners of the 2024 NCAA championships — will visit the White House on Tuesday, ESPN’s MYRON MEDCALF reports. The Huskies and Gamecocks had historically dominant March Madness runs, led by coaches DAN HURLEY and DAWN STALEY, two college basketball coaching giants.

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE WANTS YOU TO READ: This piece by NBC’s MIKE MEMOLI, CAROL E. LEE and MONICA ALBA, titled: “How Biden is spending his final months as president.” No longer constrained by the limitations of a reelection campaign, Biden is “in the beginning stage of a strategy that will take him to places at home and abroad over the next five months that he most likely would have ignored as a candidate, not with the goal of keeping the White House, but of keeping his legacy and some of his most significant accomplishments secure.” White House communications director BEN LaBOLT said the president’s schedule will be “robust” and that he “plans to leave it all on the field.”

Chief of staff JEFF ZIENTS put together an action plan for the rest of Biden’s tenure focusing on four goals: finding new ways to increase investment in U.S. infrastructure, reducing costs for Americans, safeguarding freedoms under siege and strengthening U.S. alliances to confront global challenges.

LaBolt and deputy communications director HERBIE ZISKEND shared the piece on X.

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE DOESN’T WANT YOU TO READ: This piece by NYT’s TALMON JOSEPH SMITH, who writes few employers are firing and even fewer employers are hiring, leading to younger, less experienced applicants feeling left out. The unemployment rate remains low at 4.3 percent. But a key measure of labor market momentum known as the hires rate, which tracks a month’s hires as a share of overall employment, has notably fallen back to the sluggish pace of 2014.

THE BUREAUCRATS

HATCH ACT BITES AGAIN: Navy Secretary CARLOS DEL TORO broke the Hatch Act by publicly endorsing President Biden’s then-reelection campaign and criticizing Donald Trump in several statements he made while on official duty overseas, AP’s LOLITA C. BALDOR reports. In a report to the White House, Special Counsel HAMPTON DELLINGER said Del Toro “crossed a legal line” with his comments and said the secretary's “unwillingness to acknowledge a mistake is striking” and troubling.

PERSONNEL MOVES: FELICIA SALAZAR is now senior presidential speechwriter at the White House, Lippman has learned. She most recently was senior adviser for communications at the White House's Council on Environmental Quality.

Agenda Setting

‘CAUSE IT’S POLITICS, MAN, POLITICS: The Biden administration has spent the last three years establishing a policy of “friend-shoring,” aiming to contain adversaries like China and Russia by forging better relations with U.S. allies like Europe and Japan. But as NYT’s ALAN RAPPEPORT reports, the president’s apparent decision to block the proposed acquisition of Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel by Japan’s Nippon Steel is where that policy stops.

Legal experts, Wall Street analysts and economists expressed concern about the precedent Biden would set if he uses executive power to block a company from an allied nation from buying an American business, warning that interference with the $14.9 billion transaction would be an extreme departure from the U.S.’ culture of open investment.

“This was a purely political decision, and one that stomps on the Biden administration’s stated focus on building alliances among like-minded countries to advance the economic competition with China,” said CHRISTOPHER B. JOHNSTONE, a senior adviser and the Japan chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “At the end of the day, it represents pure protectionism that draws no apparent distinction between our friends and our adversaries.”

What We're Reading

The Democrats’ Patriotic Vanguard (The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum)

‘Defund police’ or reimagine safety? Kamala Harris’ record on a historic American issue (LA Times’ Kevin Rector)

Neighbors divided: Highland Park duplex showcases political differences (TribLive’s Megan Swift)

POTUS PUZZLER ANSWER

Truman called it a “glamorous prison” and the “great white jail,” according to The Atlantic. Alright, that feels a bit dramatic. His daughter, MARGARET, later elaborated on what he meant: “You never feel at home. Not if you have any sense.”

A CALL OUT! Do you think you have a harder trivia question? Send us your best one about the presidents, with a citation or sourcing, and we may feature it!

Edited by Steve Shepard and Rishika Dugyala.

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