Republicans think Biden is an 'easy target' to unite their party

President Joe Biden launched a second campaign for the presidency — and Republicans couldn’t be more thrilled about it.

GOP officials aren’t overly pollyannaish about their prospects of winning by the White House, though they think they’re good. But the possibility of being able to simply talk about Biden rather than all their internal party drama has them downright giddy.

For weeks, Republicans have been dogged by Donald Trump’s legal sideshows in four separate jurisdictions, riven by disagreements over abortion and Russia’s war against Ukraine, and unsteadied by some of the former president's rivals taking shots at its putative party leader.

GOP operatives and candidates say now that Biden has announced his reelection bid, Republicans will have a chance to reset the contours of the race.

“He’s such an easy target,” said David Carney, a Republican strategist based in New Hampshire. Lower-polling candidates also stand to benefit, Carney said. They can more directly make their case for taking on the president in November 2024.

“It’s a good applause line — ‘I’m going to kick the shit out of Biden’ — everyone likes that on our side,” Carney added. “It gives a very safe topic to talk about.”

Already, those vying for the nomination are eager to turn attention to the other party. Vivek Ramaswamy, a 37-year-old biotech entrepreneur fighting to boost his standing out of the low-single digits, said Monday that Biden’s expected announcement “solidifies what the opposition looks like.” And he noted that Biden — like Trump in 2020 — is unlikely to face any primary debates, despite having at least two Democratic opponents and being unpopular even among his own base.

“I think that helps sharpen the case I'm making that this isn't even about Republicans and Democrats,” Ramaswamy said. “It's about the managerial class versus the everyday citizen, and the Democratic Party and the leadership of it all the way up to Biden represents the managerial class.”

Nachama Soloveichik, communications director of Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign, said her team welcomes the opportunity to make a contrast with the current president.

“Joe Biden’s administration has been defined by weakness and incompetence,” Soloveichik said in a statement to POLITICO. “Nikki Haley is running for president to make America strong and proud, and we will continue to contrast her hard work and positive vision with Biden’s hide-in-the-basement campaign.”

Opposition parties long for races to be referendums on the person in power. And the desire for the current 2024 GOP field to turn the spotlight on Biden echoes how Democrats felt about Trump in 2020 and — before then — how Republicans felt about former President Barack Obama.

“Now the cat’s out of the bag," is how Ward Baker, a Nashville-based GOP strategist, put it. "We have someone to run against.”

But that desire to shift the focus onto the current president is even more acute this cycle as Republicans face major existential questions of their own. GOP candidates are desperately trying to avoid issues that have proven to be political minefields — abortion, the war in Ukraine, reforming Medicare and more — all while wrestling with the legal troubles besetting their own frontrunner.

“For elected officials and party leaders, knowing that it’s Biden will be a useful thing,” said David Kochel, the veteran Iowa Republican strategist.

Jim McLaughlin, the veteran Republican pollster who works for Trump, predicted that Biden’s official announcement could boost the former president even more, assuming that Trump himself drew effective contrasts with his successor.

“The more he talks about issues, and the more he stays focused on issues, the better off he is, because then he can contrast his record versus Joe Biden's on issue after issue,” McLaughlin continued. “Voters think the country was doing better and Donald Trump did a better job than Joe Biden on the issues that they care about most.”

Even Trump skeptics within the Republican ranks agreed that Biden officially jumping in could boost the former president. “It's definitely good for Republicans,” said Mike Madrid, the Republican strategist and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. “It’s definitely good for Trump. It literally gives Trump the matchup that he needs to start defining the contours of the race.”

Of course, it remains an open question how and even whether Trump will take advantage of Biden's reelection launch. On Thursday, at his first public rally following Biden’s announcement, Trump plans to appear in Manchester. But that will also come just days after jury selection gets underway in a civil trial over allegations that he raped the magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll. Trump denies the allegations.

All of which could lead to Trump reverting to the mean.

“Trump actually likes attacking Republicans more than he likes attacking Democrats,” Kochel said. “That’s going to remain a feature of his approach.”

Polling shows that neither Trump nor Biden are names that most voters want to see on a November 2024 ballot — but particularly not Biden. An NBC poll released Sunday found that 70 percent of voters, including 51 percent of Democrats, don’t want the president to run again — with nearly half of those people citing his age as a major concern. In contrast, 60 percent of voters said they don’t believe Trump should run again.

For Trump, the moment itself is fraught and could ultimately boomerang months from now. In the primary, he is currently ascendant. But he faces a bruising general election against a candidate who has already beaten him. And recent surveys have been mixed on whether Trump or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — who has yet to declare his own candidacy — are more likely to beat Biden in a general election matchup.

“DeSantis squeaked out a tough victory in 2018 and won by 20 points in 2022,” Kochel said. “Electability is a strong argument for Nikki Haley, Tim Scott — all of them. Trump has extremely high negatives, and very low favorables, except within the base of the party. Trump has the worst general election argument of any of the candidates or potential candidates.”