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Joe Biden is shouldering historically low poll numbers heading into his reelection campaign. The good news is that he has a readymade platform in the form of the defunct Build Back Better bill. The bad news? He’ll have to be forced to run on it.

by Branko Marcetic, Jacobin

Joe Biden and the Democrats are running for reelection next year, in a campaign season on whose outcome, Biden says, the future of American democracy depends. So what are they running on?

Nothing so far, it seems.

Don’t just take it from me. The president’s campaign launch commercial vowed to “finish the job” without explaining what that job was or what he intended to do to finish it. Based on conversations with his advisors, the Associated Press reported in April that the Biden 2024 message “will be largely indistinguishable” from his rhetoric over the six months prior, and will see him “play up accomplishments from his first two years, draw a sharp contrast with Republican policies he deems extreme, and brush off worries about his age.” We got a preview of this in his June speech in Chicago, where Biden pointed to positive macroeconomic indicators to make the case that “Bidenomics is working,” touted the legislation he’d already signed into law, boasted about his pro-union bona fides, and hit Republicans for wanting to bring back failed trickle-down economics.

Biden in Philly

The problem is, Americans aren’t that thrilled with Biden’s presidency or his economy. The President’s approval rating has been in near-historic doldrums for well over a year now. Even Democratic voters don’t want him to run again and tell pollsters they’re unenthused about his steering of the economy, particularly those who tend to be younger, less wealthy, and black or Latino. Another recent poll found that, as Biden prepares to rest his reelection chances on his strong record of accomplishments, only 40 percent of registered voters actually think he actually has that record (eleven points fewer than for Donald Trump, his likely opponent).

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