HE'S FALLEN AND HE CAN'T GET UP, PART 2: BIDEN'S DARK CAMPAIGN. Yesterday's newsletter, "Biden and the polls: He's fallen and he can't get up," described the deep trouble President Joe Biden is in as he seeks a second term at age 81. Not only do voters of both parties believe he is too old to continue as president, but majorities disapprove of virtually everything he has done in the White House, from his handling of the economy to the border to crime to foreign affairs. Even on traditionally strong Democratic issues, such as healthcare and education, Biden's job approval rating is startlingly low.

Fast forward 24 hours. On Wednesday morning, a number of news organizations reported that Biden will begin his 2024 campaign with two speeches. One will mark the anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot with an appearance at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. The other will take place at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, where a white gunman murdered nine black parishioners in 2015.

That says a lot about the coming Biden campaign. "Biden's kicking off 2024 by delving into some of the country's darkest moments rather than an upbeat affirmation of his record is meant to clarify for voters what his team sees as the stakes of November's election," the Associated Press reported. "During both events, he will characterize [former President Donald Trump] as a serious threat to the nation's founding principles, arguing that Trump — who has built a commanding early lead in the Republican presidential primary — will seek to undermine U.S. democracy should he win a second term."

In both speeches, and in the campaign to come, the New York Times added, the Biden campaign is "seeking to frame the contest not as a traditional referendum on the incumbent president and his governance of the nation, but as an existential battle to save the country from a dangerous opponent." The Washington Post put it this way: "As the 2024 election year kicks off, Biden's actions and rhetoric suggest his campaign has finally settled on a central message — that American democracy cannot survive another Trump presidency."

Here is the simple fact underlying all of this. With deep voter concerns about his age and his record, Biden simply cannot make the election about himself. That has been clear for quite a while. And so the president has signaled for more than a year that he intends to make the election about what he calls "MAGA extremism." "Our message is clear and it is simple," Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez told reporters. "We are running a campaign like the fate of our democracy depends on it. Because it does."

That is, indeed, a simple message: If Trump is elected, American democracy will end. You don't want that, do you? Perhaps Biden can give his campaign a theme: "Midnight in America."

It's quite a choice for voters. Say you're one of those who is concerned about Trump's actions in the weeks following the 2020 election. "Everything he did after Nov. 3, 2020, Election Day, was a disaster, both for himself and the country," this newsletter wrote back in 2022. At the same time, you are satisfied with many of the results of Trump's presidency, both in what happened, including a strong pre-COVID economy, solid business deregulation, sound energy policy, and judicial appointments, and in what did not happen. This is from one of Trump's most indefatigable critics, Robert Kagan: "On Trump's watch, there was no full-scale invasion of Ukraine, no major attack on Israel, no runaway inflation, no disastrous retreat from Afghanistan. It is hard to make the case for Trump's unfitness to anyone who does not already believe it."

And on the other side? A man whose infirmities have been visibly increasing, who is now 81 years old, and who seeks to be president of the United States until he is 86. A man who even if he were not too old for office has performed in a way that majorities of voters disapprove. And a man who has decided he has little to offer voters beyond a dystopian vision of the future if his opponent is elected. That is the path Biden has decided to take in 2024.

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