What Was Missing From Joe Biden’s 2024 Announcement
What is Joe Biden doing?
On Tuesday, the president officially declared his bid to run for reelection in 2024. In his announcement video, Biden showcased his signature optimism and persistent cause to win the “battle for the soul of America.” Yet nowhere in the three-minute video did Biden even mention the words abortion, climate, environment, gun, immigrant, justice, labor, union, or worker.
The video announcement paid a great deal of focus on themes of freedom and democracy, and the threats “MAGA extremists” pose in eroding them: cutting Social Security and cutting taxes for the wealthy, “dictating what health care decisions women can make,” “banning books and telling people who they can love,” doing it all “while making it more difficult for you to be able to vote.”
“This is not a time to be complacent,” Biden urged, asking voters to consider a key question: whether they will have more freedom and rights, or fewer.
Biden’s ad in a broad sense focused on the abstractions: his belief that “we’re good and decent people” in a “country that believes in honesty and respect, and treating each other with dignity.”
But in so doing, Biden spent 184 seconds avoiding any mention of the most popular issues among not his only base, but across political lines.
State after state is advancing restrictive abortion bans and pushing attacks on LGBTQ people. The majority of Americans—regardless of party—say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. But Biden’s only invocations of the issues were subdued: MAGA extremists are looking to dictate “what health care decisions women can make,” or tell people “who they can love.”
Amid an appalling wave of gun violence across the country—from shootings against kids accidentally ringing the wrong doorbell or driving up the wrong driveway, to mass shootings at schools and banks—Biden did not mention the word “gun” once.
In the aftermath of a border detention facility fire killing 40 migrants, Biden did not mention the word “migrant,” or “immigrant,” not even to handwave about America being a “beacon” for people fleeing oppression or searching for a better life.
Nothing about “justice” either, as police killings continue, as do protests of the construction of a bloated police facility in Atlanta (protests where masses of people have been arrested indiscriminately on no just cause, and one protestor was even killed in cold blood).
After first billing himself the “most pro-union president in American history,” and then imposing a contract onto railroad workers, Biden did not mention the word “labor, “union,” or “worker.”
And on a ticking clock with no regards for second chances, after Biden rubbed his foot into the faces of the millions of young people who got him into office and his approved the controversial Willow pipeline project, the president could not even muster up the gumption to say “climate,” “environment,” or even “nature.”
Of course, it’s just an ad. On the other hand, it’s also the ad—the long-awaited confirmation that Biden is running again, and that he should earn our support lest we lose to the dangerous Republicans. And amid Biden’s lurch to the right—with no apparent electoral benefit—every display of priority matters. So if his announcement is to be graded on any scale of genuine concern for the broader slate of Democratic-mobilizing issues, or for the life-changing problems for millions of people, it fell remarkably short.