President Joe Biden's reelection campaign is shifting into high gear, launching a $30 million ad buy and a series of campaign travel stops in the wake of his forceful State of the Union address. The aggressive posture, which senior Biden campaign officials announced on Friday, is aimed at drawing a sharp contrast between the president's vision for the country and what they describe as former President Donald Trump's "dark, dangerous and chaotic vision."
In what the campaign has dubbed a "Month of Action," President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, First Lady Jill Biden, and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff will stump in every battleground state throughout March. The president kicked off the tour with events in Pennsylvania and Georgia on Friday and Saturday, with plans to visit New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Michigan next week. Meanwhile, Harris will head to Arizona and Nevada.
The Biden campaign's six-week, $30 million TV and digital ad buy, set to begin on Saturday, will target battleground states as well as Black and Latino-focused outlets and channels. The campaign is also hiring 350 new staffers and opening 100 campaign offices across swing states over the next month, reflecting a broader strategy to bury Trump in non-stop spending, made possible through Biden's significant fundraising advantage.
The timing of the ad barrage is notable, coming months earlier than allies for President Barack Obama started attacking then-candidate Mitt Romney in May 2012. It also stands out for the reassurance it is providing to anxious Democrats, who have been critical of the campaign's sleepy wind-up.
"I think Joe Biden might have changed SOTU into the Start Of The Uplift with last night's speech," said Dan Sena, a Democratic consultant who led the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2018. "Democrats needed him to lay out the playbook for this election, in particular on the economy and immigration. We got the vision and contrast we need as the campaign season starts."
Biden's overtly political State of the Union address on Thursday drew repeated and sharp contrasts with Trump on democracy, abortion rights, and immigration-all issues that are on track to define the general election contest between the two incumbent presidents. Though Biden never mentioned Trump by name, he cited his "predecessor" 13 times, compared to only once in his 2023 address.
The campaign-centered focus of the speech left Republicans fuming, but Democrats argued that it was an effective move by the White House to lay out the stakes of the election in simple terms. "Swing voters want to see a fighter that can protect them from a second Trump term," said Bradley Beychok, co-founder of American Bridge, a pro-Biden super PAC. "Biden left no doubt he's ready to take the fight to Trump. Couldn't think of a stronger start for Biden as the campaign really comes into focus."
While Biden's speech was not without its missteps, such as mistakenly inviting people to go to Moscow and using the term "illegal" when discussing a murder case, the Biden campaign pushed back on these criticisms. Campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez emphasized that the community knows Biden and "who is fighting for our community."
For several months, Biden and his campaign have been weighed down by stagnant public polling that regularly shows the president trailing Trump in head-to-head matches in swing state and national surveys. However, the campaign insists that these dynamics will shift once the race clarifies into a Biden-Trump rematch, assisted by a massive gush of paid advertising from both the campaign and Democratic outside groups.
Campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon noted that "all the, kind of, core metrics of a campaign are picking up," citing fundraising and volunteer engagement, "exactly as we expected to happen as this became more real and more clear for folks that there's a choice."
As the general election contest between Biden and Trump begins to take shape, the president's reelection campaign is wasting no time in ramping up its efforts to secure a second term. With a significant ad buy, new hires, and a swing state tour, the Biden campaign is signaling its readiness to take on the challenges ahead and draw a clear contrast with the former president.
