‘Biden is Doing it All Wrong’: Longtime Clinton Advisor Pens Scorching NY Times Op-Ed Trashing the President’s Campaign
(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
A longtime counselor to Bill and Hillary Clinton wrote an op-ed in The New York Times titled “Biden Is Doing It All Wrong,” suggesting that the president must dramatically “chart a different course” if he wants any chance at winning a second term.
Mark Penn worked for the Clintons from 1995 to 2008, and is currently chairman of the Harris Poll, and chief executive of Stagwell Inc. Biden’s problem, he writes, is spending too much time appealing to the left-wing of the Democratic Party.
“By pitching too much to the base, he is leaving behind the centrist swing voters who shift between parties from election to election and, I believe, will be the key factor deciding the 2024 race,” Penn wrote. He continued:
I’ve spent decades looking at the behavior of swing voters and how candidates appeal to them, including for Bill Clinton’s re-election campaign in 1996. If Mr. Biden wants to serve another four years, he has to stop being dragged to the left and chart a different course closer to the center that appeals to those voters who favor bipartisan compromises to our core issues, fiscal discipline and a strong America.
Penn wrote that “scared candidates are, in my experience, easily sold the idea that the Democratic base or Republican base is going to stay home in November unless they are constantly fed what they want to hear.” He continued:
The 2024 election is a rematch, but Mr. Biden should not assume that he will get the same result as he did in 2020 in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia and other battleground states by running the same playbook. This time around, Mr. Biden is seen as older, and the assessment of the job that he has done is in negative territory. While he won’t get any younger, he could still move more to the center, hoover up swing voters who desperately want to reject Mr. Trump, strengthen his image as a leader by destroying Hamas, and rally the base at the end. But that means first pushing back against the base rather than pandering to it, and remembering that when it comes to the math of elections, swing is king.
