Welcome to Trail Mix, your 2024 election sanity guide. See something interesting on the trail? Email me at jake.lahut@thedailybeast.com. To get Trail Mix in your inbox, subscribe here for free.
This week, we look at how the Biden campaign is already countering Trump's attacks on the president's age. Plus, an inside look at Democratic plans to win back the majority of statehouses before the next redistricting, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s light schedule.
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NOT AGING LIKE MILK
Six weeks ago, President Joe Biden’s campaign was deep in the throes of its worst week of the 2024 election so far.
Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on Biden’s handling of classified documents had just been released, and while it didn’t charge the president with any illegal conduct, the document painted him as “a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.”
In the face of the largest freakout yet among Democrats over Biden’s age and capabilities, the campaign and the White House projected calm.
It turns out that the calm was justified. As their rematch with Donald Trump begins in earnest, Biden and his team have managed to quell the widespread Democratic panic over what was seen as his most intractable obstacle to re-election.
The Biden plan to address his age head-on—through humor, directness, and tying it to his experience—has been on full display in recent weeks.
In the Biden campaign’s first major ad buy of the general election season—which began after Super Tuesday last week—he did just that.
“Look, I’m not a young guy. That’s no secret,” Biden said in a direct-to-camera video highlighting his administration’s legislative accomplishments, such as passing an infrastructure bill after years of Trump failing to do so.
In a quick cut at the end of the ad, Biden jokes in a fake blooper take that he’s “very young, energetic, and handsome. What the hell am I doing this for?”
Then, last Thursday, Biden delivered a widely well-received State of the Union address where he concluded by reflecting on his age.
“I know I may not look like it, but I’ve been around a while,” Biden said. “And when you get to my age certain things become clearer than ever before.”
In a speech where Biden repeatedly referred to Trump as “my predecessor,” he used his age to make a veiled but sharp contrast to his 77-year old opponent.
“Now some other people my age see a different story. An American story of resentment, revenge, and retribution,” Biden said. “That’s not me.”
It didn’t hurt that Biden spent much of his speech mixing it up with Republican lawmakers in multiple unprompted exchanges, suddenly taking the wind out of GOP talking points about the president being too weak and feeble for office.
It also didn’t hurt that days after the State of the Union, a transcript of Hur’s interview with Biden was released, undermining the special counsel’s sweeping portrayal of the president as a hapless old man.
With Bidenworld riding high, Andrew Bates, the White House deputy press secretary, provided The Daily Beast with a bullish view of what comes next for the president.
“President Biden is taking his successful State of the Union message to five states in one week, through multiple events a day, interviews, and exchanges with the press corps: that what counts is the age of your ideas and your ability to move the country ahead,” Bates told The Daily Beast, adding that Republicans “keep forgetting that their age attacks have failed since 2019.”
Heading into 2024, many Democrats were not getting less worried about the role that voter perceptions of Biden’s age would play in the race. In fact, Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) entered the race late last year almost solely in response to those fears. (Perhaps tellingly, he dropped out last week after failing to win even marginal support in nearly every contest.)
But in ruthlessly and relentlessly portraying Biden as a senile and confused octogenarian, Republicans may have laid themselves a trap that Biden snapped shut in just the last two weeks. By setting expectations for his performance abysmally low, the president and Democrats could claim victory and actually assuage voter concerns when he easily stepped over the bar.
“The Biden campaign has done a good job of taking the issue head-on,” said Democratic strategist Josh Schwerin, who added the Trump campaign and other Republicans are making the same mistake by “pretty much set[ting] the bar at, ‘If the president’s not in a coma, he’s exceeding expectations.’”
Instead of adjusting their own approach, however, Trump’s political operation only seems to be dialing up the intensity of their attacks on Biden’s age.
In an ad first released just over a week ago, the Trump-aligned super PAC MAGA Inc not only played the usual clips of Biden looking sluggish and forgetful, but also posed the question of whether he would physically survive a second term.
So far, the Biden campaign has not responded directly, and there appear to be no plans to do so anytime soon—though the ad did not go unnoticed.
Ammar Moussa, the Biden campaign’s director of rapid response, called the ad “a sick and deranged stunt from a broke and struggling campaign that can’t defend Trump’s extreme Project 2025 agenda to ban abortion, separate families, raise costs on the middle class, repeal health care, and sow chaos and division. Trump tried this strategy four years ago and got his ass kicked by Joe Biden.”
Democratic campaign observers think Trump will end up paying for the escalation sooner or later.
“The former president has chosen to make the current president’s health an issue in this campaign, and the former president’s health will be an issue in this campaign, it should be an issue,” Democratic strategist Rich Luchette told The Daily Beast.
“I don’t know who exactly will be the deliverer of that message,” Luchette continued, “but if I liked McDonald’s as much as Donald Trump does, I don’t think I’d want to release my medical records either.”
Instead of slugging it out with Trump over who will be the more mentally and physically fit octogenarian in the White House come January 2025, Democrats both around the Biden campaign and elsewhere think the best course of action is to respond to lingering concerns over aging by folding in contrasts with Trump on policy and character.
Although the Biden campaign and its allies are not completely sticking to the Michelle Obama approach of “when they go low, we go high,” they still think there’s value in not completely stooping down to Trump’s level, such as when he recently mocked Biden’s stutter.
“You don’t have to be mean,” Michael Blake, an Obama campaign alumnus, said, “you just have to be real.”
BLUE MAP
It was only eight years ago when Democrats were near rock bottom in state legislatures nationwide. Now, they see a realistic path back to controlling a majority of state legislatures.
Under Barack Obama, the party ceded nearly 1,000 state legislative seats and almost 30 state chambers flipped from Democratic control to Republican, setting Democrats back years, potentially even decades.
But miraculously, Democrats now have a path to not only reverse that trend but gain control of most state legislatures—and the timeline of their comeback couldn’t be any more conspicuous.
The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee announced this year that they have a plan to secure majorities in 50 state legislatures by 2030, an ambitious goal but one they’ve already made significant progress on. (The party currently holds 41 state legislative bodies, whereas Democrats only held 29 majorities after the 2016 election.)
The DLCC hopes to allocate roughly a third of all its expenditures on this goal, according to top committee aides who shared the details exclusively with The Daily Beast. The committee’s budget for 2024 is $60 million, and they plan to spend a third of their expenditures toward further their 2030 plan.
While the plan specifically targets holding chambers in Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and New Hampshire, growing that control relies on states like Wisconsin, Georgia, Kansas, and North Carolina, all states where both legislative chambers are currently held by Republicans.
Democrats, however, believe they can make inroads in those states.
The reason the group is targeting 2030 is significant: After those midterm elections, states will begin the once-in-a-decade process of redrawing legislative maps at the state level. Although some states have passed measures to level the redistricting playing field, the process has become increasingly partisan, with Republicans using their control at the state level to punish Democrats and make it harder for the party to win majorities. It’s those maps which propelled Republicans to a House majority in most of the 2010s, and it’s now those partisan maps that are the difference for Republicans holding their paper-thin majority.
That’s why it’s so crucial for Democrats that they get back control of as many legislatures as possible before the 2030 redistricting process.
If the party holds majorities in 50 state legislatures by 2030, partisan redistricting would be much harder for Republicans—and could, conversely, be much easier for Democrats to draw favorable maps.
“With new redistricting maps decided by 2030 elections and in order to fundamentally transform the balance of power in states, we need a long-term strategy to break into territory that Republicans have long dominated,” Heather Williams, president of the DLCC, told The Daily Beast. “That’s exactly what this plan does.”
It’s a bold plan, considering the party ceded so much ground when Obama left the White House. But it’s also a plan that Democrats argue has to happen to position the party to not only compete on the state level but to build a bench of talent that can then move up the political ladder and become the next leaders at the federal and statewide levels.
The issue of lost statehouses has long been a touchy subject for Democrats. After the party’s 2016 losses, Obama himself acknowledged he was not able to “build a sustaining organization” for the party.
But in response to those issues, the DLCC professionalized its operation in the wake of the 2016 election, using the backlash to Trump to make new gains in statehouses across the country.
The group has since quadrupled both its operating budget and its full-time staff, something top committee staff acknowledge had to happen after “a lot of self-evaluation” on how much the party prioritizes down ballot races.
NOT KENNEDYESQUE
Although he sports the same thin ties and rolled up sleeves as his legendary late father, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has embraced a more minimalistic style of campaigning.
Instead of barnstorming the country in the style of the Kennedy 1968 campaign, Kennedy Jr. is barely appearing on the campaign trail at all. On his campaign website, there are only four events listed between March and April that he’s promised to attend.
Despite being a longshot independent candidate who could theoretically use as much face time with voters as possible, Kennedy may not need to do much in order to keep polling in the high single digits in battleground states such as Michigan and Wisconsin. Such numbers would be enough to potentially sway the election between Trump and Biden.
The Kennedy campaign did not return a request for comment on whether there will be more events featuring the candidate. He is also in line with his major party competitors in appearing rarely on the campaign trail so far, though Biden’s travel has increased since he put the primary to bed on Super Tuesday.
However, according to a Kennedy-aligned operative, the candidate’s light in-person footprint is indicative of how the campaign is prioritizing grabbing voters’ attention online over a traditional presence on the trail.
Deploying Kennedy in person, the source familiar with the thinking said, should be focused on states where he’s trying to get on the ballot—like Texas and California, where he’ll be heading this weekend and next week for a pair of stops.
“Having Bobby there is a powerful visual, and it’s a sign he’s committed to doing this,” the Kennedy-aligned operative said, requesting anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Instead of spending tens of thousands of dollars on advance teams, renting space and all the other costs that come with typical campaign events, the Kennedy team is hoping to generate buzz by more unconventional means.
Enter the independent candidate’s highly unusual vice presidential deliberations, details of which have trickled into the press in recent days. Some media outlets have listed former pro wrestler and independent Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura at the top of the candidate’s shortlist, alongside New York Jets quarterback and conspiracy theorist Aaron Rodgers.
Although the Kennedy source said they’re partial to Ventura and have personally lobbied the candidate to pick the Minnesotan, they conceded Rodgers would be the ultimate manifestation of the campaign’s gamble on generating as much attention as possible from inside and outside the political media ecosystem.
“If you’re putting an Aaron Rodgers on the ticket, somebody who’s been in the living rooms of tens of millions of Americans for over 20 years, in terms of getting eyeballs and getting non-traditional voters out, that could be huge,” the Kennedy-aligned operative said.
However, they made clear the Kennedy campaign didn’t reinvent the wheel on this strategy. Full credit for the unusual tactics elevating media attention above all else, the operative argued, goes to a certain former president.
“That’s what our politics has become,” the Kennedy supporter said, “and Donald Trump proved that.”
OFF THE BEATEN PATH
GOFFSTOWN, New Hampshire—On Monday, days after a fiery State of the Union address, a much quieter and mellower President Biden made a much awaited return to New Hampshire.
It was the first time Biden had set foot in the state in more than two years, and while he visited this week in his official capacity as president, the trip offered a taste of just how drastically different the president’s general election events will be from those of Trump.
The White House went for a more intimate and low-key setting for Biden’s return: a local YMCA. The crowd of less than a hundred included several state Democratic elites, including Sen. Maggie Hassan, who introduced Biden, along with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen’s husband, Billy, who remains highly influential in local politics.
The ambiance was so quiet that a protester standing across the street shouting “Let’s Go Brandon” into a bullhorn could be heard by multiple attendees inside the YMCA.
Though this was technically an official White House visit, Biden hit on one of the key pillars of his campaign: lowering costs, an area where voters have been giving him poor marks over the past year.
Keeping his remarks to just over 15 minutes, the president mostly stuck to the script, though there were a handful of riffs off the teleprompter carefully placed out of view of the press area.
At several points, Biden went off the cuff about persistent cost issues facing Americans, asking the crowd if anyone had a family member or someone else in their lives who needs insulin to treat diabetes.
“Instead of paying as much as 400 bucks a month for insulin for seniors with diabetes, you now only have to pay 35 bucks a month,” Biden said as the prompter stayed put, holding off on the next scroll as he spoke off the cuff. “You know why we did that? I’ve been fighting that a long time too. I bet every one of you know somebody who needs insulin for diabetes—yourself or somebody else.”
The Biden event was unusual in two other respects.
Firstly, there was no rope line where he could mingle with attendees for an extended period of time—one of the president’s favorite staples of the campaign trail and an area where his staff believe he shines the most.
Most unusually, though, the event not only started almost a full hour early—a Secret Service agent could be heard alerting the president’s detail “Celtic” would be arriving early—but ended around a half-hour before it was slated to start.
“For our sake,” a local TV news producer could be overheard saying upon the speech’s conclusion, “thank God.”
CAMPAIGN LIT
So much for that. The Republican National Committee has axed its much-hyped “community center program” to engage minority voters, Roger Sollenberger scooped.
Stormy conditions. Instead of ramping up his general election campaign, Trump will soon be spending most of the spring stuck in a Manhattan courtroom for his hush money trial, Jose Pagliery and Jake Lahut report.
Troy’s war. Meet Troy Nehls, the Texas congressman who’s rising in the GOP because he loves to say the things most politicians don’t—or shouldn’t, as Riley Rogerson explains in this profile.
Camelot of trouble. A disgraced former aide to Barack Obama is behind the Kennedy 2024 super PAC, Will Bredderman scooped.
Off message. A Trump-loving YouTuber is challenging Rep. Tony Gonzalez (R-TX)—but ridiculed Trump’s son Barron on his show, Reese Gorman scooped.
