Biden's 2024 Campaign Risks Becoming a Meme Explosion

President Joe Biden announced his long-anticipated bid for re-election Tuesday, silencing critics who speculated the 80-year-old would serve one term or less in the Oval Office from the day he earned the Democratic nomination in 2020.

In a three-minute video posted on social media Tuesday, Biden stressed the importance of maintaining equality and democracy while railing against "MAGA extremists" he said have pushed to ban books, restrict people's rights, and limit people's ability to vote. "This is not the time to be complacent," Biden said.

The 2024 campaign kicked off the same way his bid in 2020 did. He launched with a video message, and with the expectation Republican Donald Trump will most likely be opposite him on the ballot. However, there will be one key difference between Biden's campaign launch in 2023 and his announcement nearly four years earlier, in 2019: Out of the public eye. Some believe that's an intentional choice.

According to multiple news outlets Tuesday, Biden—like former President Barack Obama did in his re-election campaign—currently has no plans to hold a campaign rally until the Republicans have established their nominee against him.

As things stand, he also has no apparent plans to commit to a debate with the two announced nominees against him. According to reporting by the Washington Post earlier this month, the Democratic National Committee has said it will support Biden's reelection and has no plans to sponsor primary debates.

While Biden has been in the public eye throughout his first term—many have made the argument Biden's 2024 campaign has been in "plain sight" throughout his first term as he's traveled the country in support of various policy initiatives—others have argued the strategy could be an effort to control media narratives similar to the 2020 election, where his campaign's decision to run remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic earned allegations from some he was campaigning from "his basement."

The theme already appears to be making a return this cycle as well.

"I'd bet what's left of my 401K that Biden spends even more time in his basement for this campaign than the last one," Matt Whitlock, a former spokesperson for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, tweeted after the announcement.

There's plenty for Biden's supporters to be worried about.

At 80, Biden is already the oldest man ever to serve as president. He's also prone to gaffes and, at present, boasts an approval rating lower than nearly all of his predecessors at a similar point in their first term. Most polls show few in the country want him to run for re-election. And under current conditions, surveys show Biden remains a risky prospect for Democrats in a general election environment if anyone not named Trump wins the Republican nomination.

But the electorate, observers say, remains angry—leaving the Biden campaign with a tight line to toe in an effort to remain viable in voters' eyes. Some Republicans have already seized on the possibility Biden could potentially sabotage himself, with conservative columnist Rick Moran writing for right-wing outlet PJ Media that the president could provide all the proof he's "too old to be president" all by himself.

The voting public—particularly on the internet—is already primed to buy in.

"It's no secret that our country is increasingly polarized along a number of lines, and they all intersect with politics," Anne Marie Malecha, a partner at Washington, D.C., public relations firm Dezenhall Resources. "These never-ending arguments are mostly taking place online, where voters are served up just the right amount of incendiary content to keep them outraged and posting away. Anger fuels many constituencies, and they're all interested in keeping us locked into a culture war that doesn't seem to be a productive way to bring the country together."

Unlike 2020, Biden can't hide. And while he has already been using his public appearances as president to highlight his policy initiatives, his gaffes have occasionally been proven to overshadow his message.

A campaign stop in Florida last November intended to promote the successes of his administration's Inflation Reduction Act was tarnished by numerous questionable claims and missteps that earned more attention on the internet than his message. On the campaign trail in 2019, Biden famously quipped poor kids aren't white alongside phrases like "we choose truth over facts" that were quickly weaponized by supporters of Donald Trump as well as those of fellow Democrats in the field.

In recent months, Biden has tripped and fallen up the stairs of Air Force One on numerous occasions. In March, Biden was blasted by conservatives after he laughed while discussing a mother who lost two children to fentanyl. While not necessarily a gaffe, stickers featuring a pointing Biden saying "I did that!" (a meme largely based on misinformation about COVID-19-associated inflation) began to appear on gas pumps around the country.

Those viral moments—particularly with the rightward shift on social media platforms like Twitter under new owner Elon Musk—could potentially pose challenges for Biden to control the narrative in 2024.

"Biden is inherently 'memeable,'" Malecha said. "His perceived gaffes have been amplified by meme accounts and other online instigators into full-blown reputational challenges. Twitter has increasingly become the assignment editor for the mainstream media, and perceptions of Biden that started on social media are given additional fuel by the traditional news media as a result."

One example is a recent train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. While Biden's Environmental Protection Agency was on the ground almost immediately, Biden—as well as his Transportation Secretary, Pete Buttigieg—quickly attracted the ire of conservatives on social media first for not being there and, then, for their delay in getting there, a communications crisis that quickly evolved into a national story and a major missed public relations opportunity.

But also of concern is the change in the platforms themselves—particularly with Musk's Twitter. While used by a relatively small subset of the American public, the platform still remains the preference of media figures on the left and right side of the political spectrum, helping shape daily narratives around candidates that can eventually come to define their campaigns. And as things stand, the platform is beginning to swing in conservatives' favor.

While Twitter had already admitted to disproportionately boosting right-wing figures on the platform prior to Musk taking the reins of the company, the world's richest man and precious gem heir has amplified them even further in an apparent whiplash to what he perceived as the previous regime's deference to liberal causes and candidates, leading to a sharp increase in misinformation on the platform, Poynter reported.

Biden's team already appears to be gearing up to run interference against negative forces on social media. Earlier this month, Axios reported his campaign was already courting an army of "hundreds of social media influencers" across multiple platforms who could be critical to his success in engaging with younger voters in the upcoming election.

"We're trying to reach young people, but also moms who use different platforms to get information and climate activists and people whose main way of getting information is digital," Jen O'Malley Dillon, White House deputy chief of staff, told the outlet.

How Biden's real-life campaign will weather that challenge—particularly in how it presents itself on unfriendly platforms—could come to define his re-election.

"How Twitter and Elon's whims will impact this election cycle, on the whole, could be a major variable—one we didn't have last cycle," Malecha said. "That will be interesting to watch."

Uncommon Knowledge

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

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