Challenges of Public Perception and Political Strategy

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A year ago, this week began with President Joe Biden announcing that he was withdrawing from the 2024 election. The decision came about three weeks after his mess of a debate performance that set off a revolt within the Democratic Party. By July 23, 2024, Kamala Harris had secured endorsements from enough delegates to clinch the Democratic nomination.

We all know now how the story ended, and looking at the data after the fact, the result doesn’t seem particularly surprising. No incumbent ever won re-election with an approval rating as bad as Biden’s. The number of Americans saying that the country was headed in the wrong direction was around all-time highs. And on the two biggest issues Americans were concerned about, inflation and immigration, Americans preferred Donald Trump.

That gives us some sense of why the election shook out the way it did, but those numbers don’t explain everything. For example, why did Biden decide to run for re-election in the first place? Or frankly, why did Donald Trump himself run for a rare non-consecutive term. How did Biden and Harris decide how to address Americans’ biggest concerns? And why the lack of daylight after Harris took the reins?

Today, with the help of reporters Josh Dawsey and Tyler Pager, we go behind the scenes of the 2024 campaign. Josh is a political investigative reporter at the Wall Street Journal and Tyler is a White House Correspondent for the New York Times. Their new book is called, “2024: How Trump Retook the White House and Democrats Lost America.”