Obama and Clinton aim to support Biden without stealing the spotlight

President Joe Biden is hoping the star power of his Democratic predecessors, former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, will shine a light on his campaign against another former president, Donald Trump, during a high-profile New York City fundraiser.

But although his last State of the Union before November’s general election addressed concerns about his age, his campaign is under pressure to make sure Biden is not overshadowed, particularly by his younger, more popular former boss.

The Biden campaign dismisses the idea that the president has an enthusiasm problem, citing expectations Thursday night’s fundraiser could raise more than $10 million, with 3,000-plus attendees anticipated to be at Radio City Hall.

“Democrats are unified and energized behind President Biden’s reelection campaign, and that will be on full display this Thursday in New York City,” Biden campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz told the Washington Examiner. “Donald Trump has no juice heading into the general: Huge chunks of Republican primary voters have made clear they have no interest in voting for him this November, Republican leaders like his own vice president are openly opposing him, and even if Trump wanted to reach them (he does not!), he has no cash or energy to do so.”

“Elections are won by putting in the work to assemble a broad, diverse coalition, and Joe Biden is doing just that,” Munoz said.

Simultaneously, Republican strategist and former chief of staff to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) Cesar Conda contended Biden’s support in black, Hispanic, and Asian communities is “hemorrhaging.”

“President Trump has made significant gains with minority voters, which is why I think we will [see] Barack Obama earlier and often on the campaign trail compared to 2020,” Conda told the Washington Examiner. “But I don’t think Obama’s appeal will transfer to Biden because blacks and Hispanics have been battered by rising gas prices, grocery bills, and housing costs caused by Biden’s policies. They know that they were much better off financially during the Trump-era economy.”

Meanwhile, the Trump campaign is claiming “Crooked Hillary,” in addition to “Barack Hussein Obama,” is “coming out of the bullpen to help Joe Biden shuffle over the finish line because Democrats know Biden is weak, unpopular, and incompetent.”

“Their reinforcement efforts will fail when President Trump defeats them on Nov. 5,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said.

Trump has an average 3 percentage point advantage over Biden when third-party and independent candidates are considered, according to RealClearPolitics. The same polling aggregator finds Biden’s average approval rating to be net negative 17 points, 40% approval to 57% disapproval.

But Democrats have an edge over Republicans in that they have popular former presidents, while the GOP only has “the memory of Ronald Reagan,” per George Mason University political science professor Jeremy Mayer.

“George W. Bush is almost a pariah in his own party, and his disgust with Trump’s lies, tone, and criminality mean that Trump is anathema to him and that the MAGA base continues to hate the Bush family,” Mayer told the Washington Examiner. “This must be frustrating to establishment Republicans because a former president can raise a lot of money, and Bush’s popularity has been inching upwards since his 2009 departure from office. But it is more likely that Trump will choose [Russian President Vladimir] Putin as his running mate than that the Bush-Trump divide will be healed.”

For Mayer, there are more complications for Democrats in deploying Bill Clinton because of “some of his prior conduct,” especially after the #MeToo movement.

“There are no such problems with Obama,” Mayer said. “He will be Biden’s most effective surrogate on the campaign trail. The earlier he starts, and the harder he works, the better for Biden.”

Biden and Obama’s public “bromance” was not always their private relationship, specifically when the former vice president was deciding whether to run for president against Hillary Clinton in 2016. Obama, who this month caused issues for the White House when he met with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at No. 10 Downing St., has also expressed his concerns about Biden’s 2024 campaign to the president, his aides, even White House chief of staff Jeff Zients, the New York Times reported this week.

“President Obama and President Clinton strongly support President Biden’s leadership and obviously his agenda,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Wednesday. “All three have — agree overwhelmingly on the issues that this president has been fighting for for the past three years, including an economy that works for all, leaves no one behind; that is an economy that’s built from the bottom up, middle out; making sure that we protect our critical freedoms, that is something that they all three agree on, like a freedom to choose or protecting our democracy.”

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The Biden campaign is describing Thursday night’s fundraiser, organized in part by Anna Wintour, as “historic.” For context, Biden and the Democratic Party raised $53 million last month, ending February with $155 million cash on hand. Trump’s campaign and his Save America political action committee raised $16 million, with $37 million on hand, before he became the Republican presumptive nominee and had access to Republican National Committee resources.

Hosted by Mindy Kaling, the fundraiser’s program will include performances by Queen Latifah, Lizzo, Ben Platt, Cynthia Erivo, and Lea Michele, though the campaign is billing an armchair conversation between Biden, Obama, and Bill Clinton, moderated by Stephen Colbert, as the headline. Guests can even pay the Biden campaign $100,000 to have their photo taken by Annie Leibovitz with the three presidents, with two separate receptions for those who donate $250,000 and $500,000.

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