MEMORANDUM
FROM: Jen O’Malley Dillon, Campaign Chair
DATE: July 11, 2024
RE: The Path Ahead
ACTION: Make a $25 donation today to support the Biden-Harris reelection campaign and defeat Donald Trump once and for all.
(Contribute here)
Jen O’Malley Dillon here, Campaign Chair on Team Biden-Harris. In the wake of last month’s debate, many of you have asked for an update on the path ahead and what we need to do to work together to defeat Donald Trump.
Going into the debate, our campaign was clear-eyed about the five things we needed to do to win this race:
- Showing the strength of the President’s record of accomplishment, leadership, and support.
- Going on the offense against Trump to draw contrast and show how dangerous another term would be.
- Maintaining multiple pathways to 270 electoral votes, with a focus on the Blue Wall states.
- Staying laser-focused on our coalition of voters and double-down on our grassroots support.
- Driving a vision and ambitious agenda for the future.
Those imperatives remain true. What has changed following the debate is the urgency and discipline with which we need to pursue them. We believe if we follow the roadmap below, we will win.
So, I hope you’ll take a second to read it. And, if you’re ready to donate now to help Joe and Kamala on our Path to Victory you can chip in $25 right now.
If you want to learn more about how we are going to win and defeat Donald Trump, please read on below.
Where the Race Stands
While there is no question there is increased anxiety following the debate, we are not seeing this translate into a drastic shift in vote share. In fact, this morning, a new ABC/Ipsos poll showed a tied race with no change since April.
Our internal data and public polling show the same thing: This remains a margin-of-error race in key battleground states.
The movement we have seen, while real, is not a sea-change in the state of the race. While some of this movement was from undecided voters to Trump, much of it was driven by voters who have always been our core persuasion targets. Our post-debate net favorability is 20 percentage points higher than Trump’s among these voters based on internal polling. That said, we believe we have a very real path to consolidating their support.
Most importantly, we maintain multiple pathways to 270 electoral votes. Right now, winning the Blue Wall states — Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania — is the clearest pathway to that aim, but we also believe that the sunbelt states are not out of reach. The consensus across internal and public polling is that these states largely remain within the margin-of-error.
In addition to what we believe is a clear pathway ahead for us, there is also no indication that other Democratic candidates would outperform the President against Trump. Hypothetical polling of alternative nominees will always be unreliable, and surveys do not take into account the negative media environment that any Democratic nominee will encounter. The only Democratic candidate for whom this is already baked in is President Biden.
There is a long way to go between now and Election Day with considerable uncertainty, but the data shows we have a clear path to win. As we’ve always said, in today’s fragmented media environment, it will take time for our message to break through with trusted messengers and a strong ground game. That remains the case.
What Comes Next: Shoring Up the Biden-Harris Coalition
Our campaign remains laser-focused on battleground states and prioritizing outreach to the coalition that sent Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to the White House in 2020.
Last Friday, the President rallied over 1,000 fired-up supporters in Madison, Wisconsin. On Sunday, he campaigned across Pennsylvania, speaking at a church in Northwest Philly, stopping by a field office with Senator Fetterman to fire up volunteers, talking with hundreds of supporters, including union members and local Democrats, at an organizing event in Harrisburg, and grabbing coffee at a small business in Harrisburg with Governor Shapiro. And tomorrow, he’ll be in Detroit, Michigan.
The President has also spent the weeks following the debate rallying key constituencies that make up our winning coalition, meeting with Democratic governors and mayors from across the country, talking with key congressional leaders, meeting with labor leaders at the AFL-CIO yesterday, and more.
Next week, as Trump and extreme MAGA Republicans put their toxic extremism front and center at the Republican National Convention, the President will be on the road. On Monday, he will mark the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act in Austin, Texas, followed by a trip to Las Vegas, Nevada for events with the NAACP, UNIDOS, and local leaders.
A Campaign Designed to Win Close Elections
Our campaign has been designed to win a close election from the beginning.
Since last fall, we have been building deep relationships in communities across the battleground states to register, persuade, mobilize, and turn out voters when it matters most. Using both in-person events and activities as well as engaging voters online, we are having conversations with voters to cut through media silos and political narratives.
At the same time, we made early and ongoing investments in a staff presence across the battleground states. We are presently at over 1,200 coordinated staff across key states. They are building an army of tens of thousands of volunteers who will talk to millions of voters. Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s operation relies almost exclusively on name ID and earned media, which presently Democrats are giving him in spades.
Framing the Election as a Choice
People are continuing to vote on the issues they care about — which are also the very issues we are winning on. Many voters turned on the debate having forgotten how much they dislike Donald Trump. They left the debate with a fresh reminder of how extreme and dangerous a second Trump term would be.
With that in mind, our path centers on reminding voters that this election will be a choice between Joe Biden, who is fighting to move our country forward and make life better for working people, and Donald Trump, who is focused on his own revenge and retribution with no concern for who he hurts.
In our polling, we have seen that when we remind voters what Trump has done and said — bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade, saying that there has to be some form of punishment for women who have an abortion, proposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare and tax cuts for big corporations — the voters who moved away from us after the debate came home. And, after hearing messaging about the stakes of the election, we move ahead of Trump in vote choice.
Our team has seized on this unique opportunity by amplifying Trump’s deeply unpopular agenda online and in ads. Project 2025 is now more frequently searched than Taylor Swift and the NFL, and President Biden himself weighed in, warning that Project 2025 “would give Trump limitless power over our daily lives and let him use the presidency to enact ‘revenge’ on his enemies, ban abortion nationwide and punish women who have an abortion, and gut the checks and balances that make America the greatest democracy in the world. It’s extreme and dangerous.”
When we reach our target voters with the President’s positive vision, they respond to it. This is not a simple task in this media environment, but it is a straightforward one. While we will aggressively attack the threat that Trump poses, we will simultaneously paint the picture of the America Joe Biden and Democrats nationwide are fighting for. One where we restore Roe, make billionaires pay their fair share in taxes, lower costs for American families, and protect our fundamental rights and freedoms.
During the 2022 midterms, Democrats were disciplined and banded together to expose Republicans up and down the ballot for their extremism on democracy and reproductive freedom, heading off a red wave the pundits said was inevitable. We have an opportunity to do that again over the next three and half months — and there is no better time than next week to start.
The Bottom Line
No one is denying that the debate was a setback. But the President and this team have made it through setbacks before. We are clear eyed about what we need to do to win. And we will win by moving forward, unified as a party.
We must focus on defeating Donald Trump every single day between now and Election Day. There’s never been a more important moment than right now to show that you are ready to defeat him once and for all. So, I have to ask:
Will you make a $25 donation today to reelect the President and Vice President in November?
Thank you for your support,
Jen
Jen O’Malley Dillon
Campaign Chair, Biden for President
We sincerely thank you for your help and support.
