U.S. President Joe Biden is getting the opponent he thinks he was made to beat in 2024.
Donald Trump's decisive victory in the first two Republican presidential contests in Iowa and New Hampshire make almost certain what Biden's re-election campaign has predicted for months.
It's a rematch they say they are confident Biden will win, even as public opinion polls show him tied with Trump and Americans are angry over high prices and question his age, his economic plans and his policies on the border and in the Middle East.
To beat Trump again, as he did in 2020, Biden's team is focused on warning that Trump poses a serious threat to U.S. democracy, and that abortion and other personal freedoms are at stake. They are banking on that approach winning over independents and sparking enthusiasm among lukewarm Democrats.
Biden, 81, made the controversial decision to run for a second term in large part because he was convinced he would face Trump, 77, and because he thinks he is the Democrat who can beat him in the November election.
"If Trump wasn't running, I'm not sure I'd be running," Biden said at a fundraising event last month. "We cannot let him win."
Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez told reporters on Wednesday that "the results out of New Hampshire confirm that Donald Trump has all but locked up the GOP nomination and the election-denying anti-freedom MAGA movement has completed its take over of the Republican Party."
