Then presidential candidate Joe Biden waves to supporters as he finishes talking throughout a drive-in marketing campaign rally in Georgia in 2020.

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Then presidential candidate Joe Biden waves to supporters as he finishes talking throughout a drive-in marketing campaign rally in Georgia in 2020.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Wednesday night time in Alabama, 4 Republican presidential hopefuls took the stage for the final debate earlier than subsequent month’s Iowa caucuses.

Former President Donald Trump has not been to any of those debates, and he skipped this one too.

Despite his absence, some ballot numbers are exhibiting that the 2024 election could also be a repeat faceoff between Trump and President Biden.

So the place does that depart Biden’s reelection marketing campaign? And how does this impression its final objective of sustaining Biden’s seat within the Oval Office?

Biden’s principal deputy marketing campaign supervisor, Quentin Fulks, spoke to All Things Considered host Ari Shapiro on Wednesday to debate the marketing campaign’s technique for Trump and the way they plan to win over voters as soon as once more.

This interview has been frivolously edited for size and readability.

Interview highlights

Ari Shapiro: Biden made some remarks to donors which have made an impression. Tuesday he was within the Boston space and stated, “If Trump wasn’t running, I’m not sure I’d be running.”

Is Biden implying there that if Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley is the nominee, a distinct Democrat could be higher suited to run in opposition to them?

Quentin Fulks: No, look, that is nothing new. And the president has stated this earlier than, when he ran for president in 2020.

It was due to the menace that Donald Trump posed to our democracy and fairly actually the very cloth of our nation that the president promised to rebuild and restore the soul of this nation.

You know, Ari, it’s a little bit disheartening that we’re having this [discussion] when on the identical time Tuesday, Donald Trump promised that he would rule as a dictator on Day 1.

So if something, I believe that the president’s feedback had been well timed, as they underscore precisely what he is speaking about, and the menace that, we have to preserve America shifting ahead and never flip it over to anyone who’s promising to be a dictator.

Shapiro: You’re saying that is sort of an echo of a debate that the nation had 4 years in the past. Does your marketing campaign consider that if this can be a Biden-Trump matchup, there are nonetheless undecided voters to be received over? Don’t most individuals already understand how they really feel about these two candidates since they had been each on the poll in 2020?

Fulks: Look, our marketing campaign would not take any voters without any consideration, and we perceive that we now have to do every little thing we have to do to speak with voters in a really fractured media setting, to fulfill voters the place they’re, to speak to voters about what issues to them.

But we’re constructing a marketing campaign that is effectively past and as much as the duty to do exactly that.

But on the finish of the day, if it is a referendum between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, we’re assured that American voters are going to prove and vote for Joe Biden. We’ve seen it in 2020. We noticed it in 2022. We’ve seen it this 12 months in 2023.

Listen to All Things Considered each day here or in your native member station for extra interviews like this.

Shapiro: But as you consider the marketing campaign technique, you possibly can be targeted on motivating the bottom. You may very well be targeted on entry to the poll. You may very well be targeted on profitable over undecided voters.

I’ve a sense you are going to say, “We’re taking a both and all-of-the-above approach.” If it is a Biden-Trump matchup, do you consider there really are undecided voters on the market in massive sufficient numbers to make a distinction?

Fulks: We must rebuild the bottom and proceed to do precisely what we did to prove 81 million voters to vote for the president in 2020.

This just isn’t a monolithic viewers as a folks. And no matter constituency you set that label on, they are not monolithic, whether or not it’s African American voters, whether or not it’s ladies, whether or not it’s younger voters.

Former President Donald Trump speaks at a marketing campaign occasion in Ankeny, Iowa, on Dec. 2.

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Scott Olson/Getty Images

Former President Donald Trump speaks at a marketing campaign occasion in Ankeny, Iowa, on Dec. 2.

Scott Olson/Getty Images

And so in 2020, there was a world pandemic that Donald Trump fairly actually had completed nothing to assist, that value the lives of a number of Americans and, fairly frankly, folks world wide.

Now we’re in 2024. Our marketing campaign can paint the distinction that Donald Trump can be a dictator if he was to regain energy, that he would stand for the NRA, proceed to brag about whipping away a girl’s proper to decide on.

But on the identical time, we now have an obligation to speak to American voters about what President Biden and Vice President Harris have completed for them within the report of accomplishments which we really feel are plentiful.

Shapiro: I hear you saying this can be a marketing campaign of contrasts, but additionally, as you acknowledged, the 2020 election was in some sense a referendum on the way in which Donald Trump dealt with the pandemic, the financial system.

And voters are dissatisfied with the way in which that President Biden has dealt with the financial system within the final 4 years, regardless of the financial numbers that present many individuals are doing effectively within the United States. So what’s your message to people who find themselves unimpressed with the Biden monitor report of the previous couple of years?

Fulks: The president goes to proceed to double down and earn their assist and proceed to do every little thing he can to make life simpler and extra inexpensive for them. And that is available in stark distinction with the Republican Party and what they’re placing ahead, whether or not that is Donald Trump or not. And that is simply on the financial entrance.

They’re attempting to present tax breaks to the rich, huge firms, defending gun rights teams, whereas we’re targeted on doing the precise reverse.

And at a time the place there’s a number of overseas coverage stuff happening, there’s financial stuff happening. We want a pacesetter that has expertise in doing that.

And Joe Biden has that. And so our marketing campaign goes to proceed to double down, talk on what the president has completed, strive to attract that correlation and guarantee that Americans know that the president’s doing it, and actually proceed to handle different issues that Americans are bringing to us day in and time out, with what they really feel in regards to the path of this nation, and attempt to deal with these, as he and the vp promised they might do.