Biden wants to campaign like it's 2020.

It's understandable, but a big mistake.

Politico is out with a piece this morning reporting that President Joe Biden is “delighted” to revisit “the early days of the pandemic” on the campaign trail, especially Trump’s language about the virus itself:

“Remember when he said, ‘inject bleach’?” Biden said at a private fundraiser in Houston last week, referring to the infamous April 2020 press conference where Trump suggested researching whether Covid could be treated by injecting disinfectant. “I think he must have done it. He told us to hit the body with UV light, which I’m confident he does.”

Apart from the fact that Donald Trump didn’t really say that, the problem is that voters have a long list of more important concerns:

“When we asked about 13 issues back in November to try to figure out what voters wanted to hear candidates talk about, we had Covid-19 on the list,” said Mollyann Brodie, executive director of the public polling and survey research program at health policy nonprofit KFF. “It ranked dead last.”

As the failure of Ron DeSantis’ Covid-focused campaign showed us, voters are far more concerned about immigration and inflation than revisiting cases, tests, and surgical masks.

Voters are most concerned about immigration and the economy, according to Gallup polling.

That said, given voters appear to trust Trump more than Biden on immigration and the economy, it’s actually understandable that Biden wishes to, once again, focus on the single theme that propelled an elderly, unpopular politician to the White House in 2020. If not for the social and economic dislocation of the pandemic — and the fact it afforded Biden the opportunity to avoid rigorous in-person campaigning — I think it’s likely Biden would have lost to Trump four years ago. And now, in 2024, what’s more proximate for voters than Trump’s bullshit from the podium in March 2020 is Biden’s response to the pandemic starting in 2021. A New Jersey liberal reflects on her frustration with Biden’s halting effort to reopen schools:

“I feel like Trump was a mess and Biden was a coward about doing what was right for kids,” said Ms. Fry, who describes herself as a staunch liberal. “There were no grown-ups willing to speak up for what kids needed.”

The reality is that Covid is now a nasty cold — if that — for most Americans, but the lingering effects of lockdowns, school closures, and inflationary spending continue to impact livelihoods, cities, and families in a way that is front of mind. And while suggesting Americans consider disinfecting their bodies may be a liability for Trump, everything that happened from January 2021 is on Biden, particularly his response to the worst inflation crisis since the 1970s and failure to quickly restore normalcy across society. The New York Times writes:

Elected officials, strategists, historians and sociologists say the lasting effects of the pandemic are visible today in the debates over inflation, education, public health, college debt, crime and trust in American democracy itself. The lingering trauma from that time, they said, is contributing to a sense of national malaise that voters express in polling and focus groups — a kind of pandemic hangover that appears to be hurting Mr. Biden and helping Mr. Trump in their presidential rematch.

In fall 2020, Biden declared "I'm not going to shut down the country. I'm going to shut down the virus," but, in many respects, the country remained under lock and key for years once he took office. For example, Biden's school reopening goal was a majority of K-8 schools open for in-person learning "at least one day a week" by spring 2021 -- an unambitious goal that had already been achieved when it was announced. High schools were excluded and many teenagers in major cities didn't return to their classrooms until September 2021.

Pre-departure testing to return to the U.S. by air lasted until June 2022, which was far longer than most other countries -- and many other countries never required testing of their own citizens and permanent residents. While European and Japanese civil servants returned to their offices in fall 2021, the Biden administration only started to push federal workers to end remote work in August 2023 -- and hasn't been particularly successful. Moreover, perhaps because of this failure to promptly restore normalcy, many communities saw crime, violence, anti-social behavior, and dangerous driving surge during Biden's presidency. Data suggests that some of these negative trends are now turning around, but it may be too late to change public opinion.

Is it possible that Biden’s desire to revisit spring 2020 reflects discomfort championing his own intensely unpopular presidency? As I wrote a few weeks ago, many Americans have likely found 2022 and 2023 — livelihoods crushed by inflation and terminated pandemic relief programs — to be tougher years than 2020. Does Biden subconsciously feel the same way? In November 2020, Biden’s dream long deferred came true. But, since that victory, he’s confronted inflation, two of the most violent wars in modern history, and harsh questions about his cognitive capacity.

Biden wants it to be 2020 again, perhaps because it was a better year than he’s willing to admit for him, too. He won the White House after all. And, like regular Americans reminiscing about 3% interest rates and affordable groceries, he’s probably looking back at four years ago with the same rose-colored glasses worn by voters increasingly eager to evict him for a second Trump term.