Is Biden’s campaign sputtering already?

“Watch me!” That’s President Biden’s response to critics who say he doesn’t have the energy or capability for a second campaign, much less another four years in the Oval Office.

Well, the nation is watching, and it’s not looking good.

President Biden has officially entered the race, but has been all but invisible, sitting for only one interview and rarely fielding questions from the press. His announcement video, launched in the early morning and not accompanied by any public campaign gatherings, generated little excitement. His approval ratings in subsequent days actually went down; there was no announcement “bump.”

It was an odd start, and since then, Biden’s fortunes have spiraled downward. He faces an imminent catastrophe at the southern border with the expiration of Title 42, continued instability in the banking sector, persistent inflation and a looming crisis over the debt ceiling. Instead of speaking to the American people about these momentous and unsettling events, Biden showed up yesterday talking about airline fees.

Also odd is the seeming lack of urgency about mounting a real campaign effort. According to an Axios analysis, Biden’s run is off to a “slow start — months behind the 2012 pace of Barack Obama.” By January 2011, Obama had drafted the folks destined to run his campaign, and Jim Messina, Obama’s campaign manager, had been meeting with supporters for months; by March he had piled up substantial commitments.

By contrast, Biden, who made several earlier feints towards announcing his run only to have the secret documents scandal, bank failures and other speed bumps delay the roll-out, pulled the trigger just two weeks ago. The reelection push began, oddly, without his campaign team, and especially manager Julie Chavez, in place.  

Evidently, too, the campaign is being funded by the Democratic National Committee (DNC), which paid for Biden’s announcement video and subsequent ads. That seems unusual; the Obama group paid its own way. This raises the question: Is Biden’s fund-raising already behind schedule?

Not only did Obama get the pieces in place early in the year, he also decided to engage in a White House reshuffling that the New York Times described as a “major reorganization of the Obama administration.” According to the Times, the changes highlighted the “challenges facing Mr. Obama as he can no longer present himself as a Washington outsider.”     

In January 2011, 48 percent of the country approved of the job Obama was doing, according to Gallup, while 45 percent did not.

Though that was down from the 67 percent approval Obama enjoyed at the start of his presidency, it is way above the 37 percent rating earned by Biden during Gallup’s most recent survey period, his lowest to date.

Obama and his advisers were anxious about his reelection prospects; Biden apparently is not, in spite of truly brutal polls, such as a recent one from Washington Post/ABC News that showed the president with a 36 percent approval rating — the worst ever recorded by a first-term president.

Biden did attend a DNC reception for backers two weeks ago, with White House officials offering presentations that were considered “vague and mostly talking points”; Ron Klain, Biden’s former chief of staff, made a presentation, Axios reported, which tellingly “attested to Biden’s vigor.”  

Biden’s team has indicated they will report their fundraising totals at the end of June; Bloomberg had reported that there would be an earlier announcement. In 2019, Biden’s campaign team announced it had raised $6.3 million within 24 hours of declaring his candidacy. This time round, they have not revealed the proceeds from their initial push.

The pressure is intense; the team needs to demonstrate to voters that, despite polling indicating otherwise, there is plenty of enthusiasm for Biden’s run. After all, a recent NBC poll showed that 70 percent of respondents (and more than half of Democrats) say that Joe Biden should not run for reelection.

Biden should be out storming Democratic strongholds in California or Illinois, trying to generate some momentum. But, instead, the president’s calendar has been even lighter than usual, with some days showing Biden receiving the daily briefing and no other appointments. 

We’ve seen this picture before. During the midterm election season in 2022, Biden was also for the most part a no-show, relying on Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to do a lot of the heavy politicking.

We get it. It’s hard to campaign, to face the doubters and the critics. It’s also exhausting. Biden’s team and the DNC are doing everything possible to make it easier. They scored a major coup by upending tradition to hold the South Carolina primary first. Joe Biden’s 2020 run was saved by the Palmetto State’s Black voters; they will very likely turn out to support him again. The DNC also has scheduled no primary debates, which will save Biden from unpleasant displays of mental fragility.

But Biden’s polling is not just dangerously low for him (the Washington Post survey showed him losing by a sizeable margin to both former President Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.)), it is also extremely tough for down-ballot Democrats. It is still possible that another Democrat, someone with more realistic prospects than Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or Marianne Williamson, will enter the race. Surely Democratic governors Gavin Newsom (Calif.) or J.B. Pritzker (Ill.) are champing at the bit to run; won’t party officials make that happen?

After all, when only 29 percent of independents back you, and you are losing steam with all the voter blocks that put you in the Oval Office, something must change. Certainly, the pace of Biden’s campaign must pick up. If he’s actually running.

Liz Peek is a former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim & Company.