Basement Biden back? President’s vacation schedule could serve to keep spotlight on Trump

President Joe Biden‘s frequent days away from the White House echo back to his coronavirus strategy that kept the focus on former president Donald Trump, but strategists are divided about whether keeping a lower profile will be a winning formula for the elder president.

During his 2020 run, Biden’s Zoom-based campaigning earned him the nickname “Basement Biden” but also allowed Trump to dominate headlines as a way to contrast himself as the better option. Now, as critics of Biden lament his lengthy vacation record, the president’s more limited public access may be riskier in 2024.

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Biden spent 11 days at Camp David and the U.S. Virgin Islands over the holidays, returned to the White House late Tuesday night, and will spend this weekend at his home in Wilmington, Delaware.

The Republican National Committee tracks Biden’s vacation days, and its leaders say his historically high amount of time outside of Washington points to his inability to handle the workload of a president.

“Biden began the new year the same way he began the last one — on vacation,” RNC spokesman Jake Schneider said. “Given Biden’s declining stamina and proclivity for incoherence, the reason for his reclusiveness isn’t exactly a secret. He’s not up for the job.”

Biden spent 142 full or partial days on vacation in 2023, or nearly 40% of the year, according to the RNC. It has tracked Biden spending 424 days away from the White House during his term, far more than Donald Trump’s 381 days over a full term, and Barack Obama’s 328 days over two terms. He is on pace to best George W. Bush, who took heavy criticism for his 1,020 vacation days over two terms.

Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

Spending so much time away could play into voter concerns about Biden’s age — he would be 86 at the end of a second term — and his infrequent interactions with the press compared to his predecessors. However, it could also serve as a way to keep the octogenarian commander in chief refreshed and relaxed, as aides and first lady Jill Biden sometimes encourage him to take breaks to avoid looking fatigued in his public appearances.

A Biden who is away from the White House and the spotlight also could be to his benefit in a reelection campaign, particularly against Trump, Democratic strategist Brad Bannon argues.

“Biden should cede the spotlight to Trump because Trump is his own worst enemy,” Bannon said. “And the more visible Trump is, the better it is for Biden.”

Such a strategy could be a return to form for Biden, who worked to keep the focus on his opponents in both 2020 and 2022.

He unseated the incumbent Trump in 2020, and in 2022, his warnings against “ultra-MAGA” Republicans led to his party outperforming expectations in the midterm elections.

“It worked in 2020, and actually it might work better this time because I think Trump is a lot more volatile than he was in 2020,” Bannon said, adding that he expects another low-key campaign from the Biden camp.

Craig Shirley, a presidential historian and Ronald Reagan biographer, also expects Biden to try and cede the spotlight to Trump. He just does not think it will work, he said.

“Fighting last year’s war never works in politics,” Shirley said. “The dynamics have changed completely. Trump was the incumbent in 2020, so the focus was on him. Biden is now the incumbent, so the focus is on him. It won’t matter whether he hides under his desk or goes on vacation, the focus will still be on him.”

Biden trails Trump, the likely 2024 Republican presidential nominee, by more than 2 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics polling average.

Shirley said those polling numbers show that voters are reacting to Biden’s performance in office and that the vacationing adds to the perception that Biden “isn’t on the job 24-7 — he’s on the job 8-3.”

The White House and the Biden campaign did not respond to questions from the Washington Examiner about whether voters should be concerned about the president’s frequent vacationing and what that means for his reelection bid.

Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

Even when Biden appears publicly in these early days of 2024, his focus will be on outside threats rather than on Bidenomics or his legislative accomplishments. He will leave the White House on Friday to speak in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, to decry Trump and those who engaged in the Jan. 6, 2021, capitol riot. The speech was originally set for Saturday, the three-year anniversary, but was moved up due to expected winter storms in the Northeast.

It will be Biden’s first public event since Dec. 22, 2023, when he read “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” at Children’s National Hospital in Washington.

On Monday, the president will follow that up with a visit to the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, the site of a June 2015 white supremacist attack that left nine dead. Campaign officials have told reporters that in the coming weeks, the president and Vice President Kamala Harris will “lay out the stakes” of the general election in November.

Conservatives may decry such a dark focus from the campaign, much the same way they did the “blood red” speech Biden made in September 2022.

“MAGA Republicans … embrace anger,” Biden said at the time. “They thrive on chaos. They live not in the light of truth but in the shadow of lies.”

Keeping the focus on Trump and his allies has arguably been a winner for Democrats in the last three elections dating back to 2018, and it may become so again this cycle. Biden met with scholars and historians Wednesday afternoon ahead of the Jan. 6 anniversary, an event the campaign will likely highlight not only on Friday but throughout the year.

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Biden is not shy about his frequent visits to his home state and time away from Washington, a pattern that began in the 1970s during his run as a U.S. senator and continues today as president.

“Every time I get a chance, I go home to Delaware,” Biden said in 2022. “You think I’m joking. I’m not.”