(Trends Wide) — US President Joe Biden is expected to launch a re-election campaign unlike any before on Tuesday calling on Americans to re-elect him to save democracy. This comes less than three years after his defeat of Donald Trump was supposed to restore normality and unite the country.

Biden’s quest for a second term will unfold amid what would normally be deeply bleak circumstances, with his approval rating languishing below 40% in the polls, with the country exhausted by successive crises after the pandemic lockdown. give in to a battle against runaway inflation. Polls show that most voters, and even most Democrats, don’t want her to run again. And the last thing the country seems to want is a Biden rematch with the 45th president, who is the current favorite in the fledgling Republican primary race.

But Trump’s strength within the Republican Party forms the central rationale for the Biden campaign. The president reasons that it is the best bet that the Democrats have to prevent his predecessor from winning a second term that would surely be even more savage than the first.

Biden will start his final campaign after a lifetime in politics from a habitual position of low expectations. But he has repeatedly challenged conventional political wisdom and connected with swing voters by presenting himself as the antidote to Republican extremism. Paradoxically, despite much of his party seeming to want an alternative, Biden appears strong enough to prevent the rise of any major primary challenger.

The president is expected to ignite his re-election bid with the release of a campaign video on Tuesday, exactly four years after launching what was then considered an implausible effort to fulfill a White House dream that was first ignited. in an unsuccessful run for the 1988 Democratic nomination.

Remarkably, the same motivation that supported his run for the White House in 2020—Trump’s threat to America’s democratic institutions and values—will underlie his re-election bid. Biden, in the shadow of an unannounced 2024 candidacy, criticized “MAGA extremism” and anchored a stunning Democratic performance in the 2022 midterms on the same issue.

The United States may not like Biden or Trump

It will be months before the first votes are cast in the Republican primary. And there are more than 18 months to go before Americans choose their next president. Events yet to take place in the US and abroad could transform the race. Unexpected changes in the lives and careers of Biden and Trump, and the handful of other candidates vying for the Republican nomination, could change everything. And recent elections have shown that pundits and polls don’t always capture surprising results.

However, circumstances are calling for a unique presidential contest that reflects the polarized and unstable state of the country and will once again challenge American political institutions and unity.

This is a nation that often takes advantage of elections to empower a new generation. But now he is contemplating the possibility of a race between an incumbent who would be 86 at the end of his second term and a challenger who would be 82 at the same point. The oldest combined matchup in US presidential history would likely be a welcome one for Biden, as the optics of a matchup against a younger challenger, say Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has yet to cast a primary candidacy, could alter the feel of the race.

In an even more remarkable twist, Trump is trying to pull off a feat accomplished only once before in US history: Grover Cleveland, who served non-consecutive terms after he won his return to office in 1892.

Trump’s political longevity is another anomaly in 2024.

Presidents defeated after a single term generally retire and do not return to challenge their victor. But Trump remains the dominant figure in a Republican Party that he uprooted from its corporate foundations and turned into a populist vessel for conservative culture wars. Even more incredible, Trump is trying to make a comeback after leaving office in disgrace after being twice indicted for abuse of power. He then refused to accept the will of the voters in 2020 and incited an insurrection in an attempt to cling to power.

Two weeks after the Trump mob stormed Congress, Biden told Americans in his inaugural address: “We have learned again that democracy is precious, democracy is fragile, right now my friends, democracy has prevailed”.

But the fact that Biden enters his re-election campaign again warning that democracy is under threat reflects the reality of a nation caught in an existential struggle for its institutions and still reeling under the influence of the most turbulent presidency and ex-presidency in the History.

If anything, Trump’s threat to democracy has only increased, a factor that will influence Biden’s campaign. He vows to eliminate the professional civil service in Washington and gut the Justice Department, which he claims is subjecting him to political persecution.

At his first campaign rally in Waco, Texas, last month, Trump warned: “Either the deep state destroys America or we destroy the deep state.”

Vowing to purge “thugs and criminals” in the court system, he added, chillingly: “I am your warrior. I am his justice.”

Biden could face a rival under multiple accusations

Trump’s anti-democratic rhetoric points to another extraordinary dimension of the 2024 race that Biden is expected to officially join on Tuesday.

The ex-president’s allegations of political persecution have their roots in the multiple legal threats that make his candidacy like none before. Trump faces the real threat of criminal charges for his attempts to steal the 2020 election and, separately, for his hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

On Monday, Fani Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, said she would announce this summer whether to indict Trump and his associates for their attempt to overturn his 2020 defeat in that state. Trump has already been criminally charged in Manhattan. in connection with a hush money payment to an adult film star before the 2016 election. Trump pleaded not guilty in New York and maintains he has done nothing wrong in any of the cases against him.

While Trump appears to have seen a short-term political boost from the Manhattan impeachment, there is no precedent for a presidential candidate facing multiple, simultaneous criminal investigations, and it is possible that such a scenario could play out in the hands of a candidate like DeSantis, who promises to implement a Trump-style agenda without the crazy distractions that normally revolve around the former president.

At this point, however, no potential GOP rival has managed or dared to weaponize Trump’s legal troubles for political gain, a factor that adds to the belief among many Democrats that he will win the Republican nomination. .

Biden cannot simply rely on the fact that he is not Trump

Biden defined his 2020 campaign, his presidency and the preparation for his re-election bid by who he is not: Trump. He often jokes when he talks about his political campaigns: “Don’t compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative.” But this won’t be enough as he seeks a second term. Biden will have to defend his presidency and convince voters that they are better off than when he took office amid the political fire and fury of Trump’s departure.

You will never escape questions about your age. Any sign of instability or weariness will make Republicans argue that she should retire. Serving as president while running for president has defeated younger men. And this race seems to be more grueling than the last one he ran, when the covid-19 pandemic practically suspended the normal campaign.

But Biden’s faith in the power of comparisons could help him. Trump, after all, would be turning 80 during a second term. And the president will argue that Americans cannot afford the chaos that reigned the last time Trump was in the White House. He can point to a huge bipartisan infrastructure bill that the White House says is sparking an industrial renaissance in the Midwest. Unemployment has consistently hovered near record lows while Biden has been in office, though the highest inflation in 40 years, which has now moderated significantly but was tampified by the president, convinced many Americans they were locked in an economic crisis. prolonged. High gasoline prices last year had a similar effect. And any downturn next year could spell disaster for the president’s hopes and play into Trump’s selective claims that the country experienced a golden age when he was in charge.

While Biden claims to have championed democracy at home, he is also sure to compare his revival of the Western alliance in defense of Ukraine to Trump’s continued adoration of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Democrats will also seek to exploit the repeal of the constitutional right to abortion by a conservative majority on the Trump-built Supreme Court and the continued conservative push to stamp out the procedure altogether. Concern among some moderate Republicans suggests that Biden may find a good political vein on the issue, which has already galvanized voters in elections since the landmark Roe v. Wade was voided last summer.

Ultimately, the president knows his fate will come down to the same swing states that narrowly put him in office, including Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania. Democrats will put their faith in the evidence of the last three national elections, which showed that the former president was disastrous for Republican hopes in many of the most competitive states.

So while Biden will have to run based on his record like any other incumbent, he will surely center his campaign around Trump.

In a speech in Maryland this month, Biden mentioned MAGA, his derogatory code word for Trump Republicans, more than 20 times.

It was a clear sign. Even if Trump is not the Republican nominee, Biden still plans to run against him.