Deciding the outcome of the 2024 presidential election

President Joe Biden began his March 7 State of the Union by invoking a 1940 speech by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. 

“President Roosevelt’s purpose was to wake up Congress and alert the American people that this was no ordinary time,” Biden said. “Freedom and democracy were under assault in the world. Tonight, I come to the same chamber to address the nation. Now, it’s we who face an unprecedented moment in the history of the union.”

Since his inauguration, Biden has attempted to cast himself in the mold of Roosevelt, beginning with his decoration of the Oval Office with a portrait of Roosevelt. Now, Biden finds himself in what he thinks is a similar position as FDR near the outset of World War II. In the lead-up to the 1940 election, Roosevelt faced threats of war with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Today, Biden’s reelection campaign is overshadowed by America’s muddy entrenchment in two foreign conflicts, Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Palestine.

The key difference? The American people overwhelmingly supported FDR’s foreign policy leadership. With Biden, they do not. If Biden does not fundamentally change his administration’s involvement in foreign wars, he risks losing the election over them.

In 1940, Americans trusted FDR to lead them through a crisis that reached every corner of the world

When war broke out in Europe in September 1939, Americans initially opposed getting involved in it. That viewpoint began to shift as the Nazi Blitzkrieg consumed territories across Europe and as Imperial Japan moved beyond regional ambitions and began barking at the door of U.S. territories in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

Roosevelt, who’d spent years living in Europe and who’d served as President Woodrow Wilson’s Assistant Secretary of the Navy during World War I, also knew better than to underestimate the Fascists. From the very beginning, FDR warned the American people in his fireside chats that American security and prosperity were threatened anywhere in the world where democracy lost and Fascism won.

“Does anyone seriously believe that we could rest easy if the Axis powers were our neighbors here?” Roosevelt asked in a December 1940 fireside chat. “If Great Britain goes down, the Axis powers will control the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and the high seas, and they will be in a position to bring enormous military and naval resources against this hemisphere. It’s no exaggeration to say that all of us would be living at the point of a gun, loaded with explosive bullets, economic as well as military.”

Americans listened, and they believed their president. As they voted overwhelmingly to return Roosevelt to the White House for a historic third term, Americans also increasingly supported his efforts to thwart Germany, Japan, and Italy through economic and diplomatic policies. When the U.S. entered the war in 1941, Roosevelt held a 71% approval rating, his highest at that time, and Americans supported the war declaration by a margin of 91% to 9%.

In 2024, Biden’s surface-level comparisons to 1940 are just that, surface-level

Even his most ardent critics would begrudgingly agree that history smiles on Roosevelt for guiding the nation through its two greatest challenges of the 20th century, the Great Depression and World War II. But today, even as Biden attempts to embody the rhetoric of a bold statesman prepared to take on the world as FDR did, Biden’s forceful oratory in his State of the Union belies his presence of mind. Biden is still living in the 20th century. If he does not wake up to what today’s voters are demanding, he’ll lose the election to Donald Trump.

The Biden administration’s insistence on using American dollars, weapons, and intelligence assets to keep Ukraine in the fight against Russia is losing support. Across every voting bloc, fewer Americans today approve continued U.S. military support of Ukraine as did a year ago. Almost half now affirm that the U.S. is doing too much to support Ukraine, and about 70% say it’s time for the U.S. to negotiate a peace deal between the warring nations. Independents, a voting bloc Biden needs in order to win in November, have gone from a majority in that group supporting the president’s handling of Russia-Ukraine to a majority opposing it.

The Biden Administration’s handling of Israel-Palestine is even worse, at least in the minds of women, minorities, young people, and progressives, all voting blocs the president must secure in order to win reelection. A University of Massachusetts-Amherst poll found that 50% of Americans believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza (with U.S. weapons), and about 61% say they want the U.S. to broker a permanent ceasefire leading to a two-state solution. More young Americans now sympathize with Palestinians in the conflict over Israelis, and for anyone who thinks America’s youth doesn’t vote based on foreign policy, another poll found a majority of young Americans (81%) now place foreign policy issues as “very important to them.”

Today’s Americans want peace. Biden can and must deliver it

Putin’s Russia is not Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Hamas’s 30,000 fighters are not Imperial Japan’s six million-strong military. The difference between 1940 and 2024 is that Americans in 1940 understood, accurately, that the fate of the world was at stake, and they agreed with FDR on his proposed strategies for saving the world from Fascism. In 2024, Americans understand that today’s conflicts in Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Palestine will not be resolved on the battlefield. They must be brought to an end through diplomatic and political resolutions before more lives are lost.

The fate of the world may not be at stake in 2024, but Americans know the fate of innocent lives caught up in conflicts funded by the U.S. most definitely are. Voters will make their outrage known on November 5 unless the Biden Administration changes course and becomes Earth’s peacemaker, not her arms dealer.