OP-ED: Joe Biden Should Call Chris Christie

Courting young voters and the far left may be a lost cause

Last month, Chris Christie revealed that Joe Biden has not reached out to him since dropping out of the Republican primary earlier this year. This was surprising given that Christie distinguished himself with his cut-throat approach to attacking Donald Trump, which set him apart from the field of Trump sycophants in the 2024 Republican primary. During his campaign announcement, Christie described Trump as a “lonely, self-consumed, self-serving mirror hog,” he has expressed support of the federal prosecution of Trump, calling it “very, very evidence-filled,” and he wasn’t afraid to call out other Republicans for praising and defending Trump even when they were supposed to be running against him. Christie has pledged not to support Trump if he ultimately becomes the nominee, but as of now, he has not made any endorsement. And it isn’t just Chris Christie. Jonathan Martin writes for POLITICO that “I reached out to every current Republican lawmaker who has refused to commit to Trump in the general election. Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Mitt Romney (Utah), Todd Young (Indiana), Bill Cassidy (Louisiana), and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) all said the same: they’ve not heard from Biden.” It’s difficult to fathom why this may be. After all, why wouldn’t the Biden campaign want to enlist the help of a firebrand like Christie, a Republican who is arguably more effective at dressing Trump down than most Democrats? Even Christie himself has said that it’s “pretty stupid” that Biden hasn’t picked up the phone.

Christie is perhaps one of President Biden’s most underutilized assets, and he represents a voter demographic that Biden should spend more time trying to actively court: disaffected anti-Trump Republicans. In recent campaign ads, Joe Biden has stood alongside Bernie Sanders, and while conventional wisdom may suggest that it’s wise for Biden to protect his left flank, it’s unclear if this strategy will actually attract any new support. The majority of Bernie supporters voted for Joe Biden in 2020, but those who didn’t vote for him in 2020 probably won’t vote for him in 2024 either. More concerningly, a recent CNN poll found that 81% of voters between the ages of 18-34 “disapprove of the way Joe Biden is handling the war between Israel and Hamas.” This has been reflected in the unexpectedly high turnout of the uncommitted campaign, which represents a protest vote against Biden’s support for Israel (“uncommitted” currently has 27 delegates at the upcoming DNC convention). Although foreign policy generally and Israel-Gaza rank very low among voter priorities, even among the youngest voters, this is still not a welcome development for the incumbent President.

Meanwhile, moderate Republicans have a protest vote of their own: Nikki Haley. Although Nikki Haley dropped out of the primary last March, a significant chunk of Republicans are still showing up to vote for her. In the May 1st Pennsylvania Republican presidential primary, Nikki Haley won 16.6% of the vote (158,178 people), while in the Indiana Republican presidential primary, Nikki Haley won 21.7% of the vote (128,170 people). Trump still overwhelmingly dominates, and there’s no question that he’s the de facto leader of the Republican Party and will almost certainly be the Republican nominee (barring death). But the fact that such a large chunk of the Republican electorate would still bother to vote for Nikki Haley even though her campaign has been inactive for the last three months demonstrates that moderate Republicans are yearning for an alternative. That alternative should be Joe Biden.

But Joe Biden is less likely to be that alternative as long as he campaigns with people like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who moderate Republicans view as radical socialists. Instead, Joe Biden should assemble an advisory committee of moderate Republicans made up of people like Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Nikki Haley, Will Hurd, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Chris Christie. Biden should try to make himself more palatable to moderate Republican voters, even if it means making some concessions on policy. And the fact of the matter is that Joe Biden already has made concessions on policy, losing political capital among progressives but failing to cash in with conservatives.

Perhaps the best example of this is Joe Biden’s bipartisan immigration bill, which would have given the president the power to summarily deport people without due process if the number of migrant encounters reaches above 4,000 per day, and it would have required deportations if the number reaches 5,000 per day. This bill would have essentially revived Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy. The bill didn’t make it to the Senate, which Biden has blamed on Donald Trump, and some lawmakers have confirmed this, such as Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND), who told CNN that a “border deal that actually reduced the flow of illegal immigration, that would be good for [President Biden] politically.” At any other point in history, Biden’s immigration bill would have been a godsend for conservative Republicans and MAGA, but they sabotaged it because they were afraid it’d hurt Trump politically. Many progressives were disappointed that Biden took such a Trumpian stance on immigration, but the damage has already been done, so he might as well lean into it if there’s a chance that running to the right of Trump on immigration might attract moderates who voted for Chris Christie and Nikki Haley.

We know that voters who have reservations about voting for Trump and who are concerned with protecting American democracy are “gettable,” as evidenced by recent interviews with former Trump supporters on The David Pakman Show.

While there are many voters like Kyle and Nathan who recognize that Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy, running as a safeguard against fascism may not be enough for Joe Biden to comfortably win a second term (although in a sane world, it would be). It’s time for Biden to pick up the phone and build a coalition with Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, and all of the other Republicans who aren’t willing to put party over country.