Now that former President Donald Trump is officially in the ring for 2024, will President Biden follow a similar path and announce his intention to run for a second term as well?
After all, it seems that Biden is more likely to run if Trump decided to run than if Trump had deferred. There is clearly some personal beef to settle in that Biden feels puffed up somehow because he beat Trump in 2020, and his party didn’t crash and burn in the 2022 midterms as most predicted, so he feels as though he has the formula to beat him again in 2024.
As it stands, Biden isn’t doing anything now, but will be talking to family over the holidays and will announce a decision sometime next year:
A week from Sunday, Mr. Biden, the oldest president in American history, will turn 80, a milestone the White House has no plans to celebrate with fireworks or splashy parties. And so Mr. Biden confronts a choice that still leaves many in his party quietly uncomfortable: Should he run for a second term?
Top advisers such as Ron Klain, Anita Dunn, Mike Donilon, Steven J. Ricchetti and Jennifer O’Malley Dillon are already meeting to map out what a 2024 campaign would look like. The president said last week that he “intends” to run but would talk with his family over the holidays and announce a decision early next year. He will only be more motivated assuming former President Donald J. Trump jumps into the race on Tuesday night as expected.
The bigger question is not whether Biden wants to run, it’s whether those around him will allow another campaign to play out on the national stage. The 2024 campaign will not be the 2020 campaign when Covid allowed Biden to avoid the public, avoid talking to journalists, and avoid answering questions. By the time the height of campaigning rolls around in 2024, the landscape will be very different and Biden will be almost 82 years old.
It seems patently absurd and unlikely that Biden will seek a second term. He ran as a placeholder to bridge the gap to a younger, more progressive politician than himself. Biden, however, has been no stranger to taking left-wing stances on the issues by often adopting the most extreme position and then casting himself as the “reasonable” middle ground.
From things like ending the oil and gas industry to supporting unfettered abortion up until the point of birth, Biden is no moderate. The question is whether Democrats can agree on a suitable replacement.
Polls also show that Democratic voters would prefer someone else in 2024 as well. Biden’s policies haven’t been exactly blockbuster when it comes to the economy.
One recent hypothetical involved Biden replacing Vice President Kamala Harris with California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and then Biden stepping down. This would basically install Newsom in the White House and set him up to run for a full term in 2024:
What Tuesday’s voting demonstrated is that our country is still equally divided and deeply polarized, with no political healing on the horizon.
That reality speaks to the need for a proven vote-getter with lots of money and a logistical machine behind him. In Politics 101, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) meets — maybe even exceeds — those qualifications.
Newsom won reelection easily and now has the luxury of turning his ambitious eyes completely toward the White House. The question then becomes, will his party turn its eyes toward him as the person who might save it from the Biden-Harris dilemma it is surely about to face?
If the answer is “yes,” the “solution” is really not complicated at all. In one scenario, Biden could ask Harris to resign and replace her with Newsom, who then becomes the heir apparent for 2024. Or Biden could replace Harris with Newsom and then resign himself, making Newsom the president before 2024 and arming him with the full force of the Oval Office.
It’s a fun exercise but there’s no way the Democratic Party is going to plow over Kamala Harris like that. After all, she took the VP job with the basic understanding that it put her next in line to run as Biden’s heir. Then again, she’s been an awful sidekick and often cackles more embarrassing word salads than her boss does.
Whatever the case may be, don’t expect movement on the Democratic side until further into 2023 when more of the midterm dust has settled.
