(Headline USA) President Joe Biden on Tuesday formally announced that he is running for reelection in 2024, asking voters to give him more time to “finish the job” he began when he was sworn into office and to set aside their concerns about extending the run of America’s oldest president for another four years.
Biden, who would be 86 at the end of a second term faces a smooth path to winning his party’s nomination, with no serious Democratic rivals, despite the presence of a political scion, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who will bring stark contrast between the traditional liberalism of the past with the radical progressive politics of today’s Democrats. Nonetheless, Kennedy has fallen out of favor on the Left due to his outspoken opposition to the COVID-19 vaccine.
Biden, meanwhile, is set for a hard-fought struggle to retain the presidency in a bitterly divided nation.
The announcement, in a three-minute video, comes on the four-year anniversary of when Biden declared for the White House in 2019, promising to heal the “soul of the nation” amid the turbulent presidency of Donald Trump—a goal that has remained elusive given Biden’s own divisive rhetoric and incompetence.
“I said we are in a battle for the soul of America, and we still are,” Biden said. “The question we are facing is whether in the years ahead we have more freedom or less freedom. More rights or fewer.”
While the prospect of seeking reelection has been a given for most modern presidents, that’s not always been the case for Biden. A notable swath of Democratic voters have indicated they would prefer he not run, in part because of his age—concerns Biden has called “totally legitimate” but ones he did not address head-on in the launch video.
Yet few things have unified Democratic voters like the prospect of Trump returning to power.
And Biden’s political standing within his party stabilized after Democrats notched a stronger-than-expected performance in last year’s midterm elections, despite losing the House. Many continue to suspect massive vote fraud in states like Pennsylvania, Nevada and Arizona, where GOP candidates maintained close races and lost under highly dubious circumstances.
The president is set to run again on the same themes that buoyed his party last fall, particularly abortion and efforts to vilify his political rivals in the starkest of terms.
“Freedom. Personal freedom is fundamental to who we are as Americans. There’s nothing more important. Nothing more sacred,” Biden said in the launch video.
Biden plans to continue to cast all Republicans as embracing what he calls “ultra-MAGA” politics—a reference to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan—regardless of whether his predecessor ends up on the 2024 ballot.
“Around the country, MAGA extremists are lining up to take those bedrock freedoms away,” he said. “This is not a time to be complacent.”
In the video, Biden speaks over brief clips and photographs of key moments in his presidency, snapshots of diverse Americans and flashes of outspoken Republican foes, including Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.
He exhorts supporters that “this is our moment” to “defend democracy. Stand up for our personal freedoms. Stand up for the right to vote and our civil rights.”
The president also has multiple policy goals and unmet promises from his first campaign that he’s asking voters on giving him another chance to fulfill.
“Let’s finish this job. I know we can,” Biden said in the video, repeating a mantra he said a dozen times during his State of the Union address in February, listing everything from passing a ban on assault-style weapons and lowering the cost of prescription drugs to codifying a national right to abortion after the Supreme Court’s ruling last year overturning Roe v. Wade.
Biden also plans to point to his work over the past two years shoring up American alliances, leading a global coalition to support Ukraine’s defenses against Russia’s invasion and returning the U.S. to the Paris climate accord.
But public support in the U.S. for Ukraine has softened in recent months, and some voters question the tens of billions of dollars in military and economic assistance flowing to Kyiv.
The president faces lingering criticism over his administration’s chaotic 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan after nearly 20 years of war, which undercut the image of competence he aimed to portray, and he’s the target of GOP attacks over his immigration and economic policies.
As a candidate in 2020, Biden pitched voters on his familiarity with the halls of power in Washington and his relationships around the world. But even back then, he was acutely aware of voters’ concerns about his age.
“Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else,” Biden said in March 2020, as he campaigned in Michigan with younger Democrats, including now-Vice President Kamala Harris, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. “There’s an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me. They are the future of this country.”
Three years later, the president now 80, Biden allies say his time in office has demonstrated that he saw himself as more of a transformational than a transitional leader.
Still, many Democrats would prefer that Biden didn’t run again. A recent poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows just 47% of Democrats say they want him to seek a second term, up from 37% in February. And Biden’s verbal—and occasional physical — stumbles have become fodder for critics trying to cast him as unfit for office.
Biden, on multiple occasions, has brushed back concerns about his age, saying simply, “Watch me.”
Aides acknowledge that while some in his party might prefer an alternative to Biden, there is anything but consensus within their diverse coalition on who that might be. And they insist that when Biden is compared with whomever the GOP nominates, Democrats and independents will rally around Biden.
For now, the 76-year-old Trump is the favorite to emerge as the Republican nominee, creating the potential of a historic sequel to the bitterly fought 2020 campaign.
DeSantis is emerging as an early alternative to Trump, but his stature is also in question, however, amid questions about his readiness to campaign outside of his increasingly Republican-leaning state.
To prevail again, Biden will need the alliance of young voters and black voters — particularly women — along with blue-collar Midwesterners, moderates and disaffected Republicans who helped him win in 2020.
He’ll have to again carry the so-called “blue wall” in the Upper Midwest, while protecting his position in Georgia and Arizona, longtime GOP strongholds he narrowly won last time.
Biden’s reelection bid comes as the nation weathers uncertain economic crosscurrents. Inflation has hit the highest rate in a generation despite Federal Reserve interest rate hikes.
Presidents typically try to delay their reelection announcements to maintain the advantages of incumbency and skate above the political fray for as long as possible while their rivals trade jabs. But the leg up offered by being in the White House can be rickety — three of the last seven presidents have lost reelection, most recently Trump in 2020.
Biden’s announcement is roughly consistent with the timeline followed by then-President Barack Obama, who waited until April 2011 to declare for a second term and didn’t hold a reelection rally until May 2012. Trump launched his reelection bid on the day he was sworn in in 2017.
Biden is not expected to dramatically alter his day-to-day schedule as a candidate—at least not immediately—with aides believing his strongest political asset is showing the American people that he is governing. And if he follows the Obama playbook, he may not hold any formal campaign rallies until well into 2024.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
