Joe Biden: Just Way Too Old To Run in 2024?

Joe Biden is getting older, and some worry about his cognitive capabilities. Should he run again in 2024? Will President Joe Biden run for re-election? The president hasn’t issued any hard word on whether he’ll run or not, but recent indications suggest he will. 

The last we heard from Biden on the subject of re-election was that he was going to take the time to make a “family decision,” adding that “I think everybody wants me to run, but we’re going to have discussions about it.” Biden said that he would sit down with his family during the holiday season, make a decision, and announce his decision “early next year.”

I have a difficult time imagining Biden stepping down. Biden has spent his entire life striving for the presidency – now he’s got it. I just don’t see him giving it up.

I know that’s not very scientific, but it holds. And Biden was recently validated, in a big way, through the midterm elections, where Democrats bucked historic trends and held onto the Senate majority while sustaining relatively minor losses in the House.

I expect Biden will view the midterms as further reason why he should run, i.e., the voters have spoken.

Yet, I do not think Biden should run. He is simply too old. 

Biden turned 80 this fall. Eighty years old. The life expectancy for an American male is only 77. So, Biden has already been playing with house money for three years. He is already the oldest person to ever serve as president.

If Biden runs for re-election, he will have to endure another grueling presidential campaign – his fourth.

Note that aides limited the amount of time that Biden campaigned for Democratic candidates during last month’s midterm election as a tactic to preserve his strength. And bear in mind that the 2024 presidential election is still two years away.

Joe Biden will be 82 when that finally happens. The term wouldn’t end until 2028, at which point Biden would be 86 years old. 

Are we really entertaining this? The pundits all seem too polite to ask, but do we expect Biden to live through a second term? Doing so would require him to outlive the U.S. life expectancy by a full decade. And even if Biden survives a second term, will that be Biden up there?   

My feeling, having tracked examples of Biden speaking throughout his fifty-year career, is that Biden is not as sharp as he used to be. I say that because Biden, clearly, does not articulate himself as well as he used to. Even when using relatively recent examples, like Biden’s tenure as vice president under Barack Obama, Biden was obviously much more articulate.

I’m gonna go ahead and take a leap here and suggest that the decline in Biden’s ability to articulate himself correlates with an overall decline in cognitive function. Take my YouTube-enabled medical/cognitive assessment of Joseph R. Biden with a grain of salt, obviously, but tell me, don’t you have the same impression?

And if Biden is in fact declining, actively, what’s he going to look like in two, three, six years from now?

Would it be appropriate for that version of Joe Biden to be the leader of the free world?

I don’t think so.

Harrison Kass is the Senior Editor at 19FortyFive. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, he joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. He lives in Oregon and listens to Dokken.