Joe Biden is reportedly set to announce his 2024 run- but should he?: After some uncertainty about exactly when he would get into the 2024 race, President Joe Biden will reportedly announce his reelection campaign this week. The polls have some asking if he should.
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Here Comes Joe Biden 2024?
A couple of weeks after President Biden said in an Easter TV interview with NBC’s Al Roker that he was planning to run again but did not have a timetable for an official announcement, reports say Biden’s official entry into the 2024 race could come as soon as this week.
ABC News reported this week that Biden’s aides had told allies that the announcement of Biden’s re-election could come as soon as this Tuesday. That date would be the exact four-year anniversary of Biden’s official announcement that he was running in 2020. Biden’s official kickoff even came in May of 2019.
Per the Washington Post, the official announcement will be made in the form of a video.
The Post added that “the national Democratic Party has said it will support Biden’s reelection, and it has no plans to sponsor Democratic primary debates.”
The report added that “Democratic donors are being invited to Washington, D.C., with strategy sessions planned.”
The Challenge Ahead
The 80-year-old Joe Biden is the oldest person ever to serve as president. And according to a Wall Street Journal editorial last week, his age and what is seen as his decline is reason enough for Biden not to run again.
“Asking the country to elect a man who is 80 years old and whose second term would end when he is 86 is a risky act that borders on selfish. It’s impossible to know Mr. Biden’s real physical and mental state because the White House goes to great lengths to hide it. But his decline is clear to anyone who isn’t willfully blind,” the Journal said.
The Polls
The latest poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, released on Friday, found that slightly less than half of Democrats want Biden to run again. The number of Democrats who want the president to run in 2024, however, has increased from 37 percent to 47 percent since January.
“Despite the reluctance of many Democrats to see Biden run for another term, 78% of them say they approve of the job he’s doing as president,” the AP said in the release of that poll. “And 81% of Democrats say they would at least probably support Biden in a general election if he is the nominee — 41% say they definitely would and 40% say they probably would.”
Another recent poll, from NBC News, found that the majority of voters don’t want either Trump or Biden to run for president in 2024.
“The president needs to reflect the age group in the country. They should both retire,” a Democratic poll respondent from Washington state told NBC News. “It is someone else’s turn.”
No Real Challengers?
Joe Biden appears to have nearly universal support among leaders in the party, as no major Democratic elected officials have announced their intention to run against Biden.
Two candidates, Marianne Williamson and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., have declared their candidacy on the Democratic side for 2024.
With Biden not expecting to debate them, and with the Republican National Committee in 2022 pulling out of the Commission on Presidential Debates, Biden could conceivably go the entire 2024 cycle without ever participating in a presidential debate.
CNN’s Harry Enten predicted that 2024 could go down as the “most boring” presidential primary season ever.
“Trump, like Biden, seems to have two things going for him: a large share of Republican voters and the party behind him. If those two were in opposition to each other, the primary season would have looked far more interesting,” Enten wrote. “So unless something changes, we’re looking at a recipe for primary success for both the current president and the man he succeeded.”
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Expertise and Experience: Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
