Chaffetz: Joe Biden Not Running for Re-election – Joe Biden is not showing signs of wanting another stab at the presidency, former Republican Congressman-tuned-Fox News personality Jason Chaffetz writes.
He is not campaigning hard for the presidency and instead seems to enjoy his naps on the beach in Rehoboth, Del., or camping out in vacation homes owned by billionaire donors like Tom Steyer.
The Biden campaign has hired few workers and has scheduled few events.
Joe Biden’s Basement Strategy
“Standing before a New Mexico audience recently, President Biden unintelligibly joked that, ‘I hibernated in a while – all, you know, in Iowa for a while.’ It’s not clear what he meant by that, but hibernating is an apt descriptor of the Biden 2024 re-election campaign,” Chaffetz writes.
“Though Biden was mocked for seemingly campaigning from his basement in 2020, this summer he appears to be campaigning from the beach. That’s where he spent the weekend while Maui burned, and serious presidential contenders drummed up support at the Iowa State Fair. That’s just one of several indicators that Biden may not be planning to see his name on a ballot next year.”
Alternatively, Joe Biden looks at his competition and predecessor, former President Donald Trump, who he boasts that he can “beat like a drum” and sees him self-destructing due to his lack of personal discipline and thinks he can win by default.
Biden likely views the Justice Department as an arm of his campaign and holds out hope that he can get Trump knocked off the ballot.
Biden Keeping Campaign in Delaware
Chaffetz writes that Biden has largely kept his campaign staff in his home state of Delaware, closer to his homes in the Diamond State.
“As of last quarter, he had just four people on the payroll, all working out of the party offices. In July, the campaign announced the hiring of a few fundraisers, but there seems to be little urgency to mount a full-scale campaign and the first primary votes are five months away,” Chaffetz writes.
However, it has launched one of the first ad campaigns of the 2024 cycle in advance of the Republican debate on Wednesday night touting the success of Bidenomics.
“The buy includes both the largest and earliest media buy for a reelection campaign into constituency media ever, as well as the largest overall buy for a reelection campaign at this point in time ever, ensuring that President Biden’s message is heard throughout this year’s Republican primary,” the campaign said in a statement.
Its $25 million ad buy hopes to put a mark on the GOP campaign.
“All of the things that Biden fought to get passed help the middle class,” a woman, Kilah Engelke, says in the ad, saying wages have gone up and people she knows are getting pay raises. “What President Biden has accomplished is actually helping real people.”
“Being a mom is hard, it’s just hard in a different way,” Engelke says. “It’s really unique to catch a break.”
The Republicans will parry that by pointing out that costs for food, energy, and rent have eaten away whatever financial advantages created by a strong job market.
Biden Likely Is Overconfident
“With few exceptions, we don’t see him on the campaign trail defending his presidency or touting his accomplishments in key battleground states. We don’t see his vice president making the case for him. He isn’t sharing his vision for the future. He is hiding – hiding from the press, hiding from the scandals and hiding from his own incompetence as a commander in chief,” Chaffetz writes.
If anything, knowing Joe Biden’s ego, this is a signal that the president is so overconfident that he can coast to re-election due to Trump’s unpopularity and legal woes.
He likely believes that he won’t need to expend a lot of energy in campaigning because he thinks Trump will just self-destruct.
John Rossomando is a defense and counterterrorism analyst and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.
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