Will Joe Biden stand for president again in 2024?
Over the course of his first term, the president’s age has been a constant attack line for his Republican opponents, who are likely to increase their offensive as the next presidential election.
IN DEPTH
The incumbent’s ratings are improving as midterms approach but some Democrats are keeping their powder dry
ARION MCNICOLL
Biden has said both privately and publicly he intends to run barring an unforeseen event
Samuel Corum/Getty Images
When Joe Biden joined the race to become the Democratic presidential candidate in 2019, critics questioned whether the then 76-year-old statesman was too long in the tooth.
Over the course of his first term, the president’s age has been a constant attack line for his Republican opponents, who are likely to increase their offensive as the next presidential election – which will come just a few weeks before Biden’s 82nd birthday – approaches. The question is, will Biden’s name be on the ballot?
Will Biden run again?
Before his election victory in 2020, Biden privately signalled to aides that he would “almost certainly not run for a second term”, Politico reported. But last November, his spokesperson Jen Psaki told reporters that Biden’s “intention” was to make a bid for re-election in 2024.
In recent days, that position appears to have been solidifying, The Washington Post said. Biden and first lady Jill Biden have been meeting since September with senior advisers to “prepare a potential 2024 reelection campaign”, people familiar with the planning told the paper.
While he has “not yet made a final decision”, his advisers say, he has said both privately and publicly he intends to run barring an unforeseen event.
He has also said that he is even more likely to run if Donald Trump enters the race, which itself looks probable, after Trump told a crowd in Iowa yesterday that he will “very, very, very probably do it again” in 2024.
The latest
Biden’s approval rating has risen slightly as the midterm elections approach, a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll completed on Tuesday found.
The two-day national poll found that 40% of Americans approve of Biden’s job performance, a percentage point higher than a week earlier. Nevertheless, the president’s rating remains near the lowest levels of his presidency, and his unpopularity is contributing to expectations that Democrats will lose control of the House and possibly also the Senate on 8 November.
What fellow Democrats think
At this point in a president’s first term, party loyalists would usually offer unequivocal support, said Time magazine. But some Democrats “continue to dodge the question”, refusing to be drawn on whether Biden should run again in 2024.
“I’m not having that conversation,” Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer said with a laugh when asked by a reporter in mid-September.
Biden’s age and approval ratings as well as political headwinds including high inflation and a sputtering stock market all present potential stumbling blocks for the embattled president. And yet “Biden always finishes strong”, said Ashley Etienne, a former communications director for Vice-President Kamala Harris, who added that “there is also a desire to give the President and the party the room and space to make the decision”.
What has Biden said about 2024?
Back in 2019, insiders reportedly told Politico that if Biden were elected president, it was “virtually inconceivable” that he would run again in 2024 and attempt to become the “first octogenarian president”.
An unnamed adviser to his campaign insisted that “if Biden is elected, he’s going to be 82 years old in four years and he won’t be running for re-election”.
“This makes Biden a good transition figure,” the insider added. “I’d love to have an election this year for the next generation of leaders, but if I have to wait four years [in order to] to get rid of Trump, I’m willing to do it.”
Biden never publicly stated that he would be a one-term president, however.
The notion that the US leader “might walk away from the job while he still has a choice in the matter remains a source of undimmed speculation rare in the postwar era”, said The Atlantic’s politics correspondent Peter Nicholas last April.
Having spent “the bulk of his adult life running for president or auditioning to be president”, Biden is “a unique case”, wrote Nicholas. The Democrat “wittingly or not” appeared to hint at “the prospect of bowing out after four years when he described himself during the 2020 campaign as a ‘bridge’ to a younger generation”.
But after his spokesperson suggested to reporters in November that Biden would run in 2024, the president confirmed to ABC World News Tonight that he would make a bid for a second term if he was “in good health”.
Biden offered “some latitude in his answer” when quizzed about his intentions, said The Washington Post.
“I’m a great respecter of fate,” he said. “Fate has intervened in my life many, many times.”
A good idea?
The Atlantic’s Nicholas cautioned last year that “you don’t need to buy into Trump’s cartoon portrait of Biden as enfeebled and infirm to suspect that the rigours of office could push him into one-and-done territory”.
John Maa, a surgeon and Democratic finance committee member, told Nicholas that he had concerns that Biden “may not, for health reasons, be able to continue serving until 2024.
“As a doctor, I do have some concerns about the relentless daily stress and anxiety for someone his age,” Maa said.
A former Biden campaign adviser was more blunt, telling Nicholas that “that job sucks the life out of you [even] if you’re 30 years younger than he is”.
Poor polling results have increased doubts about the wisdom of a bid for a second term in office.
As the midterms loom, Biden will be aware that “the sitting president’s party almost always loses House seats in these elections”, said NBC News. Midterms “are almost always a referendum on the president”, the broadcaster continued, and Biden’s polling numbers are currently in the “low 40s” – a sign that the Democrats may be in for a bruising when voters go to the polls in November.
Waiting in the wings
Should Biden decide against running in 2024, the most obvious candidate to replace him would be Vice-President Kamala Harris.
However, public opinion of Harris has been low in recent polls leading into the midterms, despite a recent uptick in her approval rating. Poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight shows that 50.5% of Americans disapprove of Harris, while only 38.4% approve.
Other well-known possible contenders include Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigeig, who ran against Biden and Harris in the last Democratic primaries and is the “most naturally talented candidate in the 2024 field”, according to CNN’s politics reporter Chris Cillizza.
The most likely alternatives after Harris and Buttigeig are two governors, said Amy Parnes in The Hill. The first is Whitmer, the Michigan governor, who “came closer than many realise to being Biden’s pick for vice president”. The second is California’s governor Gavin Newsom, a “battle ready” politician who would appeal to Democrats who have been “craving a leader who would get in the faces of Republicans”, Parnes said.
Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren and her Minnesota counterpart Amy Klobuchar have also both been mentioned for another run at becoming the Democrats’ candidate.
Other possibilities touted by pundits include North Carolina governor Roy Cooper, former New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu, Biden’s commerce secretary Gina Raimondo and Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker.
First published in The Week