Washington: In a formal announcement on Tuesday, President Joe Biden said he would be seeking reelection in 2024. He urged voters to give him more time so he could "finish this job" and extend the tenure of America's oldest president by an additional four years.
At 86 years old at the end of a second term, Biden is hoping that his first-term legislative successes and more than 50 years of experience in Washington, D.C., will outweigh any concerns about his advanced age.
He has an easy path to winning his party's nomination because there aren't any serious Democratic opponents. He will nonetheless face a challenging fight to keep his position as president in a deeply divided country.
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In his first outing since the announcement, Biden spoke to members of a building trades union
on Tuesday. In the speech, he used the opportunity to highlight his accomplishments, take aim at his GOP rivals, and demonstrate to voters that he was still committed to his day job.
Biden highlighted the tens of thousands of construction jobs being created since he took office that are supported by legislation he signed into law. He was greeted with chants of "Let's Go Joe" from a boisterous crowd of building trades union members, a key base of Democratic support.
Together, "we—you and I—are turning things around, and we're doing it in a big way," Biden said. "It's time to complete the task.
The three-minute video that serves as Biden's campaign announcement comes four years after he first announced his candidature for president in 2019, promising to restore the "soul of the nation" amid Donald Trump's divisive administration. This goal has proven to be elusive.
As I said, "I said we are in a battle for the soul of America, and we still are," Biden said. "We must decide whether to have more freedom or less freedom in the coming years. Either more or fewer rights.
For the majority of modern presidents, the possibility of running for reelection has been a given, but Biden hasn't always had that luxury. Because of his age, a sizeable portion of Democratic voters have stated they would prefer he not run. These worries have been deemed "totally legitimate" by Biden, but he avoided directly addressing them in his campaign video.
However, few issues have brought Democratic voters together more than the possibility of a Trump victory. Additionally, following a better-than-expected showing by Democrats in the midterm elections of last year, Biden's political standing within his party stabilised. The president plans to run on the same platforms that helped his party gain support in the previous election, particularly on protecting access to abortion.
“Freedom. The American way of life is fundamentally based on individual liberty. Nothing is more critical. In the launch video, Biden portrayed Republican extremists as attempting to restrict voting rights, cut Social Security, restrict access to abortion, and ban books they disagree with. "MAGA extremists are lining up across the nation to take away those fundamental liberties,"
Biden intends to run on his accomplishments as the campaign's general themes start to take shape. He spent his first two years in office fighting the coronavirus pandemic and advancing important legislation like the bipartisan infrastructure package, laws promoting high-tech manufacturing, and environmental regulations.
The president is also pleading with voters to give him another chance to fulfil a number of policy objectives and unfulfilled campaign pledges.
"Let's complete this task. In the video, Biden repeated a phrase he used twelve times during his State of the Union speech in February: "I know we can.
On Tuesday night in Washington, Vice President Kamala Harris, who was prominently featured alongside Biden in the video, held a political rally at Howard University in support of abortion access, beginning her own efforts to support the reelection campaign.
Our hard-won freedoms are being attacked, and I'm proud to run for re-election with President Joe Biden," Harris continued. And now is the time for us to take a stand and fight.
In the video, Biden speaks over brief snapshots of his presidency, images of various Americans, and brief appearances by outspoken Republican opponents like Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and Rep.
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Georgian Marjorie Taylor Greene. Insisting that "this is our moment" to "defend democracy," he urges his supporters. Defend our rights to privacy. Defend our civil rights and the right to vote.
In addition, Biden intends to highlight his efforts over the previous two years to strengthen US alliances, including his leadership of a global coalition to support Ukraine's defences against a Russian invasion and the US's rejoining of the Paris Climate Accord. However, public support for Ukraine in the US has waned recently, and some voters are beginning to doubt the tens of billions of dollars in military and economic aid that are going to Kyiv.
The president is also the target of GOP attacks over his immigration and economic policies, and he has endured criticism for his administration's chaotic 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan after nearly 20 years of war. This undercut the image of competence the president sought to project.
In his campaign for president in 2020, Biden emphasised to voters his familiarity with Washington's political establishment and his global connections. However, he was well aware of the voters' worries about his age even at that time.
As he campaigned in Michigan in March 2020 alongside younger Democrats like Harris, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Biden said, "Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else." You saw a whole generation of leaders stand by my side. They represent this nation's future.
Allies of Biden claim that three years later, with the president now 80, his time in office has shown that he saw himself more as a transformational than a transitional leader.
However, a lot of Democrats would rather Biden didn't run again. Just 47% of Democrats now support him running for a second term, up from 37% in a February poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Centre for Public Affairs Research. Additionally, critics have used Biden's verbal and occasionally physical gaffes to argue that he is unfit for office.
Biden's doctor, Dr. Kevin O'Connor, described him as "healthy, vigorous," and "fit" to carry out his duties in the White House following a routine physical in February.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre initially refused to say whether the president intended to serve all eight years if elected to a second term hours after Biden's announcement. In a later tweet, she clarified, "I wanted to be sure that I didn't go into 2024 more than is permissible under the law. However, I can vouch that @POTUS would serve an additional eight years if elected.
Aides admit that, despite the fact that some members of his party might prefer a Biden replacement, there isn't a lot of agreement among their diverse coalition as to who that candidate should be. And they insist that Democrats and independents will support Biden when he is compared to whoever the GOP nominates.
Trump, 76, is currently the favourite to become the Republican nominee, opening the door to a historic follow-up to the bitterly contested 2020 campaign. Trump, however, has his own formidable obstacles to overcome, such as the distinction of being the first former president to be charged with a crime.
The remaining GOP field is unpredictable, with DeSantis quickly establishing himself as a viable Trump substitute. However, amid concerns about his readiness to run for office outside of his state's shifting Republican majority, DeSantis' stature is also in doubt.
Biden will need the support of millennials, Black voters, particularly women, blue-collar Midwesterners, moderates, and disaffected Republicans, all of whom contributed to his victory in 2020, in order to triumph once more. He will need to win the so-called "blue wall" in the Upper Midwest once more while maintaining his support in Georgia and Arizona, two longtime GOP strongholds where he narrowly prevailed in the previous election.
In addition to briefing key political organisations, grassroots activists, and state party officials on strategy, Biden spoke with Democratic governors about his reelection plans on Tuesday, according to his campaign. Later this week in Washington, the president was scheduled to meet with important party donors.
While the country navigates uncertain economic crosscurrents, Biden is running for reelection. Although unemployment is at a 50-year low and inflation is slowly declining after reaching its highest level in a generation, the economy is still showing signs of resilience despite Federal Reserve interest rate increases.
Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, said in a statement: "If voters allow Biden to 'finish the job,' inflation will continue to soar, crime rates will increase, more fentanyl will cross our open borders, children will continue to be left behind, and American families will be worse off.
In order to maintain the benefits of incumbency and stay out of the political fray while their rivals trade barbs, presidents frequently postpone their reelection announcements. The advantage of holding the Presidency, however, can be shaky as three of the last seven presidents, most recently Trump in 2020, lost their bids for reelection.
The timing of Biden's announcement roughly matches that of former President Barack Obama, who held off on declaring for a second term until April 2011 and held a campaign rally until May 2012. On the day of his inauguration in 2017, Trump started his campaign for reelection.
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On Tuesday, Biden named Quentin Fulks, who managed Sen. Raphael Warnock's Georgia reelection campaign last year, to serve as principal deputy campaign manager and White House adviser Julie Chávez Rodrguez to serve as campaign manager. Rep. Lisa Blunt-Rochester, Sens. Chris Coons and Tammy Duckworth, businessman and Democratic megadonor Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Whitmer will serve as the campaign's co-chairs.
