Dems getting antsy as Biden holds off on 2024 campaign launch: report
Some Democrats are getting the sneaking feeling that President Biden may not seek a second term after all — and are quietly preparing for a 2024 free-for-all, according to a new report.
Those close to Biden, 80, say the president will ultimately run for re-election, but the campaign kickoff expected soon after the start of 2023 has not yet happened.
The delay has frozen the Democratic Party and sent some presidential hopefuls — as well as major donors — scrambling to come up with a Plan B, Politico reported Wednesday.
“Obviously, it creates doubts and problems if he waits and waits and waits,” Democratic strategist Mark Longabaugh told Politico. “But if he were to somehow not declare ‘til June or something, I think some people would be stomping around.”
“There would be a lot of negative conversation … among Democratic elites, and I just think that would force them to ultimately have to make a decision. I just don’t think he can dance around until sometime in the summer,” added Longabaugh, who believes Biden will ultimately seek re-election.
A decision by Biden not to run would send political shockwaves through the Democratic Party not seen since Lyndon Johnson decided not to seek a second elected term in 1968, focusing attention on Vice President Kamala Harris and setting off a wild scramble among Democratic contenders to jump into the race.
The roster of potential Oval Office aspirants includes Govs. JB Pritzker of Illinois, Phil Murphy of New Jersey and Gavin Newsom of California, as well as Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.
According to the outlet, the initial urgency among some Biden advisers to ramp up a campaign after former President Donald Trump announced a third straight White House try Nov. 15 has subsided for a number of reasons.
Those include the apparent lack of a credible primary challenger following Democrats’ strong showing in the midterm elections, a new nominating calendar front-loaded with states where Biden performed well in 2020, and the theory that hundreds of billions in spending on infrastructure and semiconductor manufacturing will produce positive economic results closer to Election Day.
In addition, Biden’s surprise trip to Kyiv this week to mark the anniversary of the Ukraine war has consumed precious planning time, pushing the timetable for a possible February announcement back to around April.
“We’re not going to have a campaign until we have to,” a Biden adviser told Politico. “He’s the president. Why does he need to dive into an election early?”
“The president has publicly told the country that he intends to run and has not made a final decision,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement. “As you heard in the State of the Union, after the best midterm results for a new Democratic president in 60 years, his focus is on ‘finishing the job’ by delivering more results for American families and ensuring that our economy works from the bottom up and the middle out — not the top down.”
However, a Biden confidant acknowledged to Politico that “an inertia has set in.”
“It’s not that he won’t run, and the assumption is that he will. But nothing is decided. And it won’t be decided until it is,” the person said.
A Democratic donor told the outlet that “everyone’s still keeping a motor running just in case.”
“On the phone, everyone is very clear and has the same sentence up front: ‘If Joe Biden is running, no one will work harder than me, but if he’s not, for whatever reason, we just want to make sure we’re prepared for the good of the party,'” the donor said.
The contingency planning is partly out of fear that Trump will be the GOP nominee once again.
“Most donors view the alternative as an existential threat to the country,” the donor added. “So is some of this impolite? Maybe. But no one seems to be taking issue with it.”
