The president of the United States, Joe Biden, declared this past Monday that he does plan to run for president again, although he still does not have a date to formalize his intentions. During an interview with journalist Al Roker on NBC’s Today show, Biden accepted that he does plan to run, but that he is not yet ready to make the official announcement at the journalist’s insistence to have the exclusive.
There are different visions about the performance and reality of Joe Biden’s presidency, but beyond these, his age is the biggest unknown and uncertainty regarding his future in an eventual second term. It is practically a historical fact that most first-term presidents seek re-election by default.
Only six presidents of the previous 45 have chosen not to run for re-election. The last two who chose not to do so were Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson, who rose to power after the deaths of their predecessors but did manage to win the general election once. Both Truman and Johnson found themselves in tremendously difficult times involved in war conflicts that led them to make the decision not to seek a second term.
But the big difference between Biden and his other 43 predecessors is age. Biden was the oldest person to be elected president of the United States, breaking Donald Trump’s record by more than seven years. Due to the linear nature of time, Biden would break his own record by four years if he were re-elected. He would take office at 82 and leave office at 86. Something never seen before in United States politics.
However, beyond the arithmetic representation of the number of years that Biden has lived, the real concern of some runs along the lines of his cognitive abilities. Biden had two brain aneurysms in 1988, when she was 45, but subsequent studies showed no recurrence. He does not smoke or drink, is not diabetic and is in relatively good condition according to White House medical reports.
Once doubts about his cognitive functioning are past, the most obvious reason for a president to decline reelection is if he finds himself in a moment of tremendous disapproval, or if he is overseeing a brutal war like Johnson and Truman’s, or if he is increasing the inflation or unemployment, or some other kind of disaster.
In that sense, while Biden is not in a great position in terms of popularity, he is more popular than Ronald Reagan was in 1984 on his way to re-election. Biden is not mired in a war; indeed, albeit disastrously, he ended the war in Afghanistan and has resisted the temptation to send US troops to Ukraine.
Regarding the economy, another of the fundamental factors to think about re-election, Biden has kept it acceptably stable, with growth of 2.7 percent in recent quarters. Unemployment is at the lowest level since 1969, inflation has been declining and wages are rising. With mistakes and mistakes, Biden this week signed the end of the health emergency due to Covid 19, although he cannot boast of having done much more than Trump to prevent the death of Americans from the virus.
In general, the outlook for Biden heading into his election is no worse than that of previous presidents. We can say that he is in a better position than any other Democratic candidate who could claim the presidency, and given a high possibility of facing Trump again in 2024, age becomes an anecdotal thought when it comes to electoral competitiveness. .
Biden is simply the best chance the Democrats have to win the White House again in 2024. For one thing, if he decides to run, he will avoid a hotly contested primary that could save hundreds of millions of dollars from Democratic donors who can then invest in the general election, while the Republicans could destroy themselves in their party’s primary.
No Democrat currently ranks higher in the polls against Trump than Joe Biden. There are polls that show Biden ahead of Trump and others that put them in a tie, but polls that have Trump ahead of Biden are practically non-existent.
Several recent polls indicate that Biden has a higher approval rating than Donald Trump. Polls show that while Trump has risen in the Republican primary polls, he remains unpopular with voters overall. Quinnipiac University released a national poll that found Biden would lead Trump 49% to 45% in a hypothetical 2024 matchup. A recent ABC News/Ipsos poll found that Biden’s approval rating rose nearly 10 points over Trump, ensuring a 34% favorability rate among Americans compared to 25% who have a favorable opinion of Trump.
FiveThirtyEight revealed Biden’s approval at about 43%, with 53% disapproval, while Trump’s approval came in at 37%, with 55% disapproval. The most recent approval rating average from Real Clear Politics reported that Biden has a higher favorability rating than his Republican opponent, with 44% approving of the president and 39% favoring Trump.
Biden may not have the best approval ratings. You can lead a highly criticized government. It may be part of the polarization that has hijacked America. But Joe Biden is, without a doubt, the best, and perhaps the only option to beat Trump and the Republicans in 2024 as he already did in 2020, and that should be the only and sufficient reason for him to decide to seek re-election and that is why , there is no doubt that it will. It’s that easy.
