In January, most people expected Joe Biden to announce his plans for reelection in February, on or around the state of the union address.
That time has come and gone, and Biden still hasn’t announced. Some Democrats are getting uneasy as they try to contemplate a backup plan.
Politico reports:
Biden may not run — and top Dems are quietly preparingJoe Biden’s closest advisers have spent months preparing for him to formally announce his reelection campaign. But with the president still not ready to make the plunge, a sense of doubt is creeping into conversations around 2024: What if he decides not to?Biden’s past decisions around seeking the presidency have been protracted, painstaking affairs. This time, he has slipped past his most ambitious timetable, as previously outlined by advisers, to launch in February. Now they are coalescing around April.But even that target is less than definitive. People in the president’s orbit say there is no hard deadline or formal process in place for arriving at a launch date decision. According to four people familiar with the president’s thinking, a final call has been pushed aside as real-world events intervene. His cloak-and-dagger trip to Kyiv over the holiday weekend took meticulous planning and the positive reaction to it was seen internally as providing him with more runway to turn back to domestic politics.While the belief among nearly everyone in Biden’s orbit is that he’ll ultimately give the all-clear, his indecision has resulted in an awkward deep-freeze across the party — in which some potential presidential aspirants and scores of major donors are strategizing and even developing a Plan B while trying to remain respectful and publicly supportive of the 80-year-old president.
Ryan King of the Washington Examiner notes that if Biden decides not to run, it’ll cause a major upset among Democrats, followed by a stampede:
There would be a political earthquake if Biden dropped out of the race. He would become the first Democratic president to step down since former President Lyndon Johnson. The Democratic Party’s lack of a clear alternative makes the situation all the more pressing.Lingering questions about Vice President Kamala Harris’s viability in both a primary and a general election contest loom large. Therefore, if Biden steps aside, Democrats would likely be thrust into a messy primary that heavyweight contenders had not anticipated.Some big names, such as Govs. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), J.B. Pritzker (D-IL), and Phil Murphy (D-NJ) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), have been eyed as possible alternatives to Biden if he steps aside. So far, his main primary opponent is shaping up to be spiritual guru Marianne Williamson, who lacks experience in office.Still, most aides and Democratic strategists view the prospect of Biden stepping aside as unlikely.
Will anyone really be surprised if Biden doesn’t run?
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