“I think everybody wants me to run, but we’re going to have discussions about it.”
That statement is how President Joe Biden summed up his current plans for whether he might seek a second term in the White House in 2024.
The sitting President called it a “family decision” and said he will talk it over with his family over Christmas, with an official decision coming presumably shortly after the new year begins.
The news comes in the wake of two other big watermarks for America’s next Presidential election.
First, the so-called “red wave” that Republicans were expecting in the 2022 mid-term elections earlier this week never materialized.
While the GOP still have a chance to flip the House of Representatives in their favor, the Senate is still very much a toss-up with the balance of power likely hinging on a December runoff in Georgia.
And the possibility remains for Democrats to keep control of the House and actually gain a seat in the Senate, an outcome that would make Biden’s final two years of his Presidential term considerably more favorable.
Secondly, the man Biden defeated for the Presidency in 2020, and his immediate predecessor in the White House, has indicated for months he’s aiming for a second go-round against Biden.
Former President Donald Trump said earlier this week that he’s planning a “big announcement” in just a few days at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Ever the showman, Trump’s wording was likely deliberately vague to build suspense, but he has hinted for months that he wants a second term as President, and he has never stopped pushing falsehoods about a stolen election in 2020.
However, Trump’s handpicked 2022 mid-term candidates did not perform as well at the polls as he would have hoped, and a potential rival for the Republican nomination continues to gain momentum after Ron DeSantis earned re-election as Florida’s governor in a landslide.
Currently, Biden’s approval rating sits at 43%, according to a recent Washington Post-ABC poll.
And if nothing else, the work on a Biden 2024 campaign has already begun.
“We are engaged in some planning for the simple reason that if we weren’t engaged in planning in November of this year, we should be in the political malpractice Hall of Fame,” senior White House adviser Anita Dunn said during an Axios event last week.
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