https://www.politico.com/newsletter...biden-is-planning-to-run-again-in-2024-792879
Biden 'is planning to run again' in 2024
By ALEX THOMPSON and THEODORIC MEYER
01/20/2021 06:33 PM EST
Presented by
Welcome to POLITICO’s 2021 Transition Playbook, your guide to one of the most consequential transfers of power in American history.
President JOE BIDEN gave his first inaugural address today. Will the 78-year-old try to deliver a second?
“He is planning to run again,” Sen. CHRIS COONS (D-Del.), one of Biden’s friends and close allies on Capitol Hill, told Transition Playbook this past weekend. “He knows that we are at the middle of an absolute turning point, a pivot point in American history. And he's up for the challenge.”
Speculating about 2024 hours after Biden’s swearing-in is stepping on his Inauguration Day a bit, but the new president’s reelection plans will have immediate consequences.
Congress will treat him differently. Democrats eyeing their own White House runs will either be frozen in place or will be able to do the politicking that likely 2024 Republican candidates like NIKKI HALEY and South Dakota Gov. KRISTI NOEM are already doing. And it will affect both what Vice President KAMALA HARRIS does and how she is covered when she does it.
Some outside advisers have pushed Biden to declare for or at least file for reelection immediately to quiet any lame duck talk. DONALD TRUMP filed his reelection paperwork on Inauguration Day in 2017. But Biden’s team has brushed back such counsel and insisted that Biden should be completely focused on Covid-19 and the economy rather than the next election (or at the very least appear to be focused on that).
Questions about Biden’s age and stamina hounded him during the primary and the general election.
In December 2019, RYAN LIZZA reported that Biden had signaled to aides that he was considering serving only a single term or even making a one-term pledge. That prompted Biden to publicly push back at the time: “I don’t have any plans on one term.” After he won the primary, he stirred speculation again when he told donors that, “I view myself as a transition candidate.”
But aides say he has been invigorated by victory, having finally reached the Oval Office four decades after first considering a run in 1980.
Even though Biden is older than the 45 previous presidents, history suggests he’ll run again. Every newly elected president has run for reelection since GROVER CLEVELAND did so in 1888. Some, like CALVIN COOLIDGE, LYNDON JOHNSON and HARRY TRUMAN, didn’t run a second time but had already served partial terms following the deaths of their predecessors, before winning election in their own right.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT regretted his pledge not to run again after winning reelection in 1904, according to the presidential historian H.W. BRANDS. “He later said he’d give his right arm to be able to take those words back,” Brands said.
Still, Biden wouldn’t be the first modern president to face doubts he’d run for a second term.
The day after RONALD REAGAN’s inauguration in 1981, the New York Times raised the prospect that Reagan might not run in 1984 given that he was already 69. Speculation that Reagan might not run dogged him and other ambitious members of his party for much of his first term.
Former Sen. BOB DOLE (R-Kan.) wanted Reagan to run again but griped in 1982 that the uncertainty “creates a problem for those who are sort of waiting in the wings.”
Reagan “has immobilized all the other potential Republican candidates, who wait for his decision by day and hear ‘Hail to the Chief’ for themselves in the night,” The Times columnist JAMES RESTON wrote in 1983.
He also previewed the awkward situation that could face Harris while waiting to see if Biden runs, writing in 1983 that Bush had “threatened to fire anybody on his staff who suggests that he ever thinks of running for president, which of course he thinks about all the time.”
Reagan didn’t announce he would run again until Jan. 29, 1984.
What advice would CHARLIE BLACK, a longtime Republican lobbyist who worked on Reagan’s campaigns, give to Biden? “Even if you think in your mind you’re not going to do a second term, it’s better not to say so,” he said.
Do you work in the Biden administration? Are you one of the agency review teams? Are you LADY GAGA? We want to hear from you — and we’ll keep you anonymous: [email protected]. You can also reach Alex, Theo, Megan, Alice, Tyler and Daniel individually if you prefer.
Did someone forward this to you? Subscribe here!
Biden 'is planning to run again' in 2024
By ALEX THOMPSON and THEODORIC MEYER
01/20/2021 06:33 PM EST
Presented by
Welcome to POLITICO’s 2021 Transition Playbook, your guide to one of the most consequential transfers of power in American history.
President JOE BIDEN gave his first inaugural address today. Will the 78-year-old try to deliver a second?
“He is planning to run again,” Sen. CHRIS COONS (D-Del.), one of Biden’s friends and close allies on Capitol Hill, told Transition Playbook this past weekend. “He knows that we are at the middle of an absolute turning point, a pivot point in American history. And he's up for the challenge.”
Speculating about 2024 hours after Biden’s swearing-in is stepping on his Inauguration Day a bit, but the new president’s reelection plans will have immediate consequences.
Congress will treat him differently. Democrats eyeing their own White House runs will either be frozen in place or will be able to do the politicking that likely 2024 Republican candidates like NIKKI HALEY and South Dakota Gov. KRISTI NOEM are already doing. And it will affect both what Vice President KAMALA HARRIS does and how she is covered when she does it.
Some outside advisers have pushed Biden to declare for or at least file for reelection immediately to quiet any lame duck talk. DONALD TRUMP filed his reelection paperwork on Inauguration Day in 2017. But Biden’s team has brushed back such counsel and insisted that Biden should be completely focused on Covid-19 and the economy rather than the next election (or at the very least appear to be focused on that).
Questions about Biden’s age and stamina hounded him during the primary and the general election.
In December 2019, RYAN LIZZA reported that Biden had signaled to aides that he was considering serving only a single term or even making a one-term pledge. That prompted Biden to publicly push back at the time: “I don’t have any plans on one term.” After he won the primary, he stirred speculation again when he told donors that, “I view myself as a transition candidate.”
But aides say he has been invigorated by victory, having finally reached the Oval Office four decades after first considering a run in 1980.
Even though Biden is older than the 45 previous presidents, history suggests he’ll run again. Every newly elected president has run for reelection since GROVER CLEVELAND did so in 1888. Some, like CALVIN COOLIDGE, LYNDON JOHNSON and HARRY TRUMAN, didn’t run a second time but had already served partial terms following the deaths of their predecessors, before winning election in their own right.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT regretted his pledge not to run again after winning reelection in 1904, according to the presidential historian H.W. BRANDS. “He later said he’d give his right arm to be able to take those words back,” Brands said.
Still, Biden wouldn’t be the first modern president to face doubts he’d run for a second term.
The day after RONALD REAGAN’s inauguration in 1981, the New York Times raised the prospect that Reagan might not run in 1984 given that he was already 69. Speculation that Reagan might not run dogged him and other ambitious members of his party for much of his first term.
Former Sen. BOB DOLE (R-Kan.) wanted Reagan to run again but griped in 1982 that the uncertainty “creates a problem for those who are sort of waiting in the wings.”
Reagan “has immobilized all the other potential Republican candidates, who wait for his decision by day and hear ‘Hail to the Chief’ for themselves in the night,” The Times columnist JAMES RESTON wrote in 1983.
He also previewed the awkward situation that could face Harris while waiting to see if Biden runs, writing in 1983 that Bush had “threatened to fire anybody on his staff who suggests that he ever thinks of running for president, which of course he thinks about all the time.”
Reagan didn’t announce he would run again until Jan. 29, 1984.
What advice would CHARLIE BLACK, a longtime Republican lobbyist who worked on Reagan’s campaigns, give to Biden? “Even if you think in your mind you’re not going to do a second term, it’s better not to say so,” he said.
Do you work in the Biden administration? Are you one of the agency review teams? Are you LADY GAGA? We want to hear from you — and we’ll keep you anonymous: [email protected]. You can also reach Alex, Theo, Megan, Alice, Tyler and Daniel individually if you prefer.
Did someone forward this to you? Subscribe here!
