The 2024 Democratic Presidential Derby is under way.
Activist Jerome Segal, who placed ninth among 10 candidates seeking the Democratic nomination for governor in Maryland, at one point was also among the many Democrats seeking the nomination in 2020, said Monday he is in the race, according to Newsweek.
“I was planning to delay the announcement of my candidacy until after the mid-term elections,” Segal said in a statement. “My decision to go public right now was triggered by Joe Biden’s embarrassing trip to the Middle East.”
Segal, who founded the socialist Bread and Roses party, criticized Biden for “fist bump[ing] a psychopathic killer,” in reference to Biden’s controversial greeting to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Biden, 79, has said he will run for a second term, but that has not dampened speculation that others such as Vice President Kamala Harris, Stacey Abrams, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Sens. Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobuchar might run.
A recent New York Times/Siena College poll found that only 26 percent of Democrats surveyed want Biden to run in 2024.
The poll found that 94 percent of voters under 30 want a different Democrat to run.
“I’m just going to come out and say it: I want younger blood,” said Nicole Farrier, a preschool teacher in East Tawas, Michigan.
“I am so tired of all old people running our country. I don’t want someone knocking on death’s door,” she said.
Kelly King, a former factory worker in Greensburg, Indiana, said Biden “hasn’t done what I think he’s capable of doing as president to help the American people. As a Democrat, I figured he would really be on our side and put us back on the right track. And I just feel like he’s not.”
Clifton Heard a maintenance specialist in Foley, Alabama, was not choosy when it came to alternatives.
“Anybody could be doing a better job than what they’re doing right now,” he said, adding that Biden, “wasn’t prepared to do the job.”
The Times/Siena survey of 849 registered voters nationwide was conducted from July 5 to 7 and has a margin of sampling error of plus 4.1 percentage points.
The left wing of the Democratic Party may challenge Biden if he stays his course, according to The Hill.
“Unless Biden comes to his senses and announces that he won’t run again, a contentious battle for the nomination seems very likely,” said Norman Solomon, founder of the progressive network RootsAction.
“The president may not realize or care that the trajectory of his policies has been taking him farther and farther from the Democratic Party base, but his distance from that base would likely be catastrophic for Biden if he tries to get nominated again,” he said.
“The tone-deaf and self-centered thing for him to do would be to soldier on, insisting that he should be president until January 2029, while damaging the party’s prospects in the process,” Solomon added.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.