It was widely believed that President Joe Biden would announce his plans to run for re-election shortly after his State of the Union address Feb. 7.
More than two weeks later, no such announcement has come — and a report Wednesday indicated Biden might not be planning to enter the 2024 race after all.
Four people “familiar with the president’s thinking” told Politico that plans to launch his campaign in February have come and gone.
“A final call has been pushed aside as real-world events intervene,” the sources said. “Now they are coalescing around April.”
Politico reported, “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.”
While a re-election campaign was once thought to be a sure thing, Biden appears not to have made up his mind. According to Politico, sources close to the president described him as “a kind of Hamlet on Delaware’s Christina River, warily biding his time as he ponders the particulars of his final campaign.”
“An inertia has set in,” a Biden confidant said. “It’s not that he won’t run, and the assumption is that he will. But nothing is decided. And it won’t be decided until it is.”
The president’s indecision makes it extremely difficult for other Democrats who would enter the 2024 primary race if he chooses not to run. It also leaves major donors in limbo.
Politico explains that because Democrats outperformed expectations in the November midterm elections and they perceive “no threat of a credible primary challenge,” time is on their side.
The report also raised the possibility that Biden’s team might be delaying the decision to “avoid having to report a less-than-robust fundraising total for a first quarter that’s almost over.”
Nevertheless, Politico said, Biden’s advisers have been putting together a campaign staff and have aligned with the super PAC Future Forward, which has already aired some TV ads in support of the president’s agenda.
But three individuals familiar with the situation told Politico that the president “has talked only sparingly about a possible campaign” and “spends little time discussing the election.”
There is naturally some speculation that the current probes into his son, Hunter Biden, as well as the special counsel investigation into his own mishandling of classified documents, might be giving him pause.
“A decision from Biden to [forgo] another run would amount to a political earthquake not seen among Democrats in more than a half century, when Lyndon B. Johnson paired his partial halting of the U.S. bombing of Vietnam with his announcement to step aside, citing deepening ‘division in the American house now,'” Politico said.
It would also thrust Kamala Harris into the spotlight. The outlet said the vice president’s “uneven performances have raised doubts among fellow Democrats about her ability to win — either the primary, the general election, or both.”
Democratic strategist Mark Longabaugh told Politico, “Obviously, it creates doubts and problems if he waits and waits and waits. But if he were to somehow not declare ’til June or something, I think some people would be stomping around.”
Longabaugh believes that, in the end, the president will decide to run for a second term.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
