The 2024 presidential election continues to barrel along with barely more than a month until the first GOP primary debate in Milwaukee and less than six months until the first official contest in Iowa, yet President Joe Biden has not acted as though he is an incumbent president gearing up to defend his policies and ask the American people for another four years on the job.
Sure, there are a few declared Democrat candidates challenging Biden, but the heavy-handed leadership of the Democratic National Committee has squashed any debates or talk of a competitive primary with the sole purpose of protecting Biden from any real challenge that could weaken his already diminished state before next November. The DNC even greenlit a status quo-upending change to the Democrats’ primary calendar to give Biden the best chance of winning its new, handpicked “early states” beginning with South Carolina.
Even though it looks like Democrats are clearing the field and setting the table for Biden to wage what should be an only general election-focused campaign, it seems the president hasn’t caught on.
First, Biden and his administration spent months brushing off prying questions about his 2024 plans. “He intends to run,” was the West Wing-sanctioned refrain repeated by White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, Biden himself, Vice President Kamala Harris, and essentially anyone else who was asked on-the-record.
Finally, after multiple reports citing anonymous aides cast doubt on Biden’s ability or desire to run in 2024, they were pushed aside when Biden “announced” his re-election campaign via a Hillary Clinton-esque video posted online in late April. It was very much a return to Biden’s 2020 campaign run from a basement in which he rarely faced live unprepared-for questions and was even more rarely found in a public setting.
Democrats — anyone really — would have expected Team Biden to begin actually, you know, campaigning once he finally said he would run for re-election. But he didn’t. At all.
There were questions aplenty for Karine Jean-Pierre between the end of April and the middle of June when Biden finally held his first campaign event. Will he ever campaign publicly? Is he going back to his basement? Is his campaign really campaigning?
He’s the president, after all, and his age and fitness (or lack thereof) had already caused frustration among West Wing aides because of the limited windows of time in which they could schedule him for public events. Maybe he was just too busy running the country (into the ground) to take time for campaign events? Well, it wasn’t just the lack of public campaign appearances that made Biden’s commitment to running for a second term questionable.
Until Tuesday of this week when it was announced in the president’s home state of Delaware, Biden’s re-election campaign didn’t even have an office. For the months between April and July, there were only four employees on the campaign payroll. Earlier this week, it was announced that a whopping three more staffers were being added, bringing the presidential re-election campaign to a total of seven people. Even Politico noted how “unusually small” that team is among national campaigns.
Then there’s the issue of funding needed to actually stand up a presidential campaign (with an office and more than seven staffers). Fundraising isn’t always the best way to judge a campaign’s legitimacy or seriousness, but it provides an added layer of context. The just-released second quarter finance numbers only raise more questions about Biden and his re-election operation.
Between April 1 and June 30, Joe Biden reported bringing in $19.9 million, a number which includes more than $11 million that was transferred to Biden’s campaign from the DNC. In the same period, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis brought in $20.1 million, beating the incumbent president who isn’t competing against a field of a dozen other Republican contenders for donations from Republicans. GOP frontrunner and former President Donald Trump raised $17.7 million in the second quarter.
At the same time Biden was tiptoeing around putting any serious effort into running for re-election, third party groups such as No Labels have been raising money to secure ballot access for a potential to run as an alternative to Biden or the GOP nominee — and now Joe Manchin is giving the DNC heartburn as he flirts with running for president under an independent banner to give himself another path forward other than the increasingly likely loss of his U.S. Senate seat in West Virginia come Election Day 2024.
So Joe Biden’s campaign — with fewer than 200 days before the first DNC-sanctioned 2024 primary is supposed to take place in South Carolina — has fewer staffers than fingers on a set of hands, has only just announced that a campaign office would be established in Delaware after playing coy about an official re-election announcement for months, hosted his first campaign event two months after a lazy social media announcement, and is being out-fundraised by a would-be GOP opponent who’s competing with 12 other contenders for Republican donors.
All these pieces demand a few questions: Is Joe Biden really serious about running for re-election? Does his campaign look like someone who’s serious about securing a second term as president? If not, does that mean his heart’s just not in it and he’s depending on the DNC to help limp him through November, or is he running out the clock before announcing he’s not up to the race ahead and dropping out before primaries start in the early weeks of 2024?
It would be a political mess for Democrats, of course, but not necessarily any more of a mess than Biden poses as the current candidate. And it would also explain why California Governor Gavin Newsom has been running his mouth and tweeting up a storm against GOP candidates. Perhaps he’s seen the writing on the wall — or heard directly from Biden given the loyal soldier role Biden World views Newsom as fulfilling — that this re-election campaign is just for show until Biden figures out how to make his exit announcement.
Newsom seems like something of a presumptive backup candidate for Biden, but what then becomes of Vice President Kamala Harris who is tied to Biden and his failures — along with her own?
Does Newsom keep her on this conceptual ticket or send her packing and pick a new running mate for himself? Perhaps Harris could return to California and compete in the Democrat mud fight to fill the seat opened up by the coming retirement of Senator Dianne Feinstein to make a comeback in Congress. Or would she attempt to take the reins of the Golden State from Newsom in something of a trading places situation?
Whatever comes of Biden’s stated intention to serve a second term, it’s clear his campaign and Democrats are in a pickle. Democrat challengers, especially RFK Jr., are eating into his polling numbers with a recent Ipsos/Reuters poll showing Biden with 63 percent and Kennedy at 14 percent. Does RFK Jr. pose a threat to Biden? Not really. But his polling numbers show a hunger among Democrats for something other than Biden. Enter the No Labels plan, and potential for Joe Manchin to run as a third party, and it looks like a ripe opportunity to spoil the election right into the Republican nominee’s hands. Biden lazily announced the bid he’s since done little to act on, with few staff, limited public events, and lackluster fundraising totals.
Ask yourself: If there was a hypothetical individual uninterested in pursuing a second term in the White House, but who felt obligated to mount a bid anyway due to an uncertain future for his party, would their actions and campaign look any different than Biden’s? Especially if this hypothetical individual's original plan to pick a vice president who could take his mantle after one term and run it into the future had fallen apart faster than they could explain the significance of the passage of time?
It’s a watch and see scenario to be sure, and Biden and the DNC proved their ability to run a basement dwelling campaign in 2020 — a formula they could certainly attempt to run again. But as Democrats grow more nervous about Biden’s long-underwater approval ratings and the threat of a third-party spoiler, there might soon be not-insignificant voices chirping in Biden’s ear suggesting he step aside.
