Biden announces 2024 reelection campaign

A series of upcoming challenges, from the ongoing war in Ukraine to a still-uncertain economy, could provide hurdles to President Joe Biden’s reelection. And now that power in Washington is divided, the GOP-controlled House has largely dashed hopes for major legislative accomplishments in the two years ahead of the 2024 vote.

The president’s tenure in office so far has been marked by key triumphs for his colossal policy agenda, including successfully pushing forward and compromising on a broad set of legacy-making, high pricetag priorities with Congress that addressed funding for the Covid-19 pandemic, rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, bolstering domestic semiconductor chip production, and addressing climate change. And under Biden’s watch, the US has attempted to undo Trump’s legacy of diplomacy operating through a nationalist lens, returning to global agreements and reinforcing partnerships with allies who had been jilted by his predecessor.

But broader national challenges – sometimes outside of federal control – along with admitted administration fumbles have also acted as a magnet for GOP criticism and contributed to low national approval ratings throughout Biden’s time in office.

There was the chaotic and deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan. Struggles on border policy. Fluctuations in energy prices. Missteps with longstanding allies. Supply chain issues and shortages for everyday items and essentials like Covid-19 tests, baby formula and certain medications. Ongoing legal challenges to policies Biden implemented through executive authority, like student debt forgiveness. And investigations into his family, which have accelerated under the House GOP majority. And, of course, the pervasive inflation woes impacting global markets and Americans’ spending power.

In the coming months, Biden is also facing pressure to negotiate with Republican lawmakers to raise the national borrowing limit to avoid catastrophic default, a prospect that’s already caused anxiety amid an uncertain economic recovery.

In midterm elections last November, Biden’s party was able to defy historical trends by picking up a seat in the US Senate and avert a dramatic red wave in the House of Representatives. Long a self-identified centrist, Biden has mostly won over progressive Democrats through massive climate investments and steps to relieve student debt. But concerns – including from those among his party – remain over his ability to compel enough voters to stay on board for another term.

President Joe Biden, who at 80 has had to confront questions about his age and mental acuity as he launches a reelection campaign for president, once ran a campaign that sharply attacked his opponent's age.  

In 1972, Biden — then 29 years old and a local Delaware councilman — was running against incumbent Republican Sen. Cale Boggs who was 63 years old, a former two-term governor and the state’s senior senator.

Biden used his opponent’s age against him in a way that was so explicit, one local reporter dubbed his approach, “Dear old dad.”

Biden was running to become one of the youngest people ever elected to the US Senate.

In 1972, advertisements for Biden in local newspapers and on the radio hammered home a line, “he understands what’s happening today.”

The ads targeted Boggs’ age by bringing up past historical topics from Bogg’s “generation,” like Joseph Stalin ruling Russia, jazz musicians using heroin, the development of the polio vaccine, and taxes from the 1940s.

“Cale Boggs’ generation dreamed of conquering polio, Joe Biden’s generation dreams of conquering heroin,” read one newspaper ad. “To Cale Boggs an unfair tax was the 1948 poll tax. To Joe Biden an unfair tax is the 1972 income tax,” read another.

One radio advertisement targeted Boggs as too focused on past threats from Russia, while ignoring domestic issues like crime.

“One of the biggest differences between Cale Boggs and Joe Biden is the things they worry about,” said the radio ad. “In Cale Boggs’ day when Stalin ruled, Americans had visions of the Russian soldiers in our streets. In Joe Biden’s day, Americans have visions of American criminals in our streets. Joe Biden, he understands what’s happening today.”

The approach drew pushback from Sen. William Roth, a Delaware Republican who Biden would work closely with for the next 30 years, according to the News Journal, and commentary from the media at the time.

Biden eventually won that race with the Associated Press declaring, “Biden stressed age to defeat Boggs.”

Read more here.

President Joe Biden is officially a candidate for reelection — but his advisers say don’t expect him to hold campaign rallies in the near future.

The launch and the lack of any immediate campaign rallies mirror then-President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection launch. Like Obama, Biden’s video announcement will set off a mad dash of fundraising and buildout of the reelection infrastructure Biden hopes will win him a second term. But it won’t put Biden on the campaign trail in the near future.

Obama held his first reelection campaign rally in May 2012, 13 months after announcing his bid for a second term.

The wait for a Biden reelection rally could be just as long.

As of now, Biden advisers said Biden does not intend to hold any reelection campaign rallies until Republicans have a presumptive nominee and the general election begins in earnest.

Biden does intend to leverage the power of the incumbency and the bully pulpit that comes with it. While he will forgo rallies, he will continue to leverage official White House events and travel outside of Washington to tout his accomplishments, draw a contrast with Republicans and get out his reelection message.

President Joe Biden has been in the public eye since the 1970s. Here's a short summary of positions he's held as a politician over the years:

1970-1972 - Served on the New Castle County Council in Delaware

1972 - Was first elected to the Senate at age 29, defeating Republican Senator J. Caleb Boggs. Wins reelection in 1978, 1984, 1990, 1996 and 2002

June 9, 1987 - Entered the 1988 presidential race, but dropped out three months later following reports of plagiarism and false claims about his academic record

2001-2003 and 2007-2009 - Served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

August 23, 2008 - Is named the vice-presidential running mate of Barack Obama after withdrawing from presidential race

November 4, 2008 - Is elected vice president of the United States

November 6, 2012 - Obama and Biden are reelected, defeating Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan

October 21, 2015 - Says he will not seek the presidency, announcing that the window for a successful campaign "has closed." His eldest son, Beau Biden, had passed away in May from brain cancer at age 46

April 25, 2019 - Announces he is running for president in a campaign video posted to social media

August 11, 2020 - Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, names Kamala Harris as his running mate

November 7, 2020 - Days after the election on November 3, CNN projects Biden is elected the 46th president of the United States

Read about other key moments from Biden's political career here.

This could be the most consequential rematch in US history – a president who portrays himself as the champion of democracy against a former president who routinely rejects election results.

Anyone fearing Donald Trump’s return and those who reject Joe Biden’s victory could agree that nothing less than the future of the republic is at stake if Biden and Trump are on the ballot in 2024. Biden explicitly made that case in his announcement video on Tuesday, saying “we still are” in a “battle for the soul of America.”

So why does it feel like an unwanted movie sequel – same actors, predictable new plot twist?

Biden has been a candidate on the national stage in five of the last ten presidential elections. His first and second presidential campaigns sputtered in Democratic primaries in 1988 and 2008. He ran as Barack Obama’s running mate in 2008 and 2012. After sitting out 2016, Biden returned on a mission to unseat Trump in 2020.

Now the oldest-ever president, he is asking voters to put him in the White House until after his 86th birthday.

Trump is already on his third straight election campaign. And let’s not forget he teased runs in 1988, when Biden launched his first failed bid, and also in 2000, when Trump left the GOP for a time, and in 2012, when he led the charge questioning, incorrectly, Obama’s citizenship.

Candidates who run three or more times don’t often successfully become president. One successful example is Ronald Reagan, who like Biden and Trump was technically a senior citizen when he took office. Reagan won his first term on his third try. He also overcame underwater first term approval ratings to win reelection.

In fact, at this point, a little over two years into their presidencies, Biden, Trump and Reagan were all hovering around 40% approval, according to data maintained by Gallup.

Read the full analysis here.

President Joe Biden’s final weekend before the 2024 announcement served as a window into the balancing act to come as he and his top national security officials navigated the complexity of a potentially perilous evacuation of government personnel from the US embassy in war-ravaged Sudan.

Biden has maintained privately that his primary focus is on carrying the duties of the job he was elected to do in 2020.

He gave the order on Saturday to deploy roughly 100 US special operations troops to secure and complete the evacuation of US personnel in Sudan. The operation was successful and no US military and diplomatic personnel were harmed in the roughly hour-long process.

It served as a real-time demonstration of how the next 19 months may unfold for the incumbent running for the White House, where there are no shortage of crises that can turn a message or campaign on its head seemingly overnight.

Right out of the gate, President Joe Biden picked up the endorsement of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) as he prepares to highlight his ties to the labor community at an event later today.

The roughly 775,000 member union supported Biden’s campaign in 2020.

This afternoon, Biden will address the North America’s Building Trades Union 2023 Legislative Conference where he’ll “highlight his record as America’s most pro-union President,” a White House official previewing the event said.

It will mark the president’s first scheduled appearance since launching his reelection bid and follows closely with his 2019 campaign rollout when he held his first public event with a union group in the days after his launch.

The Biden campaign headquarters will be based in Wilmington, Delaware, a decision the president personally signed off on this month, aides told CNN last week, as a nod to the pride of his hometown and a place where he spends most of his weekends.

Also under consideration was Philadelphia, where his 2020 campaign was based until the coronavirus pandemic turned it into a virtual office. But Wilmington won out and will be at least the nominal home base of his reelection effort, with a split-screen to the White House.

The decision to move forward without allowing weeks or months to pass, advisers said, was in part a recognition of how much work is facing the Biden campaign to mobilize and energize voters to turn around the malaise that some Democrats feel about his candidacy.

President Joe Biden launched a reelection bid like none before it on Tuesday with a call for Americans to choose him again to save democracy – less than three years after his defeat of Donald Trump was supposed to restore normality and unite the country.

Biden’s quest for a second term will unfold amid what would normally be deeply unpromising circumstances, with his approval rating languishing in the low 40s, with the country exhausted by successive crises after pandemic isolation ceded to a battle with soaring inflation. Polls show that a majority of voters – and even a majority of Democrats – don’t want him to run again. And the last thing the country appears to want is a Biden rematch with the 45th president, who’s the current frontrunner in the nascent Republican primary race.

But Trump’s strength inside the GOP forms the core rationale for Biden’s campaign. The incumbent reasons that he’s the best bet Democrats have to prevent his predecessor from winning a second term that would surely be even more wild than the first.

Biden is beginning his final campaign after a lifetime in politics from a familiar position of low expectations. But he’s repeatedly defied conventional political wisdom and connected with swing voters by standing as the antidote to Republican extremism. Paradoxically, even though much of his party seems to wish it had an alternative, Biden appears sufficiently strong to ward off the emergence of any significant primary challengers.

The president ignited his reelection bid with the release of a campaign video on Tuesday – four years to the day after launching what was then seen as a long-shot effort to fulfill a White House dream first kindled by an unsuccessful race for the 1988 Democratic nomination.

Amazingly, the same motivation that underwrote his 2020 White House run – Trump’s threat to US democratic institutions and values – will be the foundation of his reelection bid. Biden, in the shadow boxing of an unannounced 2024 bid, has fulminated against “MAGA extremism” and anchored a surprising Democratic showing in the 2022 midterms on the same theme.

It will be months before the first votes are cast in the Republican primary. And it’s more than 18 months before Americans pick their next president. Events yet to occur in the US and abroad could transform the race. Unexpected turns in the lives and careers of both Biden and Trump – and the handful of other candidates vying for the GOP nomination – could change everything. And recent elections have shown that punditry and polling don’t always capture surprising results.

Read the full analysis here.