U.S. President Joe Biden (80) officially confirmed his intention to run for a second term in 2024 on Tuesday, urging the electorate to prolong the tenure of the oldest U.S. president for an additional four years.
At the conclusion of a potential second term, Biden would be 86 years old.
He’s asking Americans to let him “finish this job.”
The former vice president for Barack Obama will lean on his lengthy occupation in Washington—spanning over five decades—to outweigh any concerns regarding his age, rising inflation and crime, a border crisis, a proxy war in Ukraine, the collapse of the U.S. dollar’s supremacy as the world’s currency, and the growing global threat that BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) poses to American economic and political dominance.
Biden revealed his decision to run again with a three-minute video, not pitting himself against the above-mentioned challenges, but against a large portion of the American population itself who disagree with his policies, so-called “MAGA extremists.”
For Biden, the enemy is apparently not inflation or a drug crisis or a China-Russia alliance. It’s his own countrymen who happen to vote Republican.
“Around the country, MAGA extremists are lining up to take on those bedrock freedoms,” Biden says in the video. “Cutting social security you’ve paid for your entire life while cutting taxes for the wealthy. Dictating what health care decisions women can make. Banning books. Telling people who they can love. All while making it more difficult to vote.”
“The question we are facing is whether in the years ahead we have more freedom or less freedom. More rights or fewer,” he continues. “I said we are in a battle for the soul of America, and we still are.”
Meanwhile, a significant portion of Democratic voters have expressed their preference for the former Delaware Senator not to run, largely due to concerns about his age, worries he’s acknowledged in the past as “totally legitimate.”
A recent Reuters-Ipsos poll shows about half (44%) of Democrats say Biden should not seek reelection, compared to only 34% of Republicans who say former President Donald Trump, the far-and-and-away GOP frontrunner, should not run again.
Moreover, an NBC News poll found that 70% of all Americans, including 51% of Democrats, believe Biden shouldn’t run for a second term.
Trump on Tuesday responded to the news in his own video announcement posted to his social media platform Truth Social, calling Biden “the most corrupt president in American history” and arguing the current president has damaged the nation with his “socialist spending calamity,” surrendered our energy independence, and mishandled the U.S. Southern Border.
Trump also claimed that the 2020 election was “rigged,” emphasizing, “You know what happened in the last election: they cheated, and they rigged the election.”
“There has never been a greater contrast between two successive administrations in all of American history. Ours being greatness, and theirs being failure,” he added.
Although the Democratic nomination appears to be relatively secure for Biden, there is a potential challenger in the form of lawyer and author Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.), who is also running on the Democratic ticket in 2024.
RFK Jr. has made an impressive initial impression on Americans by calling out the collusion between the Federal Government and the pharmaceutical industry (“Big Pharma”), already winning the support of 14% of voters who backed Biden in 2020.
