President Joe Biden formally launched his 2024 re-election campaign in April, and as things stand now, it looks likely that he will face off against former President Donald Trump next year in a rematch of the 2020 election.
However, not everyone fully believes that Biden is actually running for a second term in the White House, and there are several factors that strongly support the theory that the incumbent president is not really a candidate for 2024, according to the Western Journal.
Those indicators range from his nearly non-existent campaign thus far, legitimate concerns about Vice President Kamala Harris, his lackluster response to the deadly Maui wildfires and other administration failures and shortcomings, and the mounting legal woes of his son Hunter that threaten to eventually envelop him, among other things.
In a recent op-ed for Fox News, former Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) laid out "Five indications Joe Biden will not run in 2024," which resulted in the congressman-turned-TV host concluding, "By the end of this calendar year, I, for one, anticipate he won’t be a candidate in 2024."
The first of those indicators is the "skeleton crew" he has assembled to run his purported 2024 campaign out of his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, which reportedly consists only of around four full-time staffers on the payroll plus a handful of volunteers and a few individuals focused on fundraisers.
Politico reported in July on Biden's "unusually small reelection campaign team" and its "bare-bones operations" that was already being outspent by some senatorial campaigns and had struggled to raise less funds in the second quarter than either of the president's past two predecessors at the same point in time.
Chaffetz also highlighted Biden's odd and un-strategic non-campaign-related travels since launching his supposed campaign, which included a visit to deep-red Utah but hasn't included stops in critical swing states like neighboring Colorado and Nevada or Montana -- nor did Biden make an appearance at the all-important Iowa State Fair.
Another indicator pointed out by Chaffetz was the relative absence of Vice President Kamala Harris on the campaign trail, save for a few key speeches on the topic of abortion and an alleged plan by the campaign to deploy her in the future to drum up support among particular demographic groups considered vital to the electoral success of Democrats.
That could be due to the fact that Harris is just as deeply unpopular and gaffe-prone as Biden is, not to mention that she has few, if any, policy wins to tout.
In fact, in an op-ed in The Hill in May, Democratic political consultant Doug Schoen openly wondered whether Harris was actually an asset or a liability for Democrats ahead of the 2024 election.
Of more immediate concern, at least for some, is President Biden's seemingly belated response to the horrific wildfires in Maui that likely claimed hundreds of lives and caused billions of dollars worth of damage -- a terrible tragedy for which the president offered "no comment" while relaxing on the beach in Delaware on yet another extended vacation.
"Did he really not have anything to say to those desperate people fighting for their lives as he sunned himself on the beach?" Chaffetz wondered. "This was an opportunity for a president to flex his political muscle. Though the administration insists he has taken action, reports on the ground in Maui describe aid being blocked, properties being looted and FEMA being AWOL."
Finally, there is the president's son, Hunter Biden, who is now being investigated criminally by a special counsel in addition to the continuing scrutiny of his apparent corrupt foreign business dealings and influence-peddling that is being scrutinized by Republicans in search of evidence that the president has corruptly benefited from his son's dubious and possibly illicit activities.
"Though this could be a basement-to-beach campaign strategy, it’s more likely that Biden will not run," Chaffetz concluded. "With few exceptions, we don’t see him on the campaign trail defending his presidency or touting his accomplishments in key battleground states. We don’t see his vice president making the case for him. He isn’t sharing his vision for the future. He is hiding -- hiding from the press, hiding from the scandals, and hiding from his own incompetence as a commander-in-chief."
