President Joe Biden has repeatedly insisted that he intends to run for re-election in 2024, but many Americans doubt those claims for a variety of reasons, including a fair number of Democrats.
Such was the assertion of New York Times reporter Jonathan Martin, who expressed and explained his skepticism about a Biden 2024 run during an appearance Monday on ABC’s The View, Fox News reported.
Martin was on The View along with fellow Times reporter Alex Burns to discuss and promote their new book, “This Will Not Pass,” which closely scrutinized the final days of the Trump administration, the post-2020 election transition period, and the beginning of Biden’s presidency.
“It’s not clear Biden’s running for re-election”
According to Mediaite, program co-host Sara Haines referenced the “tension” the authors had documented between President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris and asked how that might play heading into the 2024 election cycle.
“This is all shaping 2024 because unlike modern and other cases in modern American histories, it’s not clear Biden’s running for re-election in 2024,” Martin said. “We have not had a first-term president in recent years where it was uncertain if he would be a candidate in the next election, and that is the case with Biden. That makes this all the more interesting.”
“He wants to run. He’s told people that we talked to for our book that he plans to run in 2024 for re-election unless there’s a health issue intervening,” he added. “A lot of Democrats don’t believe that. They’re convinced he’s not going to run again.”
Pressed to elaborate on that assertion, Martin explained, “Based on the fact he’ll be 82-years-old in 2024, and that, [they’re] just skeptical … that he’d want to serve a full second term. Which raises the question, well, if not Biden, who? And that’s what shapes the Kamala Harris news here.”
The reporter went on to mention Harris’ apparent lack of experience in her current role and noted, “So, I think her challenge has been sort of finding her niche, and it’s created tensions with the West Wing,” citing as an example that Harris has complained of “feeling disrespected” by the fact that Biden’s aides don’t stand in deference to her when she enters a room in the same way that they do for Biden himself.
Other Democrats may challenge Biden in a 2024 primary
Meanwhile, Martin and Burns are not the first to suggest uncertainty with respect to a Biden 2024 re-election run, as even The Washington Post in mid-April compiled a list of potential Democratic candidates likely to enter what increasingly looks to be a wide-open field for the party’s nomination, regardless of whether Biden is in the running or not.
Biden topped that list, albeit just barely and only due to being the incumbent, but was not followed immediately by Vice President Harris, who fell to third on the list behind Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg.
The rest of the list included, not particularly in this order, others like Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), and Corey Booker (D-NJ). Also earning inclusion were Democratic governors like Roy Cooper (NC) and Gavin Newsom (CA), as well as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).
To be sure, the 2024 presidential cycle is still a ways off and a lot can change between now and then, especially depending upon how the 2022 midterm elections play out, so, in truth, nobody really knows at this point who will or won’t end up running for president in a couple of years, confident predictions to the contrary notwithstanding.
