After months of hinting at his intention to seek a second White House term in 2024, United States President Joe Biden has officially launched his reelection campaign.
His running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris, will be joining him in the 2024 quest.
Biden, in a three-minute video announcing his second-term bid Tuesday, asked Americans for another four years to finish “the job”.
“When I ran for president four years ago, I said we are in a battle for the soul of America. And we still are,” Biden said in the video which links images from the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by former President Donald Trump’s supporters with protests over the Supreme Court decision overturning abortion rights..
“The question we are facing is whether in the years ahead we have more freedom or less freedom. More rights or fewer,” he said.
Biden attacked “MAGA extremists” (MAGA being an acronym for Trump’s “Make America Great Again” political slogan) taking on Americans’ “bedrock freedoms, cutting social security … dictating what healthcare decisions women can make, banning books, and telling people who they can love, all while making it more difficult for you to be able to vote”.
“This is not a time to be complacent. That’s why I’m running for re-election,” Biden said.
“Let’s finish this job. I know we can,” he said.
Biden’s declaration, analysts have said, will test whether or not Americans are ready to give the 80-year-old Democrat another four years in office.
At 80, Biden is already the oldest US President in history. If he does get a second term, he would be 86 by the end of his tenure, almost a decade above the average US male’s life expectancy.
Biden’s age has been a point of concern for some Americans, but also for Democrats, who have at times pondered whether he would give them the best chance at winning in 2024.
According to fresh polling by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, only 26 percent of Americans want to see Biden run again. However, his rating among Democrats has risen. From 37 percent in a January survey, about half of Democrats now believe Biden should seek a second term.
But it is unlikely that the former vice president would face a serious challenge for the nomination. So far, no senior Democrat has shown signs of challenging him, and Reuters reports that he has compiled a board of rising-star Democrats to advise his campaign, including governors J.B. Pritzker of Illinois and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania. It is believed that if he wins his party’s nomination, the majority of Democrats would support him.
Despite his age, Biden appears strong enough for the job. After an examination in February, doctors declared Biden, who does not drink alcohol and exercises five times a week, “fit for duty”, and the White House says his record shows he is mentally sharp enough for the rigours of the job.
Biden recorded some legislative accomplishments during the first half of his presidency, when Democrats held slim-but-decisive majorities in Congress. It was during those two years that he signed the American Rescue Plan, approved the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, “the first major federal gun safety bill signed into law in nearly 30 years”, according to The Guardian UK, as well as the Inflation Reduction Act. He stated in his announcement video that he plans to run on these legislative accomplishments.
Biden, if he gets his party’s nomination, may square up against Trump, his arch opponent in the 2020 election, who had announced in November that he would seek a second term in 2024.
