Biden declares intent to run again in 2024, quashing Kamala prospects

WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden has conveyed to his supporters that he plans to run for the White House again in 2024 in an apparent effort to quell Democratic disquiet and infighting amid falling poll numbers for himself and his party.
Biden and members of his inner circle have reportedly reassured allies in recent days that he plans to run for reelection in 2024, despite the widespread assumption that his age — he turned 79 on Saturday and he will be 82 by the time of the next election — will not allow a vigorous campaign.
Declaration of his intent to run is also aimed at snuffing out preparatory work by other contenders, including his vice-president Kamala Harris, who is expected to make a bid for the party nomination should Biden bail out. “The only thing I’ve heard him say is he’s planning on running again. And I’m glad he is," former Senator Christopher Dodd, a close friend of the President who was also part of the team that vetted Kamala Harris for running mate in 2020 told the Washington Post, which first reported on Biden's latest word to fundraisers.
The declaration of intent to run by a President who is already the oldest in US history comes amid growing anxiety in the party over its prospects in the mid-term poll of 2022 when the full House of Representatives and a third of the Senate — both of which are in Democratic hands — will be up for re-election.
Harris is widely perceived in political circles as not being up to the mark to win a party nomination considered she failed to win any delegates in the 2020 race, despite which Biden picked her as a running mate. Reports of tension between the two camps have surfaced in the months since they took office, and there have already been a couple of high-profile exits from their staff in recent days.
A joint appearance at the signing of the infrastructure bill and invocation of a section of the 25th amendment delegating Presidential power to Harris when Biden went under anesthesia for a colonoscopy in Friday has done little to tamp down speculation about succession. Some of the more conspiratorial tattle in the rightwing has Biden bumping Kamala Harris to the Supreme Court to pick a different running mate.
"If Biden doesn’t run, some fear an open and potentially bruising primary campaign with no clear front-runner. Harris, seen at the start of the administration as a potential heir apparent, has stumbled in the eyes of many Democrats, opening the door to conversations in the party about the prospect of others leading the ticket if Biden steps aside," the Post reported on Sunday, putting Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, seen in some quarters as a Harris rival within the party and the cabinet, as another potential candidate from inside the administration.
Both Biden and Harris are polling poorly in surveys, and Buttigieg will have his hands on the money spigot from the infrastructure bill to boost his profile ahead of the mid-term polls. Although the ruling party typically suffers losses in the mid-term polls — both Clinton and Obama lost heavily — it is not unusual to make a comeback in the Presidential poll, as the two former Presidents did in winning second terms.
But both Clinton and Obama were in their early 50s when they ran for a second term. Biden, who in some ways lucked into a relatively sedate campaign in 2020 because of the pandemic, will be 82, and although a thorough physical last week saw doctors give him a clean bill of health, they also pointed to niggles associated with aging.