Should Biden run in ’24? Some Dems whisper ‘no’
Midway through the 2022 primary season, many Democratic lawmakers and party officials are venting their frustrations with President Biden’s struggle to advance the bulk of his agenda, doubting his ability to rescue the party from a predicted midterm trouncing and increasingly viewing him as an anchor that should be cut loose in 2024.
As the challenges facing the nation mount and fatigued base voters show low enthusiasm, Democrats in union meetings, the back rooms of Capitol Hill and party gatherings from coast to coast are quietly worrying about Biden’s leadership, his age and his capability to take the fight to former President Donald Trump a second time.
Interviews with nearly 50 Democratic officials, from county leaders to members of Congress, as well as with disappointed voters who backed Biden in 2020, reveal a party alarmed about Republicans’ rising strength and extraordinarily pessimistic about an immediate path forward.
“To say our country was on the right track would flagrantly depart from reality,” said Steve Simeonidis, a Democratic National Committee member from Miami. Biden, he said, “should announce his intent not to seek re-election in ’24 right after the midterms.”
Democrats’ concerns come as the opening hearing of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol made clear the stakes of a 2024 presidential election in which Trump, whose lies fueled a riot that disrupted the peaceful transfer of power, may well seek to return to the White House.
For Biden and his party, the hearings’ vivid reminder of the Trump-inspired mob violence represents perhaps the last, best chance before the midterms to break through with persuadable swing voters who have been more focused on inflation and gas prices. If the party cannot, it may miss its final opportunity to hold Trump accountable as Biden faces a tumultuous two years of a Republican-led House obstructing and investigating him.
Most top elected Democrats were reluctant to speak on the record about Biden’s future, and no one interviewed expressed any ill will toward Biden, to whom they are universally grateful for ousting Trump from office.
But the repeated failures of his administration to pass big-ticket legislation on signature Democratic issues, as well as his halting efforts to use the bully pulpit of the White House to move public opinion, have left the president with sagging approval ratings and a party that, as much as anything, seems to feel sorry for him.
That has left Democratic leaders struggling to explain away a series of calamities for the party that all seem beyond Biden’s control: inflation rates unseen in four decades, gas prices, a lingering pandemic, mass shootings, a Supreme Court poised to repeal abortion, and key congressional Democrats’ refusal to muscle through the president’s Build Back Better agenda or expand voting rights.