Biden: Offering to serve just one term?
Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden has been “quietly indicating” he will not seek a second term if elected, said Ryan Lizza in Politico.com. Four of his advisers recently told me “it is virtually inconceivable” that the former vice president will run again in 2024, when he’ll be 82. Biden won’t make a public pledge to serve one term, because that would turn him into “a lame duck” the day he took office. Instead, he prefers “the strategic ambiguity” of leaks, while running as a transitional figure who’ll oust Donald Trump and pave the way for a new generation of Democrats.
It’s a smart strategy, said Paul Waldman in The Washington Post. Unlike some of the other Democrats in the race, Biden is offering not “a revolution, but a reset.” He does offer a menu of progressive policies, but his campaign is primarily predicated on the idea that he is the best person to defeat Trump and usher in a “return to stability.” To do that, he doesn’t “actually need a second term.” Tacitly promising to run for just one term gives Biden a “competitive advantage,” said Nancy Gibbs, also in The Washington Post. After “three years of news cycles that have left our teeth hurting, agencies ransacked, norms shattered, whole swaths of government demoralized, and strategic alliances cracked if not broken,” Americans are “yearning for normalcy.” That’s no doubt why Biden continues to lead in the polls despite his age and “serial stumbles” in debates and campaign events.
If Biden does run for one term, said Jim Geraghty in NationalReview.com, it will elevate his selection of a running mate to “extraordinary, perhaps even race-deciding importance.” Conventional wisdom would suggest that Biden needs “a younger and more progressive” running mate, like Stacey Abrams of Georgia, but for many Americans, that would nullify the allure of electing a centrist, “old-school, nonrevolutionary president.” I’d go instead with a female Democrat with a conservative voting record, like Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. As clever as this all sounds, said Eric Levitz in NYMag.com, Biden could be outsmarting himself. His tacit admission he’d be too old for a second term would open an uncomfortable question: If you’re too “concerned about your own stamina” to serve eight years, why should voters give you four?