A decision for the ages as US awaits President’s call
Joe Biden will soon have to make a decision that no other US president has had to make: whether he is too old to run for a second term.
Early next year Joe Biden will have to make a decision that no other US president has had to make. The oldest President in history will need to make a call on whether he is too old to run for a second term in the White House in 2024.
It is a judgment that will shake American politics either way. If Biden decides not to run, it will unleash a new generation of ambitious but raw Democrat contenders to take his place, none of whom have anything like Biden’s experience or stature.
If he does decide to run again in 2024, there will be more than a few nervous Democrats praying that Biden can hold it together mentally and physically for four more years, making him 86 when he leaves office.
Right now that seems like a long way off. Biden has just turned 80, but he is an old 80. He shows his age more than any other president.
His “senior moments” are becoming more frequent and embarrassing. They include bizarre misstatements, including claiming that he had cancer and that Kamala Harris was “a great president”. Biden routinely misreads teleprompters, reading out words like “exit left” and “applause” as if they were a part of the speech.
He forgets names regularly, famously referring to Scott Morrison as “that fella Down Under”.
And in September Biden called out for a congresswoman in the crowd, Jackie Walorski, forgetting she had died in a car crash the month before.
Yet those who work closely with Biden insist that despite these public gaffes, he is impressive behind closed doors and is more in command of his brief than people might think.
Australia’s ambassador in Washington, Arthur Sinodinos, is among those who say that in his dealings with the President he has been impressed by Biden’s grasp of detail.
Despite the unexpected success of Biden’s Democrats in the recent midterm elections, most Americans don’t want Biden to run for a second term.
An Economist/YouGov poll this month found that 56 per cent of Americans said they do not want Biden to run again in 2024, while only 22 per cent said they wanted him to run, with another 22 per cent undecided.
This finding also was echoed in exit poll results from last month’s midterm election that showed two-thirds of voters don’t want Biden to seek re-election in 2024, including more than 40 per cent of Democrats and 90 per cent of Republicans.
Biden says his intention is to run in 2024, but he has left enough wiggle room to reflect the fact he hasn’t made a final decision.
“Look, my intention is that I would run again,” Biden said in September before the midterms. “But it’s just an intention. But is it a firm decision that I run again? That remains to be seen.”
He says he will consult with his family and make a final decision early in the new year. In Washington, people who are well connected to the White House believe that Biden’s wife Jill will make the final call on his behalf. She will decide whether he is too old to endure the rigours of another presidential election campaign followed by another four years.
The prevailing narrative after the midterm elections was that Biden was now more likely to contest the 2024 poll given that the Democrats exceeded expectations to retain the Senate and only narrowly lost control of the House of Representatives.
What’s more, almost all of Donald Trump’s hand-picked candidates lost in the midterms, dealing a blow to Trump’s credibility and his hopes of a successful political comeback.
Biden’s team says he is the only person who can definitely defeat Trump because he has done it before. But there is no guarantee that Trump will win the Republican nomination and many Democrats would fear the thought of Biden running against new Republican rising star Florida Governor Ron DeSantis if DeSantis were to win the nomination.
But the unexpected success of the Democrats in the midterms has given Biden the power to call his own race.
If he chooses to run, it is unlikely that any serious Democrats would seek to oppose him.
Yet Biden could also use the Democrats’ success in the midterms to justify any decision by him not to contest the 2024 election.
It would allow him to depart office as a one-term Democrat hero, having defeated Trump in 2020 and then saved the Democrats in the midterms.
KAMALA HARRIS
In many ways Kamala Harris, 58, is the least likely of the prominent Democrat contenders to succeed Biden yet she is also widely portrayed as the frontrunner because she is Vice-President.
Harris has so far had an unfortunate vice-presidency and her poll numbers are dismal with just a 40 per cent approval rating while 54 per cent have an unfavourable opinion of her.
She has been seen as ineffectual, in part because Biden gave her responsibility for the intractable problem of addressing illegal immigration at the US-Mexico border. She has made gaffes, she has struggled to manage her own staff and has been unable to gain traction in her role.
Harris is viewed very differently in different parts of the country. She is a darling to big=city Democrats who applaud the rise of this progressive Californian lawyer to become the first woman, the first black woman and the first woman of South Asian descent to be appointed vice-president. But in the rust-belt states of the midwest, where the election battlegrounds are, Harris is unpopular for all of those same reasons.
Harris did well during the midterms by campaigning around the country where she focused on the vote-winning issue of abortion after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v Wade.
She is also popular with African-American voters, among whom she enjoys a 65 per cent approval rating.
But she proved to be a poor campaigner in the 2020 race, dropping out before the first caucus in Iowa. For this reason many Democrats believe she would not win a robust primary contest against other Democratic contenders in 2024.
PETE BUTTIGIEG
“Mayor Pete”, as he is known because of his previous job as the small-town mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is easily the most impressive campaigner of the potential Democratic nominees.
Pete Buttigieg, 40, currently the Transportation Secretary, came from nowhere in the 2020 presidential race to win the first caucus in Iowa and then essentially come third in the overall race behind Biden and Bernie Sanders.
He is something of an overachiever, being a Harvard graduate and former McKinsey consultant who served two tours of Afghanistan in the military before becoming South Bend mayor.
Buttigieg is openly gay, with a husband and two young children, and he pitches himself as a centrist who would represent a generational change for the Democrats.
He has the highest name recognition in the Biden administration after Biden and Harris, and was one of the most sought-after campaigners for the Democrats in the lead-up to the midterms. Since his 2020 presidential bid, Buttigieg’s reputation has only grown because he has been responsible for implementing Biden’s popular $US1 trillion transport infrastructure bill.
Buttigieg is popular with young, urban, educated voters and being the former mayor of a small midwest city would help him win votes in the rust-belt states.
The question is whether he is too inexperienced for the presidency. The other unknown is whether Americans will vote in sufficient numbers for a president who is gay. Buttigieg also struggles to attract the African-American vote, a crucial constituency for any Democratic presidential contender.
GAVIN NEWSOM
The square-jawed California Governor from central casting has said he definitely won’t run for president in 2024 under any circumstances – yet his comments have failed to dampen speculation.
“I’ve said it in French, Italian, I don’t know German, I mean I cannot say it enough,” Gavin Newsom says of his claim that he will not run for the White House.
Newsom says he told Biden over the phone that he was with him all the way in 2024. “I’m all in: put me in coach,” he told the President. “We have your back.”
But Newsom, 55, has acted a lot like someone who has eyes on a bigger price than just California.
A businessman who turned to politics, becoming the mayor of San Francisco, Newsom was once married to Kimberly Guilfoyle who is now engaged to Donald Trump Jr. He has carefully sought to cultivate a national profile this year by publicly criticising the Democratic Party for being too timid ahead of the midterm elections, urging them to be more aggressive with the Republicans. He also ran ads in Florida and Texas criticising Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Texas Governor Greg Abbott, both of whom are potential future presidential contenders.
Newsom, who easily won re-election as governor last month, is popular in California, but some consider him too smooth, too “Hollywood”, to gain traction in the rest of the country, especially in the gritty battlegrounds of the midwest.
Newsom’s state of California also is being lampooned by Republicans for its homeless crisis, where the number of homeless has grown by roughly 15 per cent since 2019. It is a hugely visible problem that a Republican campaign could use effectively against Newsom in any election.
GRETCHEN WHITMER
The Michigan Governor has captured attention after her barnstorming double-digit re-election against a Trump-backed candidate in last month’s election. Her thumping win was all the more impressive given that Michigan is a key swing state in the battleground heartland of the mid-west.
A lawyer turned politician who has been Governor since 2019, the telegenic Gretchen Whitmer, 51, has won plaudits for her strong advocacy for abortion rights, having revealed she was once raped as an undergraduate. She also has won favour for standing up to violent right-wing extremists in her state who were angered by her tough Covid-19 measures and who once even plotted to kidnap her.
She is seen as a shrewd political operator and is popular in Michigan for fixing thousands of kilometres of roads around the state without raising taxes.
One commentator said of Whitmer: “(She) thinks like a general, looks like a ’40s film star and talks like she’s ice fishing for muskie.” Whitmer, whose nickname is “Big Gretch”, got under Donald Trump’s skin during the pandemic, leading him to deride her as “that woman from Michigan”.
David Jesuit, a professor of political science at Central Michigan University, says Whitmer would have the advantage in a match-up against Californian candidates such as Newsom or Harris. “California versus Michigan – to me it’s a no-brainer,” he says. “I don’t see a coastal Democrat as being a big attraction for the national Democratic Party. They’re going to want to go after a purple-state governor like Whitmer.”
The question for Whitmer is whether she could cut through to a national audience given her lack of national exposure.
IN THE MIX
Other names also have been floated as possible contenders in any Democratic primary in 2024 including 2020 contenders such as Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar and veteran Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren.
Vermont senator and left-wing firebrand Bernie Sanders is now 81 – older than Biden – but may consider another run if Biden steps aside.
Other possible candidates include senator Sherrod Brown, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and even progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is just 33 years old but would be 35 in 2024, the minimum age allowed for a president.
Bookmaker Ladbrokes still has former first lady Michelle Obama and defeated 2016 Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton on its 2024 betting sheets despite both women insisting they will not run.
But then again, Ladbrokes also lists Prince Harry’s wife, Meghan Markle, as a 64-1 chance to win the Democratic nomination.
Of course, all this speculation will come to naught if Biden chooses to run for president again. But he is not getting any younger. The day is coming when Biden will need to look in the mirror and ask himself whether he is capable of doing the world’s most important job for another four years.
Cameron Stewart was The Australian’s Washington correspondent from 2017 to 2021.
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