I heard someone say on TV that “in the end he won’t want to do the hard work of campaigning and will being defined as a loser if he doesn’t win”. Interestingly, the person was speaking about Donald Trump (projecting that in the end Trump will not run for President in 2024) but to me it applies more to Joe Biden who I believe will not run for re-election.
Why Trump WILL run for election as President
I think it’s only a question of when Trump formally announces what is already informally a reality. He is running for election as President again. He never really stopped running after the 2020 election. He has continued to hold rallies around the country and is campaigning on the claims that 1. He was cheated in 2020 and rightfully should be president; 2. Biden is a terrible president and 3. Everything that is wrong right now is Biden’s fault and would be better with Trump as President.
Realistically though I think he will run because he realizes that being President was really an even more powerful and important position than he knew at the time and getting elected is really the only way to guarantee that he will not go to jail for what he did after the 2020 election.
I think the timing of Trump’s announcement will have to come before there is an indictment so he can claim that he is being “maliciously” prosecuted in order to keep him from running for President. I’m sure he will also try to argue that all criminal proceedings should be delayed until after the 2024 election so as not to interfere with his right to run.
Trump understands that ultimately he will be running for the power to grant himself a pardon and also to have the potential of pardons to hold out to potential witnesses against him.
It will indeed be a circus of epic proportions.
I agree with Jeff Greenfield who argues that Trump will certainly have the power to threaten to doom anyone other than himself who might get the Republican nomination Opinion | What Happens if the GOP Tries to Leave Trump Behind – POLITICO and also with those who say that Trump still has enough power within the Republican National Committee (RNC) to change the rules of the nominating process however is necessary to best serve his interests.
Why Biden WILL NOT run for re-election as President
I am certain that Biden will announce some time after the mid-terms (no matter what the result) that he will not be running for re-election. The announcement might come quickly in November if the Democrats suffer a bad defeat and maybe not until January 2023 if the Dems do better than predicted but the real reasons will be the same.
- Biden is not physically up to the rigors of another national campaign.
- Win or lose in the mid-terms Biden has an important job to do for the next two years. He will BE President of the USA either trying to govern and achieve things if somehow the Dems maintain majority control of Congress and otherwise he will be busy fighting off the Republicans in the House who have already vowed to impeach him (for reasons not yet determined) and to investigate him and his family if they win control.
- Biden of course has an ego (NOBODY runs for President of the USA without a full size ego) but he’s also realistic enough and has people around him who can remind him that he is not the same person he was in 2008 when he campaigned with Barack Obama as the vice-presidential nominee.
In 2016 I firmly believed that Hillary Clinton was just about the only Democratic candidate who could lose to Donald Trump. In 2020 I believed that almost anyone nominated by the Democrats could beat Trump. Biden believed that he was best equipped to beat Trump because he was perceived as moderate.
Biden rightfully is proud that he was the person who saved the country from a second Trump administration. In 2024 I think Biden is just about the only Democrat who might lose to Donald Trump. He will not want to take that risk.
The fight for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination will be crazy. It will start quickly in December 2022 or January 2023 with the calendar and rules already pre-determined. Candidates who already have strong fundraising organizations or the ability to self-fund will be greatly advantaged. The success in 2020 of Pete Buttegieg and Andrew Yang will encourage other unqualified people to run. More on this later…..