Well, the race for president in 2024 is long underway (sorry about that). Usually, a president is expected to run for re-election, but Biden’s age is an issue. During the 2020 campaign, there was great focus on whom he would pick as his running mate, since that person would likely take over the office after one term.
However, Biden knows a lame-duck president would increasingly lose power, as time went on, so he is not willing to say he will not run again.
As this chart shows, Biden is already the oldest president ever elected.
On the GOP side, it is almost unheard of for a losing president to be nominated again. The lone example of a president having non-consecutive terms was Grover Cleveland, and it should be noted that Cleveland won the popular vote all three times that he ran. Trump lost the popular vote—decidedly—both times he ran.
The expected nominee is usually the vice president, or vice presidential candidate, even if the ticket lost, since he (it’s always been he) might not have been at fault for the loss. It was not true with Obama/Biden, but only because Biden had recently suffered the loss of his son.
It was also not true with Bush/Cheney, who had been seen as “de facto president” until 2006, when Bush turned on him. Bush had thought about dropping Cheney in 2004, because of that perception, but the friction was most evident when Bush refused to pardon “Scooter” Libby as he left office. However, the heir-apparent status of the VP was evident in Clinton/Gore, Reagan/Bush, Carter/Mondale, Ike/Nixon, and FDR/Truman.
The only recent loser who was re-nominated in recent times (for those of us old enough to consider 2/3 of a century “recent”) was Adlai Stevenson, in 1956. That was a unique situation, because Democrats needed a sacrificial lamb to run against war-hero-general and popular president, Dwight D. Eisenhower (his theme song was, “You like Ike, I like Ike, everybody likes Ike”).
Ike won every State except the Democratic “Solid South,” which was Democratic from the Civil War a hundred years later, when it switched to the Republicans, due to Democratic support of civil rights for African Americans.
Anyway, Stevenson’s loser-re-nomination was an anomaly. Historically, it would not be expected to happen again.
But that overlooks the “8,000-pound elephant in the room.” While Donald Trump has only ever had a minority of supporters, those supporters “punch above their level,” because they are so adamant. They delight in pointing out that only three percent of colonists were directly involved in the overthrow of the mighty British Empire, in the Revolutionary War—although that is a myth.
Trump loves attention more than anything else in life, and he knows that if he were to say he would not be running in 2024, he would immediately become a footnote, and the TV cameras would be shut down and carried away from him. As long as people think he may run again, he can get all the attention he wants. In fact, Trump says he’ll make an announcement soon, suggesting he plans to run, since if he were to announce that he would not be running, he’d immediately become a footnote. Business Insider quotes Newsmax: “I’ll be making an announcement in the not too distant future.”
A hint in that direction is that Trump has been disinterested in working on a presidential library, suggesting that there may be more presidency to come.
Meanwhile, Biden welcomes the prospect, saying he’d love to beat Trump twice.
As former President DONALD TRUMP continues to tease a 2024 run and tightens his grip on the Republican party, JOE BIDEN’s resolve to run in 2024 has grown, according to several Democrats connected to the White House. . .
According to his allies, Biden believes that he is the Democrat best equipped to take on Trump, just as he did in the lead up to 2020. They also say that is driven by the idea that his legacy could be that of the president who defeated Trump and Trumpism, which he sees as an ugly, corrosive movement.
But let’s consider what happens if Trump decides not to run, or if Trumpism loses its luster over the next three years. The logical heir to the nomination would be Mike Pence. However, his chances depend on Trump losing influence. Few times in history has a president shown utter disdain for his vice president. Kennedy lacked respect for LBJ, true. Kennedy was so popular that Vaughn Meader released a comedy album called “The First Family” in which an actor portraying LBJ says, “I’d like to say something, if I may,” and the JFK voice says, “must you, Lyndon?”
Likewise, during the 1960 presidential campaign, reporters asked Ike to name an incident in which Richard Nixon had been important in presidential discussions—and Ike said, “give me a week and I might think of one.”
But the only time a president and vice president had such bad blood as we now see, was way back in 1912, when former President Teddy Roosevelt thought his vice president, who had succeeded him as president was not sufficiently progressive (liberal).
Roosevelt ran against Howard Taft, on the Progressive Party (“Bull Moose”) ticket, causing both to lose, and electing Woodrow Wilson.
During Trump’s term, there was no more loyal vice president than Mike Pence. He did not contradict Trump until the January 6 sedition.
Meanwhile, Trump treated him worse than JFK ever treated LBJ. In at least one incident, Trump openly ridiculed Pence, who was only trying to find a way to defend Trump at the time. Trump is reported as saying anyone who owns a pet is “low class.”
Pence is in a tough spot. He is a traditional conservative (in the sense that he wants to conserve our institutions and heritage), while Trump has nothing but disdain for both.
Also, Pence is a confirmed born-again Christian, saying that he is a Christian first, conservative second, and Republican third. Trump, on the other hand, has no grounding in Christian thought, as evidenced by his “Two Corinthians” speech, and his desecration of the Bible in a photo op on June 1, 2020. Trump has never shown “Christian” values, but Evangelicals have supported him as a quid-pro-quo to get what they want from him. Even so, some have become disenchanted with Trump.
If Pence can convince Evangelicals that he would work harder for them, it’s not inconceivable that they might switch their allegiance to him, but that’s a big “if.” However, as a traditional Republican, Pence might also attract the business wing of the party, which was never comfortable with Trump, whom they saw as a “loose cannon.”
One of the things Pence did was to support the concept of a peaceful transfer of power. He quickly called Kamala Harris to congratulate her on her win, and declared Biden the winner.
By nature, conservatives view democracy as a fragile human experiment, and fear autocrats and the cult of personality, believing that “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
That’s why they feared powerful leaders, such as FDR and LBJ, who “remade” American life as much as equally absolutist Reagan and Trump “unmade” it. Pence has gone as far as calling Trump un-American.
Pence’s problem is that he is seen as “enabling” Trump, while at the same time, he’s seen as letting Trump down, when he refused to act unconstitutionally on January 6. Since Trump seems determined to destroy Pence, Trump even hints that he’d dump Pence if he runs again, his only option is to appear deferential, while trying to set an independent course.
While Pence says he’s sick of Trump’s “BS,” he also seems genuinely hurt that Trump has turned on him.
Pence has his work cut out for him. Even if he is able to bump off Trump, he’ll run into the same problem Eugene McCarthy had in 1968. Once he bumped off LBJ, the field was wide open, and Bobby Kennedy joined the race, and took the lead. If Trump decides not to run, or is dislodged, somehow, there are many Republicans already running, including Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Mike Pompeo, and others. In fact, The Hill names nine non-Trump prospective candidates, and Ballotopedia lists a total of 23 GOP 2024 prospects.
But Trump is not out of it. Business Insider, “I wouldn’t want to estimate or underestimate Donald Trump as an opponent if he chooses to run,” quotes Biden’s chief-of-staff, Ron Klain, in Axios. In the same article, Trump’s niece, Mary, says Trump is not interested in running in 2024, and is only keeping the door open so that he can fleece followers out of cash for his “campaign.”
As a final note, Fox says that Biden is actually already preparing Kamala Harris to succeed him in 2024, based on her assignments.
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