Politico: Top Dems Are Quietly Preparing for Biden to Pass on 2024 Run

It’s a guessing game at this point, frequently egged on by stories such as this one out of Politico.

Will Joe Biden run for re-election in 2024 or will he bow out due to family or health reasons?

Given his age and obvious decline since 2020, it would seem almost absurd to consider Biden hitting the campaign trail for what would be another four-year term in office until 2028. Democrats aren’t thrilled about the prospect as poll after poll indicates. They want someone younger and fresher on the scene. It’s not an “anyone but Biden” mindset, since they don’t like Kamala Harris either, but it’s a “someone else” mindset.

For his part, Joe Biden hasn’t helped the matter with his poor handling of every crisis or issue that drifts in his direction. With constant buck-passing and deflection, nothing is ever this administration’s fault. It’s usually Donald Trump’s fault, Russia’s fault, or even your own fault, America! Stop asking this President for leadership!

The weirdness of this Politico story, titled “Biden may not run — and top Dems are quietly preparing“, is that it ultimately concludes he’s probably going to run but some Biden insiders are less certain they were a month ago:

Joe Biden’s closest advisers have spent months preparing for him to formally announce his reelection campaign. But with the president still not ready to make the plunge, a sense of doubt is creeping into conversations around 2024: What if he decides not to?

Biden’s past decisions around seeking the presidency have been protracted, painstaking affairs. This time, he has slipped past his most ambitious timetable, as previously outlined by advisers, to launch in February. Now they are coalescing around April.

While the belief among nearly everyone in Biden’s orbit is that he’ll ultimately give the all-clear, his indecision has resulted in an awkward deep-freeze across the party — in which some potential presidential aspirants and scores of major donors are strategizing and even developing a Plan B while trying to remain respectful and publicly supportive of the 80-year-old president.

Originally the goal to was launch around the State of the Union address as it would be a time for the media to focus on Biden and his, uh, accomplishments. With a speech that was meandering and widely panned, that announcement never came together.

Now with February slipping away and March seeming less likely, some insiders are saying Biden might announce in the month of April.

This begs the question, however, if Biden is as certain as he claims, then why does he keep deferring the announcement that he continues to insinuate is inevitable? Maybe because it’s not inevitable and everyone, including Joe Biden, knows that.

Here’s a bit of Washington speak if there ever was any:

People directly in touch with the president described him as a kind of Hamlet on Delaware’s Christina River, warily biding his time as he ponders the particulars of his final campaign. In interviews, these people relayed an impression that the conventional wisdom in Washington, D.C. — that there’s simply no way he passes on 2024 — has crystallized too hard, too soon.

“An inertia has set in,” one Biden confidant said. “It’s not that he won’t run, and the assumption is that he will. But nothing is decided. And it won’t be decided until it is.”

Nothing is decided and it won’t be decided until it is. What?

There’s clearly a hesitation within the Biden orbit of moving forward with any concrete plans. Can you blame them? Here’s a guy who has trouble stringing words together, can’t read a teleprompter, says offensive things when he’s off-script and is deteriorating mentally day to day.

If it’s Joe Biden insisting he’s running, maybe it’s the people around him stuck in the inertia of indecision.

What if Joe Biden stands down? The playing field for Democrats would be something rarely seen in modern politics:

A decision from Biden to forego another run would amount to a political earthquake not seen among Democrats in more than a half century, when Lyndon B. Johnson paired his partial halting of the U.S. bombing of Vietnam with his announcement to step aside, citing deepening “division in the American house now.”

It would unleash an avalanche of attention on his vice president, Kamala Harris, whose uneven performances have raised doubts among fellow Democrats about her ability to win — either the primary, the general election, or both. And it would dislodge the logjam Biden himself created in 2020 when he dispatched with the sprawling field of Democratic contenders, a field that included Harris.

For all the talk of a contentious and messy Republican primary, the process would pale in comparison to the political knives being sharpened against Kamala Harris. She’d clearly be the next in line based on typical succession. However, she’s a terribly inauthentic politician that lacks any real connection with voters. She was bolted onto the Biden campaign to provide a little diversity and she’s been inconsequential ever since.

If Biden defers into April or maybe even into May with no action, the pressure to do something will greatly intensify. If someone else is going to carry the Democratic nomination in 2024, they’ll need to get started pretty soon.

For the moment, Joe Biden’s busy in Europe falling up the stairs while climbing back onto Air Force One:

The ppl of Ohio seeing Trump water & other necessities being delivered to East Palestine was a sight for sore eyes and is what a real President does.

Meanwhile Biden continues to fall down on the job both literally and figuratively neglecting the ppl of Ohio and going to Ukraine pic.twitter.com/gKrP4GIWQP

— Righteous??Crusader (@Craftmastah) February 23, 2023

As the Politico story concludes, Biden is “famously indecisive” which is a good description for his entire presidency. He’s a politician that lacks any real principles and is willing to sway in whichever way is needed to please the audience he’s speaking to.

If Biden doesn’t announce a re-election campaign by April, all bets are off.