The Patriot Post® · Joe Biden: Will He or Won't He?
It’s been more than half a century since an American president decided not to seek a second term in office. Will history soon repeat itself?
On March 31, 1968, during the height of the Vietnam war, Democrat Lyndon Baines Johnson shocked the nation when he appeared on national TV and announced that he’d decided not to seek his party’s nomination for president. “There is division in the American house now,” he said. And he was right.
There’s certainly plenty of division in the American house these days, and much of it is thanks to Joe Biden, the guy who pledged during his Inaugural Address that he’d unite us:
On this January day, my whole soul is in this: Bringing America together. Uniting our people. And uniting our nation. History, faith, and reason show the way, the way of unity. We can see each other not as adversaries but as neighbors. We can treat each other with dignity and respect. We can join forces, stop the shouting, and lower the temperature. For without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury. No progress, only exhausting outrage. No nation, only a state of chaos. This is our historic moment of crisis and challenge, and unity is the path forward.
Clearly, Biden has failed. But does he even realize it? Back in ‘68, a clear-headed Johnson could see the writing on the wall. But one wonders: Does Biden?
LBJ faced long odds in November 1968. His approval rating was around 36%, a bit lower than LGB’s number today, but Johnson was already facing primary challengers by then. As historian and Johnson biographer Robert Dallek writes: “LBJ had barely survived a surprisingly strong primary challenge from antiwar Sen. Eugene McCarthy in New Hampshire, who took 42 percent of the vote to LBJ’s 48 percent on March 12. Four days later, on March 16, New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, a long-time LBJ nemesis, declared that he, too, would challenge Johnson for the nomination.”
No one in today’s Democrat Party has stepped up to challenge Biden yet. Yet. But three Democrat governors — California’s Gavin Newsom, Illinois’s JB Pritzker, and New Jersey’s Phil Murphy — have hinted that they’d consider a run if Biden decided not to. Biden, though, has been playing Hamlet lately.
His team had originally slated February 2023 for a decision on whether he’d run again. But February is almost gone. So now it’s April, they say.
At least one Biden insider, though, says he’s all in. As the Associated Press reports, “First lady Jill Biden says there’s 'pretty much’ nothing left to do but choose the time and place for President Joe Biden’s 2024 announcement, giving one of the clearest indications yet that he will run for a second term.”
“Is there any reason for any of us to think that he is not running again?” asked the AP’s Darlene Superville.
The question seemed to set the first lady off: “Are you not believing this, Darlene? I mean, how many times does he have to say it till you believe it?”
See for yourself:
First lady Jill Biden says there’s “pretty much” nothing left to do but choose the time and place for President Joe Biden’s 2024 announcement, giving one of the clearest indications yet that he will run for a second term. pic.twitter.com/UqNwCIelhY
— The Associated Press (@AP) February 24, 2023
“He says he’s not done,” the Doctor told the AP during a five-day trip to Africa. “He’s not finished what he’s started. And that’s what’s important. And I think, look at all that Joe has, has done, has accomplished. I mean, he brought us out of the chaos. And he did that, he was elected because people wanted steady leadership.”
Steady leadership?
Joe Biden has delivered many things to the American people during his first two years in office, but steady leadership isn’t one of them. Soaring inflation, a spiraling national debt, an illegal immigration catastrophe, rampant crime, a discouraged and depleted military, a dangerous proxy war with Russia — these are among the things Biden has delivered. But steady leadership?
What game has the first lady been watching?
The Democrats are in a tough spot. Biden, already the oldest president in American history, will be 82 by the time of the 2024 election, and 86 by the end of a second term. Does anyone really think he’s mentally or physically equipped for six more years of this?
Mark Alexander certainly does not and provided conclusive analysis last year that Biden will ultimately not run, despite the fact he will announce he is running, asserting that Democrats have already planned his exit strategy in the 2024 primary. Alexander believed Biden would resign for health reasons in the first year of his presidency, but Democrats grossly overestimated the abilities and popularity of Kamala Harris. Alexander believes the DNC intends to dispense with Harris in the primary in order to clear a path for Newsom or some other younger charismatic leftist. However, he does note the caveat that Biden’s puppeteers have consolidated a lot of power, and if they believe they can prop him up for another term, like the old Soviet Union dictators were propped up by their party power brokers, they will resist letting him resign.
On the other hand, the least popular vice president in history is waiting in the wings, waiting for her shot to become the first female president in history. So there’s that.