President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris formally announce 2024 reelection bids

Joe Biden spent almost thir­ty years in pur­suit of the pres­i­den­cy, and even while hold­ing the office at age eighty, Joe is not going to quit while he’s ahead.

The 46th Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States used a video on Wednes­day to announce that he and Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris are run­ning for sec­ond terms.

“Every gen­er­a­tion of Amer­i­cans has faced a moment when they’ve had to defend democ­ra­cy, stand up for our per­son­al free­doms and stand up for our right to vote and our civ­il rights: Let’s fin­ish the job,” Biden told his polar­ized country.

He made an ini­tial cam­paign stop lat­er in the day, tout­ing 800,000 new man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs on his watch at a con­ven­tion of build­ing and con­struc­tion trades unions. Amer­i­ca has gone back to work since the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, albeit with many Amer­i­cans stay­ing home to work.

The president’s nation­al job approval rat­ing stands at forty-two per­cent, accord­ing to an NBC News poll released ear­li­er this week.

It’s a per­cent­age at which one term pres­i­dents, includ­ing George H.W. Bush and Jim­my Carter, have been sent pack­ing by the vot­ers. Sev­en­ty per­cent of those sur­veyed said they do not want Biden to run again.

We know Biden. He was elect­ed to the Sen­ate in 1972 and served thir­ty-six years before being tapped as Barack Obama’s run­ning mate in 2008. He has evolved on such issues as abor­tion care. He has embraced such issues as cli­mate action. He has con­sis­tent­ly cham­pi­oned the cause of his nation’s blue col­lar workers.

What, then, boosts his prospects of reelec­tion in the face of low nation­al poll num­bers that have last­ed since the chaot­ic with­draw­al of forces from Afghanistan in the late sum­mer of 2021?

Biden faces a rematch with his pre­de­ces­sor Don­ald Trump, wide­ly unpop­u­lar with the gen­er­al pub­lic but backed by a right wing fac­tion of the Amer­i­can electorate.

Trump is not look­ing ahead to America’s future but is run­ning as a can­di­date of ret­ri­bu­tion, refus­ing to admit his own loss in 2020 and bundling the griev­ances of Amer­i­cans left behind in a tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven economy.

Against this mind­set, Amer­i­cans gave Democ­rats the best show­ing of any par­ty hold­ing the White House since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first midterm in 1934.

In Wash­ing­ton State, Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray swept to reelec­tion, the Democ­rats picked up a U.S. House seat with Marie Glue­senkamp Perez, and made gains in a state Leg­is­la­ture where they were sup­posed to go into the tank.

“It’s the econ­o­my, stu­pid,” strate­gist James Carville said in mas­ter­mind­ing Bill Clinton’s suc­cess­ful run for the pres­i­den­cy in 1992.

The brief strate­gic mantra holds par­tic­u­lar res­o­nance in America’s so-called rust belt, the Great Lakes states of Penn­syl­va­nia, Michi­gan and Wis­con­sin, tak­en by Trump in 2016 but car­ried by Biden in 2020.

The Biden-Har­ris admin­is­tra­tion (with Har­ris wield­ing a tiebreak­ing vote in the Unit­ed States Sen­ate on a near-record num­ber of occa­sions) has made the most of slim Demo­c­ra­t­ic majori­ties in Con­gress dur­ing its first two years in office.

The Amer­i­can Res­cue Plan put mon­ey into an econ­o­my rav­aged by the pandemic.

With the Infra­struc­ture Invest­ment and Jobs Act, the Biden-Har­ris admin­is­tra­tion enact­ed a law about which pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tions just talked.

With CHIPS and Sci­ence, guid­ed by Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell, D‑Washington, the U.S. has been put on a path to restore a vital indus­try we pio­neered but is now dom­i­nat­ed across the Pacif­ic by Tai­wan and China.

The Biden-Har­ris admin­is­tra­tion has even man­aged, with the Infla­tion Reduc­tion Act, to make a major invest­ment in clean ener­gy, at a time when impacts of cli­mate change are being felt from drought con­di­tions in the West to more pow­er­ful hur­ri­canes hit­ting Flori­da and the Gulf Coast. The need for action is urgent, giv­en the last eight years of record tem­per­a­tures and last week’s Unit­ed Nations report on Moth­er Earth’s rapid­ly shrink­ing glaciers.

It’s a record of recov­ery and incre­men­tal change — less ambi­tious than the pro­pos­als cham­pi­oned by the Con­gres­sion­al Pro­gres­sive Cau­cus and its backers.

Biden sup­port­ed expan­sive reform but found it blocked by two rene­gade Democ­rats in the U.S. Sen­ate. How­ev­er, sub­stan­tial leg­is­la­tion was passed, even a mod­est gun safe­ty bill, the first of its kind since 1994.

Biden is the old­est pres­i­dent in U.S. his­to­ry, eleven years old­er than Ronald Rea­gan, who suc­cess­ful­ly sought the office at age sixty-nine.

On the very last episode of his FNC show, Tuck­er Carl­son sneered at Biden with a claim that he’s suf­fer­ing ini­tial stages of demen­tia. It’s also a claim made by right wing hack Sean Han­ni­ty. In a nasty polit­i­cal cli­mate, Biden even found him­self heck­led by ultra MAGA Repub­li­cans dur­ing his State of the Union speech.

The pres­i­dent toyed with them, which is what Biden needs to do. He cam­paigned from the base­ment of his Delaware home in 2016, before the COVID-19 vac­cine was avail­able for dis­tri­b­u­tion. He can’t run like that again.

In coun­ter­ing ageist attacks, the Pres­i­dent will need to be out on the hus­tings, and made more avail­able to the press.

Biden’s White House has lim­it­ed acces­si­bil­i­ty much in the man­ner of Reagan.

Biden has a his­to­ry of mala­props, and once held forth so long at a Sen­ate For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee com­mit­tee hear­ing that fresh­man Sen­a­tor Barack Oba­ma passed a note telling an aide, “Shoot me.” But he is an engag­ing, com­pas­sion­ate man, influ­enced by death of his son Beau eight years ago.

He has an abil­i­ty to con­nect. Wit­ness Biden’s speech on health, and inter­ac­tion with dia­betes patients, at Green Riv­er Col­lege a year ago.

The Pres­i­dent has a major issue going for him – the right of women to make their own repro­duc­tive health­care deci­sions. A right-dom­i­nat­ed Supreme Court took away this right in many states with its Dobbs deci­sion last year. Repub­li­can-run states have since rushed to dras­ti­cal­ly lim­it abor­tion rights.

In Flori­da, ultra MAGA Gov­er­nor (and wannabe Trump suc­ces­sor) Ron DeSan­tis has just signed a bill mak­ing abor­tion ille­gal after just six weeks of pregnancy.

The Supremes’ action has split the coun­try, with Wash­ing­ton among states that have con­tin­ued to pro­tect repro­duc­tive rights and access to abor­tion care. Vot­ers have shown, how­ev­er, even in such con­ser­v­a­tive states as Kansas, that they are pro-lib­er­ty. The issue is like­ly to remain with us, as the legal­i­ty of med­ica­tion abor­tion pills has already reached the Supreme Court and like­ly will return there.

Still, age rears its head. Biden is cer­tain to be watched, with every ver­bal stum­ble report­ed and ana­lyzed. So many lies have come from the mouth of a sev­en­ty-six year-old Trump that the coun­try has grown used to his disinformation.

Biden’s age is like­ly to put Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris, his run­ning mate, under a brighter spot­light. She is part of the Biden reelec­tion roll­out and is slat­ed to lead an repro­duc­tive rights ral­ly on Wednes­day night.

Nobody can fore­cast the future of Ukraine, which the U.S. and NATO have sup­plied with arms, and which have thus far rolled back Russia’s invasion.

Biden has cham­pi­oned the cause, even mak­ing a risky trip to the embat­tled coun­try to meet with Pres­i­dent Zelen­sky. Repub­li­cans used to be adamant oppo­nents of the old Sovi­et Union. But they are split on Putin’s mur­der­ous war of aggres­sion, with the party’s far right wish­ing to aban­don Ukraine.

A final plus for Biden: He faces no major chal­lenger for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tion. At his request, the DNC has rejig­gered the pri­ma­ry cal­en­dar to open with South Car­oli­na. It was a piv­otal state in his 2016 run.

So far, his only non-Repub­li­can chal­lengers are new-ager Mar­i­anne Williamson and anti-vaxxer Robert Kennedy, Jr. , one of Tuck­er Carlson’s guests in his last week on FNC. Nei­ther is con­sid­ered a cred­i­ble can­di­date by most Democrats.

Joe Biden is with us after all these years. Can he pre­vail again next year in what he has accu­rate­ly called a “bat­tle for the soul of America?”