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Biden on his bike for 2024
Before President Joe Biden fell from his bike while dismounting in Rehoboth Delaware – at his summer home for his 45th anniversary celebrations with Dr Jill Biden and Fathers Day on Sunday – he had a lot on his mind
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When he spoke to the Associated Press late last week he was very candid.
In discussing the mood of the country, the president said
“ People are really, really down. They’re really down. Their need for mental health in America has skyrocketed because people have seen everything upset. Everything they counted on upset. But most of it’s a consequence of, of, of what’s happening, what happened is a consequence of the, the COVID crisis.
People lost their jobs. People are out of their jobs. And then, were they going to get back to work? Schools were closed. Think of this. I think we vastly underestimate this.”
As a politician, Biden has always felt the people who he works for in his gut
The White House can be a bubble, but Biden’s was a pretty accurate take on how so many Americans are feeling right now. He went deeper:
“We have a little thing called climate change going on. And it’s having profound impacts. We got the tundra melting. We’ve got the North Pole, I mean, so people are looking and, and I think it’s totally understandable that they are worried because they look around and see,
“My God, everything is changing.” We have more hurricanes and tornadoes and flooding. People saw what — I took my kids years ago to Yellowstone Park. They call me, “Daddy did you see what happened at Yellowstone, right?” Well, it’s unthinkable. These are 1,000-year kinds of events.
I think, you know, I fully understand why the average voter out there is just confused and upset and worried. And they’re worried, for example, you know, can they send their kid back to, back to college? What’s going to happen? Are we going to take away the ability of people to borrow? So I think there’s a lot of reasons for people to want to know what comes next.”
Biden talked about his legislative program, and he thinks he can get the votes to lower the household costs of utility bills and prescription drugs, make investments in technology and broadband, and enact fairer taxes for the super-wealthy.
Biden knows he has to deliver the goods.
While the political chatter in Washington lurched into making his stumble off the bike a metaphor for his presidency right now, Biden immediately got back on it and pedaled ahead to his destination: re-election in 2024.
There is a lot of speculation on whether he will run again.
Here are the facts: Biden wants to run again. He especially wants to run again if Trump runs again. Biden entered the presidential campaign in 2020 because he felt he had to save the country by stopping Trump from destroying America’s democracy. And he did. Trump in 2024 only re-ignites the urgency of Biden’s mission.
There is no whispering from inside the White House undermining or contradicting the president’s intention. Among political professionals, there no material dissent from the judgment that Biden is the strongest Democratic candidate: there is no obvious alternative who commands anything near the support Biden has among Democrats.
Biden knows his approval rating. He knows the Republicans smell blood. He knows many Democrats who voted for him have doubts given his age and his current standing. But Biden knows that inflation will recede, the economy will recover, and the Republicans in 2023 will be the most extremist cohort of radical lawmakers the country has ever seen, and that the place to be is in the centre, where elections in the United States are won and lost.
Rep. Jim Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina and the third ranking leader in the House, whose support for Biden effectively sealed Biden’s nomination in 2020, said over the weekend “My advice: be yourself, stay focused. Make the promises and keep them.”
That is exactly where Biden is. To Joe Biden that looks like the winning hand in ’24.