WASHINGTON (NBC NEWS) — At fundraisers and on the sidelines of events in recent weeks, Joe Biden has been selling Democrats — on Joe Biden for 2024.
It’s an unusual sales pitch reflecting an unusual political moment: the nation’s oldest sitting president, with a weakened political standing, grappling with questions in his own party about whether he will, or even should, run for another term, shaped by the prospect of a rematch against Donald Trump.
People who have spoken with the president described to NBC News what’s become a familiar exercise. Biden will argue he’s the only one who can beat Trump, sometimes ticking through the names of potential Democratic candidates if he stepped aside — Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, even Vice President Kamala Harris. Then rhetorically asks: Can any of them beat his 2020 rival?
“It’s basically the same argument he was making at this point in 2018 about why he thought he might have to run,” one Democrat familiar with the comments said. “He would just walk through every candidate.”
Biden’s political operation insists he’s running — and amid questions of his viability, sources tell NBC News, he now intends to show it.
Soon after the midterms — and following a discussion with his family over the holidays — Biden will move perhaps more quickly than expected to formalize his intentions for 2024, according to a top official familiar with the president’s planning, filing paperwork for re-election shortly after the new year.
Aides say the president also plans to use November’s midterm elections as something of a test run for 2024, much as he used the 2018 midterms to set up his 2020 bid. As the Jan. 6 committee wraps up its work this fall, Biden is also likely to invoke new revelations to remind the country what is at stake should Trump allies return to power in Washington, harkening back to another core message from his winning campaign that the very soul of the nation is at risk.
He’s also expected to pick up a more robust schedule of events around the country in late July when he returns from a trip to the Middle East, his aides said, with an eye toward quieting some of the hand-wringing over his age by demonstrating he has the stamina for campaigning.
“It’s the kind of thing you can only show, not tell,” a top White House adviser said, noting that Biden’s age was an issue in the 2020 election as well and that “short of buying a time machine” there’s nothing he can do about it except get out in public more.
The selling points will include the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure law. He also hopes to motivate key pillars of his political constituency — Black voters and suburban women — by highlighting the historic appointment of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court and underscoring what’s at stake after the high court overturned Roe v. Wade.
This is all a conversation kicked into gear sooner than anyone in the White House wanted by recent stories in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal addressing increasingly public discussions among Democrats about their future under Biden, who would be 81 during the 2024 campaign.
Beyond upping Biden’s visibility, his advisers have been working with the Democratic National Committee to build up political infrastructure in key midterm battlegrounds — many of which are also likely to be critical in 2024. Some of the staff now working in coordinated campaign offices in states with key House, Senate and gubernatorial races — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — would be well positioned to quickly transition to a Biden re-election campaign. Already the DNC has poured $20 million into the effort, with more being raised and spent quickly.
“Every cent you spend in 2022, of course helps in 2022 but also builds for 2024,” a Biden adviser said.
Out in the open, the 2024 pitch sounds like the 2020 pitch. The same goes for behind closed doors, where the argument about electability is what he used to hold off a historically crowded field of Democrats in 2020.
People familiar with the president’s comments said he’s not disparaging other Democrats when privately making the case that they can’t beat Trump. Rather, they said, he’s explaining what he sees as a fact supported by data.
A White House official echoed Biden’s private remarks, saying of another matchup with Trump: “He beat him before. It’s not clear there’s anybody else who could. But he did, and can again.”
Article was written by: By Mike Memoli, Carol E. Lee, Peter Nicholas and Peter Alexander