President Joe Biden’s wife, Jill, announced Friday that he will run for reelection.
The 80-year-old President Biden’s decision to seek reelection has been the subject of much conjecture over the previous two years. In an interview with the Associated Press, Jill Biden conceded that, other than the time and place of the official announcement, there is “pretty much” nothing left to determine as to whether or not her husband will run for president.
She asked the site’s readers, “How many times does he have to say it for you to believe it?” His exact words were, “He claims he’s not finished.” He failed to do what he set out to do. Indeed, that sums up the whole thing nicely.
On her five-day trip to Africa, Jill Biden was interviewed in Nairobi, Kenya. She has long played a key role in influencing the president’s policymaking. The 71-year-old first lady said, “Of course, he’ll listen to me since we’re married.” She was responding to a question about if she had the last word on whether her husband ran for reelection. “He makes up his mind, believes me,” she said.
Biden administration officials have said that the president will announce his candidacy in two months. This timing would mirror that of former president Barack Obama, who announced his re-election campaign in April 2011 and began conducting events in May 2012. Biden, though, can choose to follow former President Lyndon Johnson’s lead and not seek reelection in 1968 because of dwindling support for the Vietnam War.
Biden’s mental competence has been questioned, and his approval rating remains below 50% after more than two years in office. As reported by the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs, support among Democrats for a second term for President Joe Biden has dropped to 37% from 52% in the run-up to the 2018 midterms.
It’s safe to assume that if Biden were to launch his campaign for the nomination, no other Democrats would follow suit. Candidates like California Governor Gavin Newsom, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg have all been mentioned, but none of them have officially announced their desire to run against the incumbent president. Although her promotion to vice president, Kamala Harris’s popularity among voters remains in question.
Several people have recently run for office in the Republican Party. Former President Donald Trump declared his third attempt for the president just after the elections, after losing to President Joe Biden in the divisive 2020 race. Since then, Nikki Haley, a former ambassador to the UN, and Vivek Ramaswamy, a billionaire businessman, have joined the cause. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is widely anticipated to run in the Republican primary election, however, he has not yet formally declared his candidacy.
WPA Intelligence found that inflation or rising expenses were seen as more important by 38% of Republican primary voters than illegal immigration was seen by 27%. Actions taken by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Vice President Mike Pence are likewise suggestive of a primary campaign.