Will Biden Run Again? Democrats Need an Answer Soon

Will Biden Run Again? Democrats Need an Answer Soon

Jonathan Bernstein | Bloomberg — Read time: 5 minutes

Democracy Dies in Darkness

Will Biden Run Again? Democrats Need an Answer Soon

Analysis by Jonathan Bernstein | Bloomberg

October 17, 2022 at 2:24 p.m. EDT

The midterms are coming, and with them, the pressure is building on President Joe Biden to let everyone know whether he is running in 2024.

In a normal presidential election cycle, we would be about to hit the two-year mark in the “invisible primary.” That’s the period before voters get involved, in which candidates seek the support of key party players. That process usually begins immediately after the previous presidential election. 

By the midterms, presidential campaigns start getting organized as candidates decide whether to run a full-on campaign or to drop out. Formal declarations may wait, but most serious candidates are in full election mode just a few months after the midterms, when the Iowa caucuses are still a full year away.(1)

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On the Democratic side, what’s unusual is that there is an  invisible primary at all. Parties with a first-term president normally get a respite from nomination jockeying. Not so for a party that elects a president who will be 82 by the start of his second term. For now, Biden is acting as if he will be running for a second term. The demands of governing make that the smart move whether he intends to seek re-election, plans to retire or just doesn’t yet know.

Amid this uncertainty, potential candidates including those who made a splash in 2020 as well as newcomers likely to run if the nomination is open are doing things to drum up attention. Generally, sitting vice presidents are leading contenders for open nominations, and Kamala Harris surely would be first in line — but no vice presidents have been nominated in the modern era without facing serious competition.  

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Once upon a time, presidential campaigns didn’t begin this early. But that was when invisible campaigning — winning the support of party actors, often by talking with a small universe of people one-on-one — was the bulk of campaigning. Indeed, the conventional wisdom was once that early campaigning was a sign of weakness.

Beginning in 1972, changes to the nomination process that introduced the modern system of primaries and open caucuses made public campaigning necessary in order to accumulate delegates. When George McGovern captured the 1972 nomination by doing well in early primaries, and then when Jimmy Carter shocked the party by winning in 1976 after spending four years campaigning in Iowa and other early states, candidates learned the lesson that they couldn’t begin too soon.(2)

As president, it is in Biden’s interest to hold off on announcing his intentions, especially if he doesn’t intend to pursue a second term, to avoid governing as a lame-duck chief executive.

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But as party leader, Biden has other responsibilities. If he isn’t going to run in 2024, he needs to give Democrats time to sort through the candidates, push for their policy preferences and then coordinate with each other so that they back a candidate the entire party can accept while also making that candidate firmly commit to the party’s agenda and priorities.

Consider, for example, the push for new federal day care programs. That’s a policy issue that has been simmering among Democrats for years. The presidential nomination cycle — if Biden doesn’t run — is a big opportunity for those calling for more federal day-care funding. It isn’t just that they will want to lock up support from all the candidates. They also ideally will want the candidates to agree on as strong a policy that they can get consensus on, while also moving day care up the list of party priorities. In doing so, they will have to compete against advocates for student loan reform, expanding health care and every other spending priority.  

It’s also a question of which bills will move forward when the votes might only be there for some of them. Or which ideas will be stuffed into a must-pass omnibus bill and which will have to wait. Advocates want strong commitments from the candidates, and they want to nominate a candidate who leans their way.

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But parties also want to reach agreement on a candidate, preferably early on, so that the nomination process resolves quickly and cleanly, and leaves everyone in the party reasonably satisfied even if their first choice doesn’t win. If a party can settle on a candidate early on (as Democrats did with Al Gore in 2000 and Hillary Clinton in 2016) they can send clear signals to primary and caucus voters to support that candidate, which in turn will help that candidate win even if he or she faces a strong challenge for the nomination.(3)

The later that process begins, the harder it will be for the party to come to an agreement and the weaker the signal will be to voters in the primaries. That could lead to a factional candidate who owes nothing to most of the party. Or an unvetted newcomer who could turn out to be ill-equipped for a general election campaign — or for the presidency if elected. Or a media darling who might enjoy a burst of attention but burn out quickly after locking up the nomination. Or some combination of those unfortunate scenarios.

There is no specific date by which Biden will have to make known his decision, but if he is going to retire he risks harming the party if he doesn’t make that clear by early next year or spring at the latest. And although we might not see it in public, some pressure will start to build on him soon after the midterms. 

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Perhaps Biden really does intend to run in 2024. But if not, it’s getting close to the time for him to let people know.

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(Corrects spelling of “harming” in 15th paragraph.)

(1) Or whatever the first event with voters will be in 2024; Democrats are considering changes in the calendar, with a real possibility that Iowa will lose its first-in-the-nation slot.

(2) Whether it’s really true that candidates need to start very early isn’t clear - but most politicians and campaign professionals believe that it’s true, which is what drives their behavior.

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(3) They send those signals directly through endorsements, and indirectly by providing valuable resources - money, expertise, coverage in party-aligned media - that are valuable in primaries and caucuses. Party actors don’t have a monopoly on those resources, but they have enough to give a candidate a very large advantage.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics and policy. A former professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio and DePauw University, he wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.

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