President Joe Biden is not yet a declared candidate for reelection, but he is acting like one.
He is staging a number of events that allow him to sharpen his campaign message in front of friendly audiences, while his political advisers intensify planning behind closed doors for the expected launch of his 2024 campaign.
Aides have interviewed potential campaign managers and held discussions about how and when to kick off the run, according to people familiar with the matter. No final decisions on those matters have been made. Biden cryptically told reporters last Friday in Ireland he would announce his run “relatively soon.”
Yet his allies say he can afford to hold off an announcement in large part because he can use the bully pulpit of the presidency to spread his message.
Biden on Tuesday in the Rose Garden touted his plan to make childcare more affordable, while rebuking “MAGA Republicans’” economic plans of “robbing” Americans of entitlement benefits. He assailed the GOP economic plans again Wednesday at a Maryland union training center, saying the party is threatening to default on the national debt “unless I agree to all these wacko notions” of benefit cuts.
Those messages form the foundation of Biden’s pitch to voters: arguing Americans should let him finish the job he started while framing the race as a choice between himself and an extreme opposition party, guided by former president Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again,” or MAGA, doctrine.
The president’s team did not appear to be speeding up plans for an announcement following his Ireland tour, according to a person familiar with their thinking. That trip also included campaign-like atmospherics, including stops highlighting Biden’s roots and a speech staged like a rally, featuring a green stage, large flags and a cheering crowd.
“There’s no urgency for him to announce,” said Meghan Hays, a former longtime communications adviser to Biden. “Let him go be the president and do the job he’s applying for again and let people see him being the president for as long as humanly possible. The president can wait as long as he likes.”
Any outside pressure for the president to formally declare his candidacy has subsided since the November midterm elections.
No serious Democratic primary challenger has emerged, while other possible rivals have promised to support Biden. Republicans, at the same time, have been rocked by tumult. Trump — whom Biden’s team sees as his most likely opponent — has been indicted in New York, and faces possible criminal charges in other state and federal investigations. His rivals have tried to outflank one another rightward, on divisive social issues like abortion and gun rights.
Biden also has urgent matters on his governing agenda. He has engaged in a stand-off with Republicans over their refusal to raise the debt limit without conditions, which he has said could set off a “gigantic recession and beyond.”
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Wednesday proposed a bill that would raise the U.S. debt limit for roughly one year and cut federal spending. McCarthy hopes if the House can pass it, which is far from given, it could prod Biden into resuming talks on the debt ceiling.
Meanwhile, a small inner circle of senior White House advisers are discussing the reelection with Biden: Anita Dunn, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, Mike Donilon, Bruce Reed and Steve Richetti. First lady Jill Biden also has an influential voice and her top aide, Anthony Bernal, has also participated in discussions, according to people familiar with the process.
Biden’s team has interviewed people for the roles of campaign manager in recent weeks, and created a short list of Democratic operatives for top campaign roles. White House intergovernmental affairs director Julie Chavez Rodriguez, a senior adviser on Biden’s 2020 campaign, is said to be a contender for a top role, according to people familiar with the matter. But decisions on individual roles have not been made.
In previous presidential reelection campaigns, major decisions have been made in the West Wing with the campaign staff making tactical choices and executing the plan.
Major Biden donors have been invited to Washington at the end of next week to meet with the president, according to two people familiar with the matter, another sign of the planning accelerating. The invitations, which went out by phone, include a dinner with Biden and a briefing with his top advisers.
The meetings, which the New York Times earlier reported, is being seen as an effort to fire up donors ahead of what is expected to be a grueling race.
Biden, 80, is the oldest U.S. president and will face questions about his age even as he repeatedly insists he is running for a second term. Republicans, including Trump, have said he appears too old to do the job. Biden tested out a new line last week that parried age-related doubts with a bit of humor.
“I come to the job with more experience than any president in American history,” he said in a speech to Ireland’s Parliament. “It doesn’t make me better or worse, but it gives me few excuses.”
While some have speculated Biden could launch in April to get a jump start on the new fundraising quarter, waiting also saves donor cash; once you’re a candidate, political activities have to be paid for with campaign funds.
“It’s very hard to argue to Democratic donors that next quarter’s filing matters in the general election, because it doesn’t. It’s very hard to make it urgent,” said Matt Bennett, executive vice president for public affairs at the center-left group Third Way.
Biden is a famously deliberate decision maker. He began the 2020 campaign in April of the previous year, after other major candidates had already entered. The president made one key choice last week by picking Chicago as the Democratic convention site.
If Biden waits much longer to declare, he will fall behind the timelines of former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, who announced their runs in April 2011 and May 2003.
Yet Biden aides say there has never been a timeline to announce, and that he doesn’t need a full campaign infrastructure in place to say he is running again.
Many Biden staffers were based in a Washington co-working space when his last campaign got underway in 2019.
