Biden expected to announce 2024 presidential campaign on Tuesday

Joe Biden is expected to announce his 2024 re-election campaign as early as Tuesday, possibly setting the stage for an extraordinary rematch with Donald Trump.

A Tuesday launch would come exactly four years after Biden announced his 2020 presidential bid, in which he warned that the “soul” of the nation was at stake after four tumultuous years under Trump.

More than two years into his own presidency, Biden has struggled to heal political and cultural divisions he believes are tearing American society. But he has racked up a list of legacy defining legislative accomplishments while working to restore US leadership on the world stage.

Following Democrats’ better-than-expected performance in the November midterms, Biden has been open about his intention to seek a second term. For months, the question was not if he would run, but when and how he would announce.

Just before leaving Ireland earlier this month, Biden declared that the ancestral journey had reinforced a “sense of optimism” about what he might accomplish. He told reporters the “calculus” on a second term had been completed and he planned to run. An announcement, he said, would come “relatively soon”.

Asked again on Monday, Biden replied: “I told you I’m planning on running. I’ll let you know real soon.”

Partial to symmetry and nostalgia, Biden appears to have signed off on a plan to announce his 2024 campaign with a video outlining his vision, as he did in 2019. The president is scheduled to speak at the North America’s Building Trades Unions’ US Legislative Conference in Washington on Tuesday, an echo of his first campaign event in 2019, when he spoke at a union hall in Pittsburgh.

Much has changed. The pandemic that reshaped US life for nearly three years has receded, due in large part to the mass vaccination campaign the Biden administration oversaw. Decades-high inflation is abating, though economic uncertainty lingers. A loss of federal abortion protections and threats to democratic institutions have fueled Democrats in key battleground elections.

“Part of the case President Biden will make to the public after he announces his reelection campaign is that he needs more time to do more and build on the things he has done during his first term,” Biden’s former press secretary, Jen Psaki, said on her MSNBC show on Sunday. “That’s the message: ‘Let me finish the job I started.’”

Biden’s team is touting the historically productive start to his term, which included a pandemic-relief package that temporarily halved child poverty; a generational investment in infrastructure; rare action to reform gun laws; a wide-ranging effort to combat climate crisis; lower healthcare costs; and efforts to boost US competitiveness and arrest inflation, leading to an unexpectedly successful midterm election season.

With Republicans in control of the House and major legislative action unlikely, Biden has focused the second half of his term on selling these policies to the public. Visits to Japan and Australia next month will bring an opportunity to emphasize efforts to rally the world in defense of Ukraine and against the growing influence of China.

But Biden will also have to contend with voter disapproval of his handling of the economy and Republican attacks on immigration.

Perhaps most urgently, Biden must decide how to engage with House Republicans in a debt limit standoff. The speaker, Kevin McCarthy, has proposed dramatic spending cuts, including to Biden’s landmark climate and healthcare bill, in exchange for lifting the debt ceiling and avoiding default. Accusing Republicans of holding the economy hostage in order to cut social programs, the White House has repeatedly called on Congress to keep negotiations over the debt ceiling separate from debate about fiscal restraint.

Biden is dogged by low approval ratings and concerns about his age. Already the oldest president in American history at 80, he would be 86 by the end of a second term. Polling has consistently shown that most Americans, including a majority of Democrats, do not want him to seek re-election. That lack of enthusiasm is especially prevalent among young voters, who were skeptical of Biden in 2020 but ultimately turned out in high numbers to help him beat Trump.

He has also tangled with progressives who accuse him of returning to his moderate roots on crime, immigration and climate. Yet the desire to keep Trump or a Trumpian alternative out of the White House remains strong among Democrats and independents. Most Democrats say they will back Biden if he is their nominee.

While Biden is not expected to face any major challenge for the nomination, the field of Republican contenders remains unsettled. Trump leads the pack.

The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, is expected to jump into the race, offering a combative alternative to Trump, who faces legal challenges stemming from his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, his handling of classified documents, payments to a porn star, a rape allegation and his business affairs.

Biden is also confronting a legal inquiry into his handling of classified documents as vice-president and before that as a Delaware senator.

Biden ran unsuccessfully for president twice before 2020. To defeat Trump, he mobilized a coalition of young people, women and voters of color while persuading independents soured on his opponent.

Biden presented himself as a bridge to the next generation of leaders. But with his mind now made up about a second term, and little agreement over who might succeed him if he did step aside, he appears best placed to be the party’s standard-bearer in 2024.

“Running for the president the first time is aspirational. You can make all sorts of big bold promises,” Psaki said. “Running for reelection is when you actually get your report card from the American people.”