Speaking as a Joe Biden supporter, it has to be acknowledged that if he can’t get his approval numbers to significantly improve by, say, the spring of 2023 or certainly by the summer, he has to consider the option of cutting bait.
Biden saved our country from a second Trump term, but God help us all if he runs again and Trump somehow wins. Or if the Trump forces manage to cheat or coup d’etat their way back into the White House. Plus, as was noted earlier today, no one is really cool with the idea of a U.S. President being only four years shy of 90, which is what Biden would be by late ’28.
And what if, God forbid, Biden gets re-elected in ’24 but doesn’t live out the full term? (This is a reasonable question to ask.) Nobody but nobody wants Kamala Harris moving into the Oval Office. The fall-out would be catastrophic.
Bret Stephens, from “Joe Biden Would Like to Know What Your Problem Is,” posted on 1.24.22: “If the fourth year of the Biden administration resembles the first, particularly when it comes to inflation, I’ll be hard-pressed to vote for him. And so, I suspect, will many of the people who supported him last time.
“Which brings me to my latest hobby horse, which is to get Biden to announce early that he won’t run again so other Democrats can start exploring a run. Critics of the idea think it turns him into a lame duck, but I think it would look statesmanlike and actually strengthen his hand.
“Isn’t every re-elected president an automatic lame duck, because they can’t run for a third term? Biden can still get a lot done in 35 months, without sitting on the rest of the Democratic Party like a wet blanket on a cold day. And we can all stop pretending that we’re totally okay with the idea of an 86-year-old president, which is what Biden would be at the end of a second term.”