Biden’s Announcement of 2024 Run

by Vijaya Chandrasoma

As was widely expected, President Joe Biden made the announcement, on April 25, 2023, of his intention to run for re-election for a second term in the next general election. He said he had taken a “long, hard look” at his advanced age – he will be 82 years old in November 2024. While he certainly considered this to be a factor, he decided that his long and successful political career in Washington, D.C., serving 36 years in Congress as the Senator from Delaware, then eight years as Vice President to President Barack Obama, would be of greater benefit.

He is determined to continue with the job of “saving the soul of America”, the soul Trump had sold to the devil, in the guise of billionaires, corporations, the National Rifle Association and his best friend and America’s worst adversary, Vladimir Putin.

When Biden took office in 2021, the nation was facing unprecedented crises. A raging pandemic, racial injustice with the rise of the Christian white supremacist movement, economic chaos, gun and racial violence and the climate crisis. And a complete loss of trust with long-standing allies, and the ill-concealed contempt of the rest of the world.

The United States has now regained its position as the Leader of the Free World, which had been surrendered to Germany’s Angela Merkel during the Trump years.

One of the most important pieces of legislation passed by Biden almost immediately after he moved to the White House was the American Rescue Plan, which delivered direct relief to the American people, and served to revive the economy. Since then, the economy has created more than 12 million jobs, the unemployment rate is at a 54-year low.

Biden signed the most aggressive legislation to combat climate change and the first, though still woefully inadequate, legislation to control gun violence. Biden also delivered the historic bipartisan Infrastructure Law which will rebuild America’s crumbling infrastructure. He will continue with his strategy to build the economy from bottom up and middle out, with a tax structure that will improve the lives of all Americans, not just the corporations and the wealthy. Biden is seeking re-election on the back of one of the finest performances any president has achieved in the first two years of his administration.

Former President Trump had already made the announcement in November 2022 that he plans to run for a non-consecutive second term, having been comprehensively defeated by President Biden in 2020. According to current form, a Trump/Biden rematch seems likely in 2024. Not a certainty, though; these are early days, many surprises could befall this ill-starred contest in the next 18 months.

Biden accuses the extremist MAGA Republicans of “threatening to derail the progress he has made for the middle class”. He reiterated his determination to “save the soul of America”, saying “Let me finish the job. We’re on the cusp of major change”.

He is currently facing challenges from two 2024 presidential aspirants: Marianne Williamson and Robert F. Kennedy Jnr.

Williamson, 61, a writer and political activist, ran unsuccessfully for the California House of Representatives in 2014. A Bernie Sanders supporter in 2020, she launched her campaign challenging President Biden in March, 2023.

Robert F. Kennedy Jnr, 69, Environmental Lawyer and anti-vaccine activist, launched his campaign for the presidency in April 2023. He is a scion of the most famous political family in the nation, the son of Bobby and nephew of JFK.

If there is just one thing that both Democrats and Republicans agree on, it is that the country needs leadership of younger faces, in both parties. After the vitality of the Obama Administration, the nation has been infested with a bunch of old men and women, if not actually physically past the mortality rate, then saddled with antiquated values dating back to the 1950s.

These fossils are responsible for making decisions affecting our basic freedoms. The denial of Reproductive Freedom to all women, and the refusal to impose sensible gun control measures to curb the pandemic of mass shootings, which are approved by the vast majority of Americans, are classic examples of how the will of the people is ignored.

An intriguing candidate for 2024 could be Liz Cheney, 56, formerly a rising star in the Republican Party, who served as its third-ranking member of the House from 2019 to 2021. An intransigent fiscal and social conservative, she voted lockstep with the Trump administration during his term. She fell out with Trump and the Party after the insurrection of January 6, 2021.

Ms Cheney is no longer a member of the House of Representatives and has said she will resign from the Republican Party if Trump is the Republican nominee for 2024. She has not indicated any intention to run for the 2024 presidency herself, but has stated that she would do everything in her power to “help restore our party”. She is certainly not alone in this ambition of returning the Republican Party to the pre-Trump era. A party of law and order, small government and fair play, concepts supported by a large number of moderate Republicans. No longer a Republican, she could also run as the nominee of a third party. In any event, she has confirmed that she would be campaigning for Biden and the Democrats during the November 2024 election.

Given the advanced ages of both nominees for the presidency, the role of the Vice Presidency becomes vital. They may virtually be running to govern the country, if the president becomes mentally or physically incapable of carrying out his presidential functions.

The Biden/Harris ticket is likely to be unchanged. In the event President Biden becomes incapable, for whatever reason, to carry out his presidential duties, Vice President Harris is eminently capable of seamlessly taking over. There are many extremely talented Democratic politicians available for support.

For the Republicans, the 2016 Trump/Pence ticket will not be an option. In the choice of his Vice President, Trump demands that his orders, whether legal or illegal, constitutional or unconstitutional, be carried out with neither hesitation nor question. In his perverted mind, personal loyalty is the only quality of paramount importance.

Pence proved his patriotism, refusing to carry out Trump’s seditious, perhaps even treasonous orders to nullify the Electoral College votes sent to Congress on January 6, 2021; to suspend a purely constitutional formality, as the President of the Senate, of certifying the presidency of Joe Biden. Pence went against Trump’s seditious instructions and carried out his constitutional duty at the risk to his own life and that of his family.

However Pence has behaved in the past, and whatever he will achieve in the future, he will always remain the hero of January 6, who saved the nation’s democracy and denied Trump the dictatorial power which he craves.

So the question is: who will be on the Republican Party ticket for Vice-President if Trump is the nominee? There are a few – McCarthy, Jordan, Gaetz, Hawley, to name a few, who may fit the sycophantic bill, who will follow Trump’s every order to ensure he remains in power, probably for life.

But the candidate whose name is being bandied around, who will stop at nothing to show her cultish devotion to Trump, who will fall on her sword for the Fuhrer, is QAnon lunatic, Marjorie Taylor Greene. Yes, the same Greene who has labeled herself a Christian Nationalist – a Nazi in Hitler’s Germany – who deplores the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state.

She recently called for a “national divorce” between liberal and conservative states based on religious and racial criteria, the sort of secession envisaged during the Civil War. However, of late, she has been trying to re-brand herself as a politician who can act as a bridge between the party’s radical right wing hard liners, whom she currently leads, and its establishment. Trump has not publicly given any indication that he is seriously considering a vice-presidential pick, but it is rumored that MTG is on the short-list.

President Donald Trump and Vice President Marjorie Taylor Greene. Heil Hitler!