Biden Announces for Reelection; Trump Is Already Running. Sigh.

Joe Biden announced his reelection bid in a video released on Tuesday¹, saying “It’s time to finish the job.”  The snarky response would be: Well, it makes sense that you need more time.  Things take longer when you get old.  

Others have already announced their campaign for 2024.  Former President Trump may have been the first, announcing in November of last year, though I am not sure whether he is running for election in November, 2024 or he is still trying to get the “stolen” election of November of 2020 “corrected” so he can take over right now. 

All of these announcements make me think of 1968.  It was a different time.  (There are people who are grandparents today who weren’t even born then.)  All of the various campaign financing laws make it generally a good idea to declare earlier instead of later now.  Not so back then.  In 1967, it was pretty clear Richard Nixon was going to run.  He had crisscrossed the country for Republican Congressional candidates in 1966.  So it wasn’t e surprising when he announced his bid.  But it was surprising he did it on February 2 – of 1968.  Nixon spent 1967 traveling around the world; he wrote an article, “Asia After Vietnam” for Foreign Affairs².  He also spent time thinking.  He figured he had enough visibility he didn’t need to declare right away and that other people, such as George Romney, Governor of Michigan, might make enough mistakes in their campaigns that he should just get out of their way.

Apparently, President Biden doesn’t feel that way.  It looks like he doesn’t want to give other candidates a chance to make mistakes, maybe figuring they’d might make fewer mistakes than he does, so he better not give them a chance.

It also appears President Biden really wants former President Trump to be his opponent, figuring that Trump can’t win and that he would ensure a Biden victory.  That is an interesting thought, especially if you think former President Trump is as bad, and dangerous, as Democrats say (and I believe) because it is exactly what Hillary Clinton supporters were thinking/saying in 2016 and look how that turned out.

There is also the risk that President Biden/Democrats will help former President Trump lock up the GOP nomination and then something will happen next spring that will force President Biden out of the race and, because it would be so late, give the Democratic nomination to Kamala Harris.  That wouldn’t be good.

In any case, we will see what happens – and long for the days of yesteryear when the Republicans had a ticket of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.
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¹ In addition to being our granddaughter Ruth’s birthday, April 25 is also the 107th anniversary of the landings at Gallipoli in World War I.  I assume President Biden is hoping for a better result.
² And, in his case, he really wrote it.