Dems preparing in case Biden decides not to seek a second term

While the White House has assured the American public repeatedly that President Biden would seek a second term, and the president has made claims to that effect, a new report out from Politico states that "the president no longer seems absolutely certain to go for a second term..." This as he makes promises for a new forever war in Europe, backed by the US.

In the event that the current leader of the Democrat party does not run, the party is "quietly preparing" for how they would handle the next election. On the GOP side, former president Donald Trump has not only announced his run for the 2024 contest, but has been out on the campaign trail for months. Biden and the Dems, meanwhile, have had "a less-than-robust fundraising total" for the frist quarter of 2023.



"Without being overly aggressive, everyone’s still keeping the motor running just in case and they’re not being bashful about it," a Democratic donor said of a call with staffers for one of the 2020 candidates, Politico reports.

"On the phone, everyone is very clear and has the same sentence up front: 'If Joe Biden is running, no one will work harder than me, but if he's not, for whatever reason, we just want to make sure we’re prepared for the good of the party.'"

Certainly the field of contenders is well-populated with eager aspirants to the nation's highest executive office. California's pretty-boy governor Gavin Newsom seems poised to enter the ring, as does Illinois' JB Pritzker and Phil Murphy of New Jersey. Long-time Democrat senators, too, could be making moves, with equally aged Bernie Sanders potentially coming back for more after losing the nomination in 2020, and Amy Klobuchar seeming to consider taking a stab at it.

Pritzer, it is reported, has kept his campaign staff on alert, just as he has been elected to a second term and has publicly said that he supports Biden. Newsom reportedly has his campaign staff at the ready as well, and Murphy "who’s chairing the Democratic Governors Association, is in the same boat as the others, having vowed to back Biden while indicating an interest in a campaign should a lane open for him."

Klobuchar held a fundraiser in Philadelphia, far from her constituency in Minnesota. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts may also revisit a run for president, though that's unlikely, a source told Politico. She was on the crowded Democrat platform going into the 2020 primaries. She has since said she would back Biden, but has been less willing to support current VP Kamala Harris. And if there's an opening, Sanders stands at the ready.

Biden has not yet announced a run for a second term, and he turned 80 in November. Since then, there have been inklings that he intends to announce a campaign for 2024, but that has not yet happened. In fact, while advisers had indicated that an announcement was coming in February, that has now been pushed off to April.

His trip to Kyiv, which came as a surprise to the American public, took a great deal of White House focus leading up to it, during which domestic matters took a back seat as he prepared to meeting with President Zelensky, engage in photo opps, and speak to a crowd of supporters in Poland.

Now, as he returns to the US, and a public that watched that European pomp and circumstance while being aware that Biden has essentially ignored an unfolding ecological disaster in East Palestine, Ohio after a toxic chemical spill due to a train derailment, questions of a presidential run will have to be answered. Trump was on the ground in Ohio this week doing what he could for residents there.

Politico writes "...his indecision has resulted in an awkward deep-freeze across the party — in which some potential presidential aspirants and scores of major donors are strategizing and even developing a Plan B while trying to remain respectful and publicly supportive of the 80-year-old president."

Part of what's keeping Biden's announcement at bay, say advisers, is that they don't feel an urgency to confront Trump on the campaign trail. During the 2020 election, Biden would barely consent to engage Trump in debate, and the two only appeared on the same stage to face off once.

Biden barely left his home state of Delaware, while Trump went across the country rallying supporters. Biden appeared terrified of the pandemic while Trump appeared strong and steadfast. Still, it was Biden who was inaugurated and took office in 2021.

Noe Biden is in Europe while Trump is appealing to the voters and speaking to the needs of Americans as opposed to European or global concerns. Three people closely allied to Biden, as reported by Politico, have said "he has talked only sparingly about a possible campaign."

A potential Biden slogan, launched at the recent State of the Union Address, was for the administration to "finish the job" they started when they came into office. Since then, Biden has shut down oil and energy pipelines in the US and Europe, demanded excessive climate spending through what's called the Inflation Reduction Act, and pushed for Americans to switch to electric vehicles and move away from gas powered cars.

He pushes for rebuilding the nation from the "bottom up and the middle out" while implementing huge diversity, equity and inclusion progams that intend to control outcomes, with little attention to process. Many of the president's programs are entirely opposite to that motto, and are top down approaches designed to fix probems by focusing on results and not how those results are obtained.

"We're not going to have a campaign until we have to,” a Biden adviser said, per Politico. "He's the president. Why does he need to dive into an election early?"

When asked by Telemundo as to when he would announce, Biden said "I'm just not ready to make it."