Biden will be praying for a Trump rematch

As Joe Biden tours Northern Ireland this week to mark the twenty-five-year anniversary of the ​​Good Friday Agreement, the big question is not what he might say or do while abroad, but rather what he will decide to do back at home. Will he be running for president again?

The question emerged after Biden told NBC’s Al Roker on Easter Monday that he has “plans’ to run again, though he won’t be formally announcing anything yet. These hints have been dropping for months, from both Biden and his wife. But others are more skeptical. The simple fact of his age — Biden is the oldest president in American history — and the pressures of the job are clearly taking a toll on him. Is he really ready to commit to another four-year term? And if so, is it not strange that he hasn’t formally announced yet?

There are some technical reasons he may be holding back his official announcement, including deadlines for disclosing campaign donations (Biden will want these figures to look as impressive as possible before they are publicly analyzed and dissected). 

But I suspect the overarching reason that no official announcement has been made yet is that there is simply no rush to do so. Declaring one’s candidacy is a much more important moment when your party is out of power, or in an election year where a two-term president is on the way out and both parties have to battle over their candidates. At the moment, no serious contender has announced they will be running against Biden. So long as no one truly threatens to announce their primary bid, Biden can take all the time he wants before he announces formally that he’s running again.

And as things stand now, the results of the midterms last year combined with the abysmal alternatives in the Democratic Party bode well for him. It’s no secret that the party has been split on the idea of a second term for Biden, even before he took his oath in January 2021. But for those who hoped he’d be a transition candidate, no one obvious has emerged as his successor. Vice President Kamala Harris is just as unpopular as Biden: the average poll ratings actually show her favorability rankings several percentage points lower than the president’s. 

Meanwhile any Democrat who fancied their chances against the president will have taken pause, at least temporarily, last fall when the midterm elections delivered much better results for the Democrats than had been expected. The rejection of so many Trumpian candidates on the ballot saw the Democrats keep control of the Senate. While the Republicans did manage to win back the House of Representatives, it was not the “red wave” that many were predicting, handing Biden a better midterm election than Bill Clinton or Barack Obama experienced.

This doesn’t just grant Biden boasting rights: it has allowed his team to double-down on the narrative that Biden is an election winner (even if practically speaking the results were less about great enthusiasm for the Democrats, and more about rejecting the alternative). Still, it has seriously empowered the president’s hand. The question has quickly changed, from who the Democratic National Convention might back to challenge Biden, to what Biden will decide to do with his right of first refusal. Most signs point to Biden wanting to run again. 

There are, however, two major caveats. The first would be a serious health issue, or a serious public gaffe that brought concerns about his age permanently under the spotlight. The second would be a faulty calculation about who his opponent will be.

The assumption at the moment seems to be that if Biden runs, he’s running against Donald Trump. That’s a campaign formula Biden’s team knows and understands — and, crucially, believes they can repeat from 2020 (whether this is misplaced confidence is another question). But what if the Republicans don’t choose Trump? The GOP is still waiting on some rather weighty candidate announcements, including Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who has yet to formally declare. Biden’s waiting game may well be rooted in curiosity about who else he might be facing, on stage in the debates and then on polling day.

No doubt he’s hoping to face Trump again, so he can present himself as the more palatable option, that makes many Americans nostalgic for how American politics used to operate. But if there’s decent reason to think he might face a younger, less polarizing Republican, his own calculation might change.

This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.