(Washington) He had the “intention”, it’s now official: Joe Biden, 80, announced his candidacy for the 2024 presidential election on Tuesday, which could see him face Donald Trump again.
“I’m running for re-election,” Trump said in a video message posted to Twitter, opening with footage from the January 6, 2021 Capitol storming.
“Let’s get the job done,” Mr. Biden said, emphasizing what he said was an ongoing fight for freedom and democracy.
The main handicap of the Democrat, whose popularity rating remains poor, is his age.
Never before had Americans elected such an old president, nor had a candidate asked them to leave him the keys to the White House until he turned 86.
The president underwent, in November 2021 and again in February 2023, health checks which concluded that he was “in good health”.
Joe Biden certainly displays unusual endurance, juggling between international crises and major reforms.
His trip to Kyiv, an unprecedented initiative for the Head of State surrounded by the strictest security arrangements in the world, was a spectacular reminder of his role as the architect of the Western response after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
And he never ceases to recall the very ambitious reforms adopted on his initiative to reindustrialize America, attract cutting-edge technologies, accelerate the energy transition, renovate infrastructures and “give some air”, as he puts it. often said, to the middle class.
Still, in a country where image is everything, where a candidate must overflow with vitality, the president cannot hide his age.
His demeanor is more cautious, his speech sometimes muddled and he has moments of confusion that the Republican opposition seizes on to question his mental acuity.
But Joe Biden has noted that, according to the polls, the candidacy of his predecessor Donald Trump, 76 years old and officially in the race since last November, is no more enthusiastic than his.
The Democrat therefore believes that if he once beat his Republican predecessor, a divisive figure par excellence, he can do it again by highlighting his good-natured personality and his unifying program.
Joe Biden is also counting on his balance sheet and on the flourishing health of the economy and employment. None of this is much to impress US households, which are struggling with a sharp surge in inflation.
The Biden team is betting, however, that in two years, renovated roads, cheaper drugs, factory openings will be credited to the Democratic candidate.
Joe Biden, who campaigned in 2020 to “save the soul of America”, should this time insist more on the social and economic dimension of his project.
Since the beginning of the year, he has been hammering his will to restore his “dignity” to the “forgotten” popular America, disturbed by globalization, which Donald Trump has been able to seduce in part.
One big unknown remains: what would Joe Biden’s chances be if he faced a younger opponent in November 2024?
The name of 44-year-old hard-right Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been circulating widely. But he has not yet declared himself.
Less well known, Republican Nikki Haley, already campaigning, calls for the emergence of a “new generation”. In particular, it calls for intellectual capacity tests for all politicians over the age of 75.
