With the 2024 election season already under way, Joe Biden has faced questions over whether he is best suited to represent the Democratic party at the top of the ticket next year. Surveys show that Americans fret over his age, as Biden would be 86 years old at the end of his second term.
Progressives have previously shied away from offering a full-throated endorsement of Biden’s re-election bid. But those whispers quieted to near silence at House Democrats’ issues conference in Baltimore, Maryland, this week. Rather than wringing their hands over the president’s anticipated announcement, House Democrats from across the party’s ideological spectrum embraced the idea of Biden’s re-election.
As Biden prepares to formally launch his campaign in the coming weeks, he appears set to enter the 2024 contest with the enthusiastic and unified backing of his congressional allies.
“I think he will win. I think he’s our strongest candidate,” Congressman Pete Aguilar, the House Democratic caucus chair from California, said on Thursday at an event with Punchbowl News. Aguilar added: “I think that he can and should run, and he’s going to have the support of the House Democratic caucus.”
That sentiment was echoed by progressive leaders in the House, who have occasionally clashed with Biden over policy matters. Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), said on Thursday that she hopes Biden will announce his re-election campaign sooner rather than later. Citing Biden’s efforts to address the climate crisis and raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans and corporations, Jayapal complimented the president on delivering results for his supporters.
“He’s been faithful to his electorate that elected him – to progressives who turned out in key states like Georgia and Arizona, movements that did that and the ideas that drove them,” Jayapal said.
Jayapal’s praise was even more noteworthy because of some CPC members’ past comments about the 2024 race. Asked last June about the next presidential contest, progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez declined to endorse Biden.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” Ocasio-Cortez said at the time. “We should endorse when we get to it.”
But even Ocasio-Cortez appears to have shifted her tone in recent weeks. While saying that she will still closely watch the presidential primary as it unfolds, Ocasio-Cortez told CNN last month: “I would enthusiastically support [Biden] if he were the Democratic nominee.”
The results of the midterm elections appear to have shifted many Democrats’ thinking on 2024. Although Democrats lost the House in November, the widely expected red wave failed to materialize, leaving Republicans with a narrow majority in the lower chamber. In the Senate, Democrats even managed to gain a seat.
Multiple Democratic leaders said at the issues conference that they interpreted the midterm results as a vindication of Biden’s presidency and legislative achievements.
“We had unexpected results last November because we put people over politics and explained time and time again exactly what we were doing,” Congressman Jim Clyburn, the assistant House minority leader, said on Wednesday. “We are going to further that.”
Biden and congressional Democratic leaders repeatedly referenced the need to “finish the job” of the work done over the first two years of his presidency. The theme seems likely to play a major role in Biden’s re-election campaign messaging.
“As much as we’ve done, we have a lot of unfinished business as well to finish the job that needs to be done,” Biden told House Democrats on Wednesday. “But we’ve got more to do … We’ve just got to keep going.”
Although Biden declined to make his 2024 plans official this week, recent signs indicate that a formal announcement could come in the next several weeks.
“It’s Joe’s decision,” the first lady, Jill Biden, told CNN late last month. “And we support whatever he wants to do. If he’s in, we’re there. If he wants to do something else, we’re there too.” Asked whether there was any chance her husband may not seek a second term, the first lady replied: “Not in my book.”
Although Biden would enter the 2024 race with the strong backing of Democratic leaders, the president still faces several liabilities in his quest for the nomination. Biden’s approval rating remains underwater, as more than half of Americans disapprove of his job performance, according to FiveThirtyEight’s polling average. One survey taken by the Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research in late January found that just 37% of Democrats want Biden to seek a second term. The self-help author Marianne Williamson has also launched a long-shot bid for the Democratic nomination.
Despite those challenges, House Democrats showed little interest in considering another candidate for 2024, instead arguing that Biden would be an asset in their efforts to recapture the majority next year. Republicans currently represent 18 House districts that Biden carried in 2020, as several Democratic leaders noted at the issues conference, and they believe the president’s re-election campaign could help the party swing those seats.
“In those 18 districts that are held by Biden Republicans, he’s the best [candidate] in terms of his message and how he approaches this and the coalition that he built in 2020 coming back even stronger in 2024,” said Congresswoman Annie Kuster, chair of the center-left New Democrat Coalition.
Even Democrats who faced tough races in 2022 – and will probably deal with close contests again in 2024 – voiced enthusiasm. Congresswoman Lauren Underwood, co-chair of the House Democratic policy and communications committee, appeared at an event with Biden in her home state of Illinois days before polls closed in November, as election forecasters predicted her seat could be up for grabs. Underwood ultimately won the race by 8 points.
“We are so proud of the progress that the Biden-Harris administration [has] made,” Underwood said on Thursday. “I certainly am very pleased to have the opportunity to be on a ballot with President Biden in 2024 – unequivocally, full stop.”
Echoing many other Democrats’ message during the conference, Underwood celebrated her party’s unified message, and it is clear that she can already envision a positive outcome in 2024 with Biden at the top of the ticket.
“House Democrats are united behind a single mission: delivering for our majorities – sorry, delivering for our communities,” Underwood said, eliciting laughter from reporters. She then admitted: “I’ve got the majority on my mind.”
