The 2024 Democratic Presidential Campaign During Biden’s First Year in Office: He Hasn’t Posted His Candidate For A Second Term

The official declaration ended the suspense over Mr. Biden’s intentions, and paved the way for another nomination for the president. He persistently said he intended to run, but then delayed his announcement for months. His team can raise money for a campaign after they have a structure in place.

The campaign manager for Biden’s campaign, and the principal deputy campaign manager, were also announced on Tuesday.

Biden has been saying he intended to run for a second term since his earliest days in office. Democratic voters haven’t really warmed to him. Biden’s popularity plunged last year, pressured by concerned over the withdrawal from Afghanistan, then by soaring consumer prices.

At 80, Biden is the oldest person to serve as president, a point that has given Democrats pause, questioning, at times, whether he gives them the best chance at winning. A serious challenge for the nomination is not likely to arise from the former vice president.

The announcement comes four years to the day after Biden announced his candidacy in a video. When there were 19 other candidates already in the crowded race, Biden will not face any serious Democratic challengers this time.

After months of hinting at a likely bid, President Biden officially announced on Tuesday that he will seek a second term as president of the United States in the 2024 election.

Biden ran his first campaign on a platform of fighting for “the soul of our nation,” arguing that Trump had stirred up racist and antidemocratic sentiment that was hurting the country.

Half of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said in a February NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll that they had a better chance with Biden than someone else. That was a reversal from the year before, when a majority of people said they would have a better chance with someone else.

That alternative, however, never emerged. Vice President Harris and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, for example, have had consistently worse favorability ratings.

Ronna McDaniel, Republican National Committee chairwoman, said in a statement that Biden is out of touch and blamed him for inflation, crime rates and the drug trade.

Climate and health care measures in the Inflation Reduction Act have been popular with Biden’s policies. He’s been able to make a strong case for himself as a candidate for the presidency of the United States, said a Democratic strategist.

But the pandemic is largely in the political rearview mirror, and the uncertain economy dominates as Americans’ top concern. The economy is an area of vulnerability for Biden. A March NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found just 38% approved of his handling of the economy, including just 28% of independents.

Overall, Biden’s approval rating, like Trump’s before him, has lagged in the low-40s. It nose-dived several months into his first year in office after the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Biden’s 2024 video features an image of Trump with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a onetime ally and now likely challenger in the Republican race — along with an image of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. — as Biden describes what he calls “MAGA extremists” who he said are “dictating what health care decisions women can make, banning books, and telling people who they can love. All while making it more difficult for you to be able to vote.”

Biden ended Tuesday’s campaign announcement with the phrase “let’s finish the job,” a line he first tested out in his State of the Union address this year.

Biden repeated the phrase 12 times during that speech in February, referring to rebuilding the middle class, capping the cost of insulin, expanding Medicaid, acting on climate change, increasing taxes on billionaires, strengthening antitrust enforcement, getting more affordable housing, funding universal pre-K, increasing vocational job opportunities, pushing for police reform and banning assault-style weapons.

Jim Messina, a former campaign manager for President Barack Obama, thinks that’s likely to happen if Trump is the Republican nominee.

In his video, he said his fight in 2020 to restore the “soul of the nation” was still incomplete, and at risk. At his speech, the biggest applause lines were his vows to defend the country from various perils, not any remarks presenting an uplifting vision for the future.

Cristbal Alex, who worked for Mr. Biden in both his White House and 2020 campaign, said it had been a problem for a long time. “The country remains on the cliff. And the election of Donald Trump or a similar MAGA type would push the country over the brink.”

The Life of a Re-Electron: A Call from the President’s Counsel to the Post-Pandemic Era

The re- elections staff is still being built out, even though some elements of the campaign weren’t completed until last weekend. Representative Veronica Escobar, a Texas Democrat, said she had received a call from Mr. Biden on Sunday asking her to be a campaign co-chair.

Mr. Biden won the 2020 presidential election even though he was campaigning most of the year from his Delaware home because of the Pandemic, and that made his team sensitive to questions about age and the rigor of his schedule. The White House has compiled a chart tracking his travel so far in 2023, and it shows that his number of trips outpaced former President Barack Obama’s in the same time period in 2011.

With the widespread end of coronavirus precautions, Democrats are predicting a return to normalcy on the campaign trail. The 2020 race “will have turned out to be, I think, an atypical election,” said Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey, the chairman of the Democratic Governors Association.

But Mr. Biden’s campaign is hardly seeking to have him dominate the headlines. As he has traveled the country recently to promote his legislative accomplishments, the nation’s attention has often focused elsewhere, especially on the never-ending legal and political drama encircling his predecessor.