A challenge requires a challenger — and all the Democrats being discussed as potential primary opponents to President Joe Biden tell AWN they’re ruling out runs and warning others to follow suit.
The chatter is fed by Democratic officials and party leaders who have begun to doubt that Biden is, as he’s insisted privately to donors and others, their strongest candidate to beat Donald Trump — or another GOP candidate — in 2024. And it’s being propelled even more by the 79-year-old President’s age, which has prompted questions about what kind of campaign schedule he’d be able to keep up.
Fear runs deep of yet another unfavorable Biden comparison to Jimmy Carter, who survived a 1980 primary challenge from Ted Kennedy but not the lasting wound going into the general election. Democrats privately hoping Biden might reverse course and not run are petrified that they’re backbiting their way into allowing Trump and Trumpism back into power.
That hasn’t stopped muted worries from going around the West Wing, according to four aides familiar with the conversations, that someone may yet emerge ahead of the President’s planned spring 2023 formal reelection campaign launch. Biden advisers expect to stick to that no matter what happens, including if Trump decides to jump in early.
“Nothing about our timeline changes, but we’re prepared if he decides to run,” one person familiar with the Biden team’s political planning said about Trump.
But even Rep. Ro Khanna, the California congressman and former Bernie Sanders campaign co-chair, who first won his seat by beating an incumbent in a primary, said he won’t entertain the thought of jumping in against Biden, although he’s aware he’s being whispered about — so much that a close friend had a dream over July Fourth weekend that he did it.
“Absolutely not,” Khanna told AWN. “I plan to support (Biden) because of the danger that Donald Trump poses. I would certainly not do anything to weaken him, and I hope no one else will do anything to weaken him. He’s still the safe brand in the midwestern states to make sure Trump is kept far away from the Oval Office.”
That also goes for California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has been causing the most antsy whispers from the Biden orbit with his comments calling out a lack of Democratic action and energy and his buying a July Fourth ad in Florida hitting Gov. Ron DeSantis, a prospective 2024 GOP candidate. Newsom, who’s facing reelection in November, compared the Democratic dynamics to those he initially faced in his recall election last year, when he and advisers worked to scare off several Democrats who’d looked at jumping in against him.
“The success of our recall was about unifying around our party and defining the opposition. We need to unify the Democratic Party and not destroy ourselves from within,” Newsom said. “We need to have our President’s back. But we also have to get on the field. He needs troops. He has to govern. Our job is to organize, and it’s to have his back.”
The same goes for J.B. Pritzker, the billionaire first-term Illinois governor who also drew some behind-the-scenes brushback from Biden world by delivering a speech about his exhaustion with the Democratic status quo in famous first-presidential primary state New Hampshire. The Democrat, who’s running for a second term in November, lit up even more speculation with his response to the Highland Park shooting in his state earlier this month, which was more forceful than Biden’s.
Biden “has said he’s running for reelection and I support that,” Pritzker told AWN, adding that though he thinks some other opponent may yet emerge, Biden “will win the nomination, and yet, it’ll be Ted Kennedy running against Jimmy Carter … They will lose and they will take away from the President. That’s not what we need right now.”
The speculation is at a high enough fever that when Pete Buttigieg’s PAC reactivated on Twitter at the end of June to endorse a few candidates for US House and state legislature, several plugged-in operatives began to wonder if this was the first step in the transportation secretary relaunching as a candidate. His attendance at Democratic National Committee events and meetings with a few potential future donors only sparked more talk.
But there’s nothing to that, according to a Transportation Department spokesperson, who said, “Buttigieg has had no involvement in Win the Era PAC since his nomination as Secretary. He is 100 percent focused on his job at DOT, including implementing President Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure law.”
Some have talked about Jared Polis, the Colorado governor known for straying from what became Democratic orthodoxy on Covid-19 lockdowns and is facing voters this fall. He has a personal fortune, several operatives noted, and while not enough to self-fund, enough to possibly seed a campaign and feel confident that he wouldn’t have to worry about endangering future job prospects. Polis campaign spokesperson Amber Miller said he’s “not considering anything like that and is focused on running the state of Colorado. If he is re-elected, he plans to serve his entire term as governor of Colorado.”
Vice President Kamala Harris has repeatedly said Biden intends to run and that she’d be his running mate, and no one around her or anywhere else believes she’d be able to pull off a campaign that started by breaking with him.
Sanders, the Vermont senator who has twice sought the Democratic nod, told AWN last month he would not run against Biden. A spokesperson for Sen. Elizabeth Warren, meanwhile, told AWN that nothing has changed since the Massachusetts Democrat told NBC News that she’s not running for president in 2024 and would be supporting Biden. Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ top political adviser and former campaign manager, said trying to run by appealing to his wing of the party “would be an almost insurmountable climb to get to the top of that mountain, given that Bernie has said he’s going to be supporting Joe Biden if he runs for re-election.”
New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who defeated a member of Democratic House leadership to come to Congress, told late night host Stephen Colbert at the end of June that she was more focused on preserving American democracy than presidential speculation.
But she’s also held off on saying she would support Biden for reelection, noting that the President hasn’t said he’s running himself.
Asked by AWN if that left space for her to consider running a youthful, progressive primary against him, a spokesperson for the congresswoman didn’t return requests for comment.
