The New York Times article quoting numerous Democrats who say that Biden is too old to run for re-election in 2024 seems to have shaken loose a lot of latent opposition to Biden in the party.
One prominent radical group, RootsAction.org, announced that it would oppose Biden’s renomination in 2024. They will spend “six figures” on a“#DontRunJoe” campaign targeting early primary states. RootsAction.org is especially prominent on abortion and gun issues, has a mailing list of more than one million followers, and supported Bernie Sanders for president in 2020.
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The announcement comes on the heels of a new Sienna poll showing that two-thirds of Democratic voters say they want someone else to be the party’s nominee in 2024.
“Unfortunately, President Biden has been neither bold nor inspiring,” RootsAction said in a prepared statement shared first with POLITICO. “And his prospects for winning re-election appear to be bleak. With so much at stake, making him the Democratic Party’s standard bearer in 2024 would be a tragic mistake.”
It’s possible that Biden, if he runs in 2024, would quickly coalesce support from throughout the party. He accomplished that in 2020, largely winning over progressives after defeating Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), among other liberals, in the primary. Sanders, the progressive icon RootsAction initially supported, has said he will support Biden if he runs again.
Sanders would be 82 if elected president in 2024. What’s worse for the radicals is that there’s no clear successor to his progressive crown. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is too young and far too much of a loose cannon to be the Democratic nominee. She has also angered half the Democratic Party by supporting primary opponents over long-established Democratic congressmen.
“Our immediate goal within the Democratic Party is to ‘dump Biden,’ much as the anti-Vietnam-War forces among Democrats set out to ‘dump Johnson’ in 1967, which led antiwar candidates Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy to enter the race,” RootsAction says in a FAQ on its “DontRunJoe” website.
“If you’re in touch with Democratic Party activists, the frustration is palpable,” said Jeff Cohen, a co-founder of RootsAction. “Biden appears to be dithering while progressive achievements just go out the window, from abortion rights to the Clean Air Act.”
After Biden was elected, progressive groups like RootsAction trumpeted a new “progressive era” in American politics. Less than two years later, Democrats are fighting for survival, and progressives have largely been discredited. They are dreaming if they believe Democrats are paying attention to them.
But other, more mainstream Democrats don’t want Biden to run because, regardless of if the president has been neither “bold nor inspiring,” he’s been incompetent and weak. And that’s enough for party leaders to start gaming out an exit scenario for Biden that wouldn’t completely humiliate him.
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