President Biden is telling confidantes—including former President Obama—that he plans to run for reelection, reports the Hill. The story quotes an anonymous insider who says that Biden, despite cratering poll numbers, believes he is the only Democrat who would be able to defeat former President Trump. "He's clearly letting everyone know," says the source, one of two quoted in the piece. Biden, who would be 82 at the start of a second term should he win, has previously said he would be "lucky" to face Trump in the general election. But as Mike Allen of Axios reports, the potential rematch is raising the prospect of a "nightmare" scenario that has begun to worry top Democrats.
The fear is not just that Trump would win, but that his victory would be accompanied by a veto-proof majority in the Senate for Republicans. That's on top of Democrats' fear that Republicans will reclaim the House in this year's midterms. "Democrats need to wake up, because right now they’re sleepwalking into disaster, with no plan to avert it," writes Simon Bazelon at Slow Boring, a piece cited by Allen. Biden pollster John Anzalone tells the Politico Playbook that he does not know if the president will indeed run again, but he thinks Biden might be right about one thing.
"A lot of us feel that if Trump runs, there’s no one else that could beat Trump [other] than Joe Biden," says Anzalone. "You go head-to-head and Joe Biden’s always ahead of him. Not by a lot—one or two points. … Even at his lowest approval rating, he still beats Donald Trump.” But his assessment of the nearer future, the midterms, is more sobering for Democrats: "It’s the worst political environment that I’ve lived through in 30 years of being a political consultant." (More Election 2024 stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
