President Joe Biden formally announced on Tuesday that he would seek a second term, arguing that American democracy still faces a profound threat from former President Donald Trump as he set up the possibility of a climactic rematch between the two next year.
In a video flashing images of a mob of Trump supporters storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the president said that the “fight for our democracy” has “been the work of my first term” but is incomplete while his predecessor mounts a comeback campaign for his old office that Biden suggested would endanger fundamental rights.
“Around the country, MAGA extremists are lining up to take on those bedrock freedoms away,” Biden said, using Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan to describe the former president’s allies. “Cutting Social Security that you’ve paid for your entire life while cutting taxes for the very wealthy. 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.
“When I ran for president four years ago,” he added, “I said we were in a battle for the soul of America. And we still are.”
The official declaration finally ended any lingering suspense over Biden’s intentions and effectively cleared the way to another nomination for the president, barring unforeseen developments. While he had repeatedly and consistently said he intended to run, Biden stoked renewed speculation by delaying his kickoff for months. Now his team can assemble the formal structure of a campaign organization and raise money to finance it.
Biden tapped Julie Chavez Rodriguez, a senior White House adviser and granddaughter of the iconic labor leader Cesar Chavez, as his campaign manager. Quentin Fulks, a Democratic operative who most recently ran Sen. Raphael Warnock’s 2022 reelection campaign in Georgia, will serve as her principal deputy. But the operation is expected to be overseen from the White House by top presidential aides.
Although he described himself as “a bridge” to the next generation during his 2020 campaign, a comment that some interpreted as a hint that he would serve only one term, Biden concluded that he was not in fact ready to hand over the torch yet. His decision was fueled in part, aides said, by his antipathy for Trump and his belief that he is the Democrat best positioned to keep the criminally indicted and twice-impeached former president from recapturing the White House.
In offering himself as a candidate again, Biden is asking Americans to trust him with the powers of the commander in chief well into his ninth decade. At age 80, Biden is already the oldest president in American history, and, if he were to win, he would be 86 at the end of a second term, nearly nine years older than Ronald Reagan was when he left the White House in 1989. Trump, no youngster at 76, would himself outlast every president by age other than Biden if he were restored to the Oval Office and finished his new term at 82.
