DETROIT – I know you must be tired of politics, campaigning, and being deluged with endless commercials and email blasts from candidates begging for money. And I expect you may hate me for saying what I am about to say, but this much is true:
The 2024 presidential campaign is already under way — and is likely to get gradually more intense all year. Yes, I am aware that what seemed like the longest midterm election in the history of the world is technically still going on, and won’t be over until after the runoff in Georgia next Tuesday between incumbent U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, the Democrat, and Republican Herschel Walker.
Not that it will change much. No matter how that turns out, Democrats are going to control the U.S. Senate, and Republicans will have a very narrow majority in the House.
That likely means a lot of gridlock, frustration, and even more focus on the next election, in which both parties will promise to fix everything, if only we give them power — and the presidency.
So to save time, and allow you to pay attention to other things, let’s cut to the big question: Who will be elected President of the United States a little less than two years from now?
Spoiler alert: I don’t know.
I have been covering, studying and writing about politics for many years, and I don’t know who will win either party’s nomination. I don’t know everyone who will be running, and I don’t know if there will be any significant third party or independent candidates.
There’s as much or more uncertainty about how this will all play out than there has ever been in any election in my lifetime. But I do know this: If I were kidnapped today, taken away at gunpoint and forced to bet everything I had on a candidate, I wouldn’t hesitate.
I would put my money on President Biden.
Now, there are a lot of reasons to think Joe Biden shouldn’t run for reelection, and some reason to think he won’t. Most of all, he just turned 80. When Michigan’s U.S. Sen. Carl Levin turned 80, he decided to retire, even though he looked and acted more like 60. He was immensely popular, and could have easily won another term.
But when I asked him why he wasn’t running, he said “Sure, I feel great now, but I don’t know what I will be like at 86.” Tragically, he was more right than he knew; he was dying of lung cancer by then.
Jimmy Carter, now at 98 our oldest-ever living ex-president, has said he couldn’t have handled the duties of president at 80.
However, people age differently; Konrad Adenauer was still a very vigorous chancellor of West Germany well into his 80s, and despite nasty rumors on social media, there’s no sign President Biden has any cognitive impairment, at least not yet.
But the biggest reason to think Biden will run again is that power is hard to give up. In the last century, the only presidents who did not run for a second elected term were Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman, and Lyndon Johnson, all of whom served a large portion of the earlier terms of predecessors who died in office.
Presidents have a way of convincing themselves they are indispensable, and Biden knows the moment he announces he is a lame duck he will instantly lose a lot of influence. Since there is no obvious successor, half a dozen prominent Democrats would likely begin running, dividing the party on a number of key issues.
By the way, if he does run, he is unlikely to face a serious challenge from anyone in his own party; no incumbent President in modern history has ever failed to be renominated.
Republicans, on the other hand, face different hurdles. If, as it now seems, there’s a battle for the nomination between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former President Trump, all indications are that it’s likely to not only be nasty, but not apt to end with handshakes, hugs, and pledges of unity.
Should Trump fail to be nominated for a third time, he has hinted he might run as an independent, which would probably doom the Republicans. If he is nominated, it is entirely possible that someone like outgoing congresswoman Liz Cheney could launch a third-party bid on behalf of Republicans who can’t stomach Trump.
Of course, whatever happens may and likely will follow an entirely different script. Nobody thought in 2014 that Donald Trump would be the next President; and in 2018, few believed Joe Biden would be elected two years later. Unforeseen economic and world events are bound to play some role in what happens.
So may other things. On November 3, 1963, nobody imagined that exactly a year later, Lyndon Johnson would be elected, let alone by one of history’s biggest landslides. John Adams famously said of the vice-presidency “In this I am nothing, but I may be everything.”
Should history’s oldest U.S. president become ill and resign before the next election, the equation will be dominated by President Kamala Harris, now a youthful 58, by today’s political standards.
Odds are that politically, the next two years will be a wild and all-consuming ride. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
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