President Joe Biden says he intends to run for reelection in 2024. And that Vice President Kamala Harris will again be on the ticket with him. In public, Biden’s top Democratic primary rivals from 2020 say the proper, if slightly less than definitive, things. (Bernie Sanders: “I think next time around you’re going to see another candidate carrying the progressive banner.” Elizabeth Warren: “Joe Biden is running for president, and I expect to support him.”)
So this is going to be a very short story. Right?
Maybe if Biden’s job approval numbers hadn’t started sinking in July, gone underwater in August, and plunged, by several counts, into the weak low 40s as the new year began. Perhaps if COVID cases and inflation hadn’t been trending in the opposite direction during that same stretch, the latter boosted in February by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And certainly if, when the next presidential campaign is in full swing, Biden was not going to be closing in on his 82nd birthday. “I’m just going to be brutally honest about this,” says a national Democratic strategist. “But I don’t think he’s physically up to being able to run again. I’m optimistic that by the summer of 2024 the country is going to be back to 95 percent normality—and he’s going to have to run a vigorous, hard campaign that he didn’t in 2020. He’s not going to be able to stay in the basement.”
So a behind-the-scenes Democratic conversation is becoming increasingly active and anxious: If Biden does not run, whether for political or personal reasons, what then? “Plan B,” says Cornell Belcher, a pollster and adviser on both of Barack Obama’s successful runs for the White House, “is complete fucking chaos in the Democratic primary.”
Biden’s number two, Harris, would start with history on her side. “Look at the modern era,” a well-connected Democratic consultant says. “No sitting vice president who has publicly sought their party’s nomination has failed to get it, going back to Nixon.” It is good to be the incumbent. “I started getting Al Gore ready for the 2000 caucuses in 1997,” says Jeff Link, a veteran Iowa operative who ended up running Gore’s state campaign in the general election. “Being able to invite people and groups to the White House, making calls as the incumbent vice president, flying around on Air Force Two—you just have a huge advantage.”
Yet Harris’s first year as V.P. was rocky. The administration saddled her with two highly difficult policy issues—southern immigration and voting rights—and has given Harris little room to burnish her image. “She’s been a good trouper,” says Charles Phillips, cochair of Black Economic Alliance. “My hope is she gets something that’s more mainstream, and visible, that she can get her arms around and take credit for.”
That would help further distance Harris from the 2020 campaign, when she dropped out before any primary votes were cast. “Harris was considered a weak retail politician during the primary,” a top adviser to a rival 2020 contender says. “She’s only gotten weaker in this White House, where they’ve put incredible barriers around her.” Possibly because there appears to be another Biden inner-circle favorite. “The other active crowd in the party is the Obamanauts,” the national Democratic strategist says. “And they’re all about Buttigieg.”
“Pete?” a senior adviser to a second 2020 presidential candidate says. “He’s going to be running for president until he’s president. Or until he’s dead.”
Ideologically, though, Buttigieg, Biden’s secretary of transportation, occupies the same moderate lane as Harris. That’s valuable in a general election (see Biden, President Joe). But in a Democratic primary, it leaves a large opportunity for a staunchly progressive challenger.
The problem is who. Beyond Sanders, there is a precipitous drop-off in stature. Nina Turner? After serving as an Ohio state senator for six years, she’s lost two runs for bigger Ohio offices. Maybe a governor? “There are no truly progressive Democratic governors,” the national strategist says.
But there is an AOC. The second-term congresswoman from New York is charismatic, has a potent digital fundraising operation, and possesses enormous name recognition (you knew I was referring to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez without me even using her full name). Her age problem, though, is the opposite of Biden’s: She will turn 35, the minimum legal age to become president, less than one month before the 2024 election. A larger political problem is that AOC is as polarizing as she is magnetic. “The polling shows that the number one person the Republicans have vilified is Nancy Pelosi. Number two is AOC,” the 2020 top adviser says. “It’s super sexist and racist, obviously. But she’s a villain to a lot of people. I would be more excited about a governor who has been out of the national conversation and who has been delivering results during a pandemic and is not mired in the across-the-board frustration with Washington.”
The Democrats haven’t nominated a governor since Bill Clinton in 1992. It is, frankly, very hard to raise the money and the profile necessary to build a successful primary campaign without a large, previously existing platform. Buttigieg came close, in 2020, but not that close. Still, disgust with Washington is pervasive—it sure helped Donald Trump in 2016. So now the Democratic chatter centers on two possibilities. Roy Cooper has twice been elected governor of an ostensibly red state, North Carolina; he was tough on crime as its attorney general; and he’s done respectably well with Black voters, a crucial Democratic primary constituency. Then there’s Gina Raimondo, Biden’s commerce secretary. Before that, however, she was the technocratic two-term governor of Rhode Island. “She is one of the most requested people for events,” a prominent Democratic fundraiser says.
Still, Cooper and Raimondo are pols, not inspiring, category-transcending, potentially unifying figures. “If it isn’t Biden, whoever emerges on the D side isn’t going to be someone like Barack Obama who could build a huge coalition,” a principal strategist for a third 2020 aspirant says. “Well, unless it’s Michelle.”
Let’s get this over with quickly. Despite all the wishful talk in Democratic circles, Michelle Obama isn’t running for president in 2024. Neither is Hillary Clinton. Or Al Gore. Or Oprah Winfrey. Or The Rock. Will some celebrity candidate make a play? It wouldn’t be shocking. How about an independently wealthy long shot? “Tom Steyer seemed to be having the fucking time of his life in 2020,” the well-connected Democratic consultant says. “And he’s driven by an enormous ego. Which I kind of respect.”