After months of hinting at a likely bid, President Biden officially announced on Tuesday that he will seek a second term as president of the United States in the 2024 election.
"When I ran for president four years ago, I said we are in a battle for the soul of America. And we still are. The question we are facing is whether in the years ahead we have more freedom or less freedom. More rights or fewer," Biden said in a 3-minute video announcing his run.
The video links images from the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol with protests over the Supreme Court decision overturning abortion rights.
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At 80, Biden is the oldest person to serve as president, a point that has given Democrats pause, questioning, at times, whether he gives them the best chance at winning. But the former vice president and longtime Delaware senator is unlikely to face a serious challenge for the nomination.
Rank-and-file Democratic voters began to coalesce around the president, as his intention to run became evident.
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Half of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said in a February NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll that they had a better chance with Biden than someone else. That was a reversal from shortly before the 2022 midterms when a majority said they thought they would have a better shot with someone else.
That alternative, however, never emerged. Vice President Harris and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, for example, have had consistently worse favorability ratings.
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Biden's entry now sets up a potential rematch with former President Donald Trump, who announced in November that he would also make another run for office. Trump is expected to face a vigorous primary race, though he remains the candidate to beat.
Biden's 2024 video features an image of Trump with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a onetime ally and now likely challenger in the Republican race — along with an image of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. — as Biden describes what he calls "MAGA extremists" who he said are "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."
Biden ran his first campaign on a platform of fighting for "the soul of our nation," arguing that Trump had stirred up racist and antidemocratic sentiment that was hurting the country.
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Biden ended Tuesday's campaign announcement with the phrase "let's finish the job," a line he first tested out in his State of the Union address this year.
Biden repeated the phrase 12 times during that speech in February, referring to rebuilding the middle class, capping the cost of insulin, expanding Medicaid, acting on climate change, increasing taxes on billionaires, strengthening antitrust enforcement, getting more affordable housing, funding universal pre-K, increasing vocational job opportunities, pushing for police reform and banning assault-style weapons.
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On Tuesday, Biden also announced some key members of his campaign team: campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodriguez, who has been the White House point person with governors and mayors during Biden's first term in office, and principal deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks, who ran the campaign of Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., in 2022.