WASHINGTON — Top White House advisers are set to make final decisions on launching President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign, even as the would-be candidate seems to show little urgency to formally declare his 2024 plans, several sources familiar with the discussions told NBC News.
Biden’s deliberate approach to making public what he’s repeatedly made clear in private is being driven by a number of factors: no major Democratic challenger is emerging; his now-indicted predecessor is consuming the political spotlight; and a major clash with congressional Republicans over spending is looming.
And then there are uniquely Biden reasons for delaying an announcement beyond the timelines informally floated by his team.
“The decision part is over, but he resents the pressure to have to announce what he’s already decided,” one source familiar with the matter said. “It’s frustrating but it’s also very Joe Biden.”
Another longtime adviser, who has navigated Biden’s candidacy decisions before, said the delay also serves to “preserve the option not” to run.
Many of those in Biden’s inner circle were there eight years ago, when he appeared on the cusp of announcing his candidacy on a Tuesday night, only to declare in the Rose Garden on Wednesday afternoon that he would not run in 2016.
Even as Biden has said publicly that he “intends to run” in 2024, he almost always couches it with a caveat that he’s a “respecter of fate,” a nod to the real possibility that circumstances, whether political or personal, could shift and point him in a different direction.
Aides, however, universally say they have little doubt that Biden will seek a second term, and that preparations are underway accordingly. The president has been teasing a re-election bid at public events recently, coinciding with an administration-wide, campaign-style tour touting his legislative accomplishments. And in doing so, he’s drawing on one of his chief advantages at this point — being president, not a candidate.
With no major primary opposition, Biden has the luxury of starting his final campaign on his own terms. Biden has never been a darling of the left, yet the progressive wing of the Democratic Party appears to have coalesced behind him.
“Why would you ever announce when you’ve already cleared the field without doing any work to beat anybody down?” a source said.
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who co-chaired Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, said of…
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