Joe Biden's only hope for the 2024 presidential campaign might be... his long-standing Republican rival Donald Trump, according to some Democrat observers.
“It’s pretty clear that the strongest argument for Biden 2024 is a Biden vs. Trump rematch,” Democratic strategist Joel Payne told The Hill.
Despite his less-than-impressive approval ratings, Biden still seems to be the only one who could beat Trump, according to a New York Times-Siena College poll, which showed the Democratic president enjoying a small 44-40 lead in a hypothetical rematch with Trump.
“So many people are counting him out, but when you put it in those terms (…) when you see he’s the only one who could win, we’d be crazy not to rally behind him. Because who else is there at the moment?” one Democratic donor told The Hill.
Trump's potential candidacy would add “some life at a time when [Biden] really needs it,” according to the Democratic observers, because in Trump's absence, Biden's chances at re-election are estimated as quite low by experts from both parties. The majority of Democrats do not want him to run in 2024, and they are equally reluctant to support Kamala Harris' vice-presidential bid.
But the former Republican president is still playing coy about his 2024 plans. Defeated by Biden in 2020, Trump has continued to insist that the presidential election was "stolen" from him. Earlier in the week, however, he hinted that he has already made the decision on whether to run or not, but stopped short of revealing what that decision was.
The incumbent Democratic president, who is the oldest US president in the country’s history, has repeatedly indicated that he plans to run again, even though he will be 81 in 2024.
“Biden very much benefits from a Trump run,” one Democratic strategist who has worked on recent presidential campaigns told The Hill. “We know what that looks like. We know what the arguments are. We know that even if Biden runs, Trump energizes the base. It’s the best-case scenario for Biden.”