A 'Don’t Run Joe' campaign started in New Hampshire on 9 November hoping to dissuade America’s oldest sitting president from seeking reelection in 2024.
“It’s clear that Joe Biden should not be the party’s presidential nominee in 2024,” RootsAction.org said in a press release just one day after the mid-term elections in the country.
The online organization launched the campaign with a spate of digital ads making their debut in the state that typically hosts the first in a series of nationwide party primary elections every four years. The grassroots organization added that, eventually, the campaign would embrace the entire country.
“We cannot risk losing in 2024. We shouldn’t gamble on Joe Biden’s low approval rating,” one of the ads said.
'Logjam Named Biden'
Back in July, as gaffe-prone Biden’s approval rating sank to ever-new lows, RootsAction said in a media statement:
“Unfortunately, President Biden has been neither bold nor inspiring. And his prospects for winning re-election appear to be bleak. With so much at stake, making him the Democratic Party’s standard bearer in 2024 would be a tragic mistake.”
At the time, Norman Solomon, co-founder of RootsAction, was cited by media outlets as indicating that voters want the Democratic POTUS to “to get a logjam named President Biden out of the way for 2024". Back in 2020, RootsAction had initially supported Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), but after Joe Biden defeated him in the primary, the group went all out to sway progressives to vote for the Democrat from Delaware.
Throughout the year, polls have consistently revealed majorities of Democrats and voters saying Biden should not throw his hat in the ring again. One survey in September showed that just 35 percent of Democrats favored another Biden run in 2024. However, 56 percent of Democrats want the party to choose a different nominee for president.
A member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, Democrat Sherry Frost, who had endorsed Sanders in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries, said in a statement for the 'Don’t Run Joe' campaign that she is “not confident that Joe Biden is the leader we need to take us into the next term".
“I am eager to support a candidate who understands the fatal dysfunction in our economy and is willing to hold the ultra-wealthy individuals and corporations to their obligations. I am not confident that Biden is that candidate… I believe we need someone else to champion the big and systemic changes we need to continue to strive toward our more perfect union,” Frost stated.
A poll released on 7 November showed Joe Biden's public approval rating sinking to 39 percent, with a third of the respondents surveyed singling out the economy as the biggest problem facing the country, amid soaring inflation and recession predictions now leaning towards "when" rather than "if".
Speaking after the mid-tern elections in the US on Wednesday, Biden said that the results marked a "good day" for democracy, as the "giant red wave" pundits had predicted didn't happen. Biden told reporters that he intends to run for reelection in 2024, and that he would most likely make a decision early next year.
"Our intention [with first lady Jill Biden] is to run again. That's been our intention, regardless of what the outcome of this election was," Biden said. "I'm a great respecter of fate. And this is ultimately a family decision. I think everybody wants me to run but we're going to have discussions about it, and I don't feel any hurry one way or another," Biden stated.