Eager to reassure young Democratic primary voters concerned about then-candidate Biden’s age and quaint centrism, his allies began quietly spreading the word four years ago that, if elected, the elderly Biden would forgo a second term and would instead help Democrats transition into a new golden age of progressive rule.
While Biden never went so far as to make the one-term-pledge publicly — and even knocked down speculation when asked about it — “four people who regularly talk” to him got the word out in a December, 2019 Politico report.
Former Vice President Joe Biden’s top advisers and prominent Democrats outside the Biden campaign have recently revived a long-running debate whether Biden should publicly pledge to serve only one term, with Biden himself signaling to aides that he would serve only a single term.
While the option of making a public pledge remains available, Biden has for now settled on an alternative strategy: quietly indicating that he will almost certainly not run for a second term while declining to make a promise that he and his advisers fear could turn him into a lame duck and sap him of his political capital.
According to four people who regularly talk to Biden, all of whom asked for anonymity to discuss internal campaign matters, it is virtually inconceivable that he will run for reelection in 2024, when he would be the first octogenarian president.
“If Biden is elected,” a prominent adviser to the campaign said, “he’s going to be 82 years old in four years and he won’t be running for reelection.”
The adviser argued that public acknowledgment of that reality could help Biden mollify younger voters, especially on the left, who are unexcited by his candidacy and fear that his nomination would serve as an eight-year roadblock to the next generation of Democrats.
The “prominent adviser” was right on his math, so either he misjudged Biden’s boundless desire to hang on to power or he said what needed to be said to maximize the elderly candidate’s chances at the time, right or wrong.