President Biden is already facing mounting questions about his ability to win re-election next year, but Democrats must now face the prospect of a growing list of prospective third-party competitors in 2024.
Major Democratic Party victory in off-year elections in 2023 provided Biden with a much-needed lift after a string of widely publicized surveys revealed he was trailing former President Donald Trump — the clear GOP candidate front-runner — in a rematch in 2024.
However, the declaration on Thursday by 2016 Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein that she will run for President again next year was not welcomed by Team Biden.
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Many Democrats continue to blame Stein’s 2016 campaign for Trump’s election. Her vote totals in the critical battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin seven years ago exceeded Trump’s advantages over Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton in each state.
A few hours after Stein’s announcement, moderate Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin declared he will not run for re-election in deeply red West Virginia next year, undercutting his party’s expectations of retaining their Senate majority in 2024.
Manchin, who has openly considered running for president as a third party, stated in his announcement video that he will travel across the country in the coming months to see “if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.”
There has been rampant speculation Manchin could join a potential bipartisan national ticket that the centrist group No Labels is considering launching next spring. Veteran New Hampshire-based political scientist Wayne Lesperance, the president of New England College, noted that Manchin potentially “creates new troubles for Team Biden’s re-election.”
“Manchin has options — none of which are good for the president. He can decide to make a White House run on his own.
‘He can join a No Labels-fueled effort to run. Even if he decided to just travel to battleground states and urge voters to support moderate or centrist campaigns, the impact will be felt by Team Biden,” Lesperance said.
Environmental champion and high-profile vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a scion of the Kennedy family political dynasty, and outspoken progressive university scholar Cornel West are already running for president on their own.
According to recent polls, Biden’s age is causing increasing worry among American voters. Many Americans, including many Democrats, do not want the president to run for a second term, according to polls, and a few influential Democrats have proposed that the 80-year-old president withdraw from the 2024 contest and transfer the torch to a new generation.
The president is now facing primary challenges from two Democratic opponents. Three-term Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota, who announced a primary challenge to Trump late last month, has argued that Biden will be unable to defeat Trump in 2024.
Recent polls issued in the last week provided Phillips with plenty of new fodder. Marianne Williamson, a spiritual counsel and best-selling author, is also running for President for the second time.
Pointing to the strong performance by Democrats at the ballot box earlier this week, Biden 2024 re-election campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said Thursday that “we’ve heard the press and pundits count Joe Biden out time and time again, but we know he always proves them wrong.”
“On Tuesday, voters in states across the country proved the pundits wrong,” Chavez Rodriguez emphasized.
During a trip to Illinois on Thursday to talk to the United Auto Workers, Biden took aim at media coverage of recent polls that show him losing to Trump in hypothetical 2024 matchups.
“Because you don’t read the polls,” Biden pointed out. “Ten polls. Eight of them, I’m beating [Trump] in those places. Eight of them. You guys only do two. CNN and New York Times. Check it out. Check it out.”
Asked if he believed he was trailing Trump in the key battlegrounds, the president answered, “No, I don’t.”
