Politico is out with a piece today that IS a sign of impatience ….
President Biden is on his way back from Europe…..
He’s also sent the EPA to take over in the Ohio train toxic spill situation….
He’s got China and the Ukraine on his mind….
And?
He’s got some Democrats and media types worried that he’s NOT front and center about something a year away….
Go figure….
(If Biden does NOT run?…ALL BETS ARE OFF with a internal political knife fight in the offering…..And Kamala Harris probably has a LESS than 50% chance to be the Democratic Presidential nominee for 2024….I’d think)
Joe Biden’s closest advisers have spent months preparing for him to formally announce his reelection campaign. But with the president still not ready to make the plunge, a sense of doubt is creeping into conversations around 2024: What if he decides not to?
Biden’s past decisions around seeking the presidency have been protracted, painstaking affairs. This time, he has slipped past his most ambitious timetable, as previously outlined by advisers, to launch in February. Now they are coalescing around April.
But even that target is less than definitive. People in the president’s orbit say there is no hard deadline or formal process in place for arriving at a launch date decision. According to four people familiar with the president’s thinking, a final call has been pushed aside as real-world events intervene. His cloak-and-dagger trip to Kyiv over the holiday weekend took meticulous planning and the positive reaction to it was seen internally as providing him with more runway to turn back to domestic politics.
While the belief among nearly everyone in Biden’s orbit is that he’ll ultimately give the all-clear, his indecision has resulted in an awkward deep-freeze across the party — in which some potential presidential aspirants and scores of major donors are strategizing and even developing a Plan B while trying to remain respectful and publicly supportive of the 80-year-old president.
Democratic Govs. JB Pritzker of Illinois, Gavin Newsom of California and Phil Murphy of New Jersey have taken steps that could be seen as aimed at keeping the door cracked if Biden bows out — though with enough ambiguity to give them plausible deniability. Senators like Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobucharhave been making similar moves.
People directly in touch with the president described him as a kind of Hamlet on Delaware’s Christina River, warily biding his time as he ponders the particulars of his final campaign. In interviews, these people relayed an impression that the conventional wisdom in Washington, D.C. — that there’s simply no way he passes on 2024 — has crystallized too hard, too soon….
…
The campaign pieces are being lined up. And several top financiers say they have been in touch with the president’s team to plan events. The president had a physical examination last week, in which his doctor gave him a nearly clean bill of health.
All that is missing is the official go-ahead.