By Our Reporter
WORLD NEWS
US president Joe Biden has confirmed he is going to stand for re-election in 2024. The announcement has been made in a promotional video that has just been released today, 25th April, 2023.
The video opens with footage of the violent US Capitol riots violence that erupted more than two years ago. Images of the most provocative Republicans – from former President Donald Trump to Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene – flash across the screen.
There is a reminder too of Republican attempts to restrict abortion access, limit voter access and clamp down on the LGBT community.
In his launch video, Joe Biden tells voters that the “battle for the soul of America” he referenced during the 2020 election is raging on. “This is not a time to be complacent,” he says.
Biden is already the oldest ever US president – and in his 2024 run, he wants Americans to value his experience as a lawmaker as he asks for their trust once again.
Biden announces his campaign team
Over the weekend, US media reported that Joe Biden had chosen his senior White House advisor Julie Chavez Rodriguez as his campaign manager.
In a press release accompanying Tuesday’s launch video, Biden confirmed the selection of Rodriguez, a long-time Latina Democratic operative with ties to former President Barack Obama and Vice-President Kamala Harris.
The rest of Biden’s top team for 2024 has also now taken shape.
Quentin Fulks, who previously served as campaign manager to Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock in a closely-watched race last year, will serve as Rodriguez’s deputy.
The campaign’s national-co-chairs – initial leaders who will be key to on-the-ground organising and volunteer efforts – are some of Biden’s most strident and long-term backers.
They include Jim Clyburn, the South Carolina congressman whose endorsement is widely credited with boosting Biden to the nomination in 2020; Michigan’s Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer; and Chris Coons and Lisa Blunt Rochester, lawmakers from Biden’s home state of Delaware.
Biden’s pitch for 2024: ‘Let’s finish the job’
Joe Biden’s campaign for re-election has officially launched – in the form of a three-minute video that begins with a one-word pitch: Freedom.
Narrated by the 46th US president himself, Biden argues that abortion rights, the defence of democracy, voting rights and the social safety net will be among the most important issues on the ballot in 2024.
He says that voters will be faced with the choice of leaving the next generation with “more freedom or less” and “more rights or fewer”.
“Every generation of Americans has faced a moment when they’ve had to defend democracy, stand up for our personal freedoms, and stand up for our right to vote and our civil rights. This is ours,” he says.
Hearkening back to his 2020 campaign message that Americans were “in a battle for the soul” of their nation, he presents his 2024 slogan: “Let’s finish the job.”
So Biden’s announced he’s running – now what?
The 2024 campaign trail will look quite different for Joe Biden compared with his last run.
As an incumbent candidate, he’ll have to balance his job leading the country with his efforts to sway voters in his favour. He is likely to point to his accomplishments from the past two years, including major infrastructure and climate laws, as evidence he is up to the task.
The trail will look markedly different for Biden this time around for another reason: The president did much of his campaigning for the 2020 election virtually from his home in Delaware due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
This time, it will be back to large events and campaign stops around the country to shake hands with voters.
Biden’s already invited top Democratic donors and fundraisers to meet with him later this week in Washington.
