Biden launches his 2024 campaign amid polls suggesting 26% support for reelection

President Joe Biden on Tuesday formally announced his reelection campaign for the 2024 presidential elections, asking voters to give him more time to “finish this job,” despite the fact that some polls suggest as many as 70% of the electorate would prefer he step down after his first term. 

Biden, 80, announced his campaign with Vice President Kamala Harris in a three-minute video that was released on the anniversary of when he declared his candidacy for the presidency for the previous elections in 2019. In the video, he promises to heal the “soul of the nation.”

“When I ran for president four years ago, I said we are in a battle for the soul of America. And we still are,” he said in the video, which showed images of the Jan. 6, 2021 storming of the Capitol and abortion rights activists protesting at the U.S. Supreme Court.

“The question we are facing is whether in the years ahead we have more freedom or less freedom. More rights or fewer,” Biden says. “I know what I want the answer to be and I think you do too. This is not a time to be complacent. That’s why I’m running for reelection.”

Biden does not face a serious Democratic challenger, paving a smooth path to winning his party’s nomination. However, a notable number of Democratic voters have expressed concerns about his age—Biden would be 86 by the end of his second term if he were to be elected. Biden has called the concerns “totally legitimate” but did not address the issue in his campaign video. 

"It's legitimate for people to raise issues about my age," he said earlier this year. "And the only thing I can say is, watch me."

The president is hoping that the achievements under his belt during his first term and his more than 50 years experience in Washington will be enough to convince voters to cast their vote for him. The video shows brief clips of key moments of his presidency. 

Yet Biden also asked voters to give him more time on the job in order to complete the unmet promises he made during his first campaign and reach several policy goals that his administration set. 

“Let’s finish this job. I know we can,” Biden said in the video.

In the video, Biden also warns against “MAGA extremists” who he claims are “dictating what health care decisions women can make, banning books, and telling people who they can love.”

“Every generation of Americans has faced a moment when they’ve had to defend democracy. Stand up for our personal freedoms. Stand up for the right to vote and our civil rights,” he says. “And this is our moment.”

This week, a CBS poll found as much as 45% of Democratic voters do not want Biden to run again, an Associated Press poll said 52% Democrats feel the same and that 73% of Americans in total across the political spectrum feel the same. 

That poll reported that only 26% of the American electorate wanted Biden to run for reelection.