As the calls for President Joe Biden not to run again grow, Democrats are starting to face questions about whether they think he should step aside.
And while the traditional position, especially for those in Congress or other prominent positions, is to back the incumbent, some have avoided saying that Biden should run again.
On Wednesday, it was Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) turn to face the question of whether she thinks the president should run again.
MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan noted that she ran against Biden in the 2020 Democratic primary and asked if she would run again in 2024.
“Yes, Joe Biden should be running. He is running. I will be running for Senate in 2024,” Warren responded.
She went on, “But, I want to say this, I’ll give you those sentences. We’ve got to stop the catnip about 2024. We are 100 days out from the midterm. And what happens in 2022, two more Democratic senators, and we can get rid of the filibuster. And we can actually protect voting rights. We can make Roe v. Wade the law of the land. We can do even more on the climate crisis. We can actually make gun safety a priority.”
Watch the video below:
"We've got to stop the catnip about 2024." Senator Elizabeth Warren is not interested in entertaining hypotheticals about 2024 until 2022 is over and has properly set the context for 2024. pic.twitter.com/aBQNtg0xaB
— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) July 28, 2022
Hasan interjected to suggest that there is a “disconnect” between polls that show Democrats might hold onto the Senate and others that show “bad numbers for Biden.”
“You can’t just ignore that disconnect, can you?” he asked.
Warren responded by arguing Democrats need to focus on the midterms to try to pick up at least two Senate seats and keep control of the House.
“We can do enormous good for the American people, and that puts us in a position in 2024 where we have more opportunities to win. If we start getting tangled up on 2024, and fail to pay attention to business in 2022, that is not only going to hurt us in 2022. It is going to bite us on the rear end in 2024,” Warren said.
In June, Warren’s fellow progressive, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), was asked on CNN if she would support Biden in 2024.
“You know, if the president chooses to run again in 2024…” she began
Ocasio-Cortez laughed then said, “I mean, first of all, I’m focused on winning this majority right now and preserving a majority in 2022. So we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. But I think if the president has a vision, then that’s something certainly we’re all willing to entertain and examine when the time comes.”
And earlier this week, Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) declined to share if she would like to see Biden run again, as IJR reported.
It’s understandable that these Democrats do not want to be on record one way or the other. But given Biden’s behavior so far and his failure to course correct, it seems like they would have ample reasons to later say that he should not run — if they said he should now.
If they want to stop the “catnip” and the vultures circling — which certainly can’t help Democrats ahead of the midterms — the best thing they could to do would be to borrow from Warren’s playbook and say, that he should run — at least until November.
