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Why Does WaPo Need to Speculate Who is Running for President in 2024?

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  April 17, 2022 9:00 PM

President Joe Biden has said that he intends to run for re-election. Whether or not he actually will is another story, considering he reminds us on a regular basis he's the oldest president to take office, with comments being made about his health and making use of the 25th Amendment. Polls have also shown, though, that a majority of the American people, including Democrats, don't want Biden running again. He'll be just about to turn 82 for the 2024 election, and will be 82 if he wins when he is inaugurated. Further, even the mainstream media, has taken to speculating on how Biden may not run, including The Washington Post on multiple instances.

One such instance came on Saturday, with Aaron Blake's list of "The top 10 Democratic presidential candidates for 2024, ranked."

The list included:

10. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

9. Gov. Gavin Newsom

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8. Sen. Cory Booker

7. Sen. Sherrod Brown

6. Gov. Roy Cooper

5. Sen. Amy Klobuchar

4. Sen. Elizabeth Warren

3. Vice President Kamala Harris

2. Sec. of Transporation Pete Buttigieg

1. President Joe Biden

The blurb on Biden barely focuses on his age and health, mentally or otherwise. Rather, it references the problems he's facing. Even with Democrats expected to have stunning losses in these November midterms, you wouldn't necessarily know it from the way the Biden administration goes about things, as they blame the country's greatest problems on others, such as price hikes on Russia's Vladimir Putin and the supply chain crisis on Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX).

As Blake wrote:

1. President Biden: Having said all of the above, things are often darkest for a president in a midterm election year. And Biden has both a pandemic and inflation to contend with. If those factors wane in the coming months, and after the 2022 midterms? The picture might be significantly different. If Republicans win some control of Congress, as appears likely, it could even help Biden politically, because he’ll have something to run against (even apart from Donald Trump). But mostly, we just wonder whether we’ll see him try to become the first-ever octogenarian presidential nominee.

Blake himself doesn't hold back on how precarious the situation is for Biden, as he too references the polls, with original emphasis:

The poll, from YouGov, asked about the 2024 Democratic presidential primary; only 21 percent of Democratic-leaning voters said their choice was the incumbent Democratic president, Joe Biden. That put him barely ahead of the 18 percent who said they weren’t sure whom they supported; Vice President Harris and Bernie Sanders each had 14 percent shares. 

This is not normal. We’ve seen some evidence that Democrats aren’t sold on nominating Biden for a second term, including a poll in November showing a majority of Democrats didn’t want him to run again. But lots of Republicans say the same about a repeat run for Donald Trump in 2024 — yet he’s the clear front-runner when you pit him against actual would-be opponents. 

Democrats need to decide what this means for them. Certainly, there’s an argument to be made that the best path forward is to pick a different nominee. But if Biden is intent on running again, do you allow a competitive primary that could put the choice in voters’ hands — and risk damaging the incumbent president, ala Jimmy Carter vs. Ted Kennedy in 1980? Do you subtly suggest to Biden that it might be better to pass the torch, and hope that it works? Or do you just hope things with his presidency get better?

When it comes to the likelihood of Trump once more becoming the nominee, as Madeline recently highlighted though, citing a Rasmussen poll, 40 percent prefer Trump, while 22 prefer Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. Twenty-three percent said neither. 

While Biden claimed he'd be "very fortunate" to face Trump in 2024, polls have shown Trump with the edge. 

Considering that Biden is first on the list, it's worth wondering what the point of the list actually is, then, though it's not lost that they were speculating it might not be Biden after all. 

What attention the tweet from the Washington Post's Politics account got was virtually all replies or quoted retweets raising eyebrows. 

As our friends at Twitchy also highlighted, though, it's worth noting that Vice President Kamala Harris is not number two, but rather is third, while Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg is second.