Biden to announce re-election bid next week

WASHINGTON (AFP): President Joe Biden could announce his long-expected bid for a second term as early as next week, US media reports said Thursday.

According to reports in outlets including The Washington Post and CNN, citing unnamed sources, Biden is set to launch his re-election campaign with a video release.

The Post reported that this could be on Tuesday, the anniversary of the day in 2019 when Biden joined the race to take on then incumbent Donald Trump in 2020. However, the report underlined that the plans were not finalized and could be postponed.

Already the oldest US president in history at 80, Biden would be 86 by the time he completed a second term. The current frontrunner for the Republicans is Trump, raising the growing possibility of a rematch of one of the most divisive elections in US history.

In 2019, Biden opened his bid with a video address. Although many initially saw him as a has-been, out of politics since finishing his term as vice president under Barack Obama, he went on to win the Democratic nomination, then defeat Trump in a tempestuous contest that the Republican attempted to overturn.

Biden has dropped repeated hints that he will run, including last week during a trip to Ireland when he said: “I told you my plan is to run again.”

However, Biden backers have pointed out that he is not necessarily in a hurry. Republicans are lurching toward a likely ugly nomination battle, while Biden has the advantages of having no serious challenger in his party.

Washington is also entering a prolonged and high-stakes political struggle over extending the US borrowing limit, a dispute that risks ending in a US debt default and serious economic upheaval some time over the coming weeks.