Apparently 2024 is just going to be a remake of the 2020 election cycle, as not only are Trump and Biden both going to be running again, but another standout figure from that election cycle could be making a comeback too.
That would be aging socialist Bernie Sanders, whose longtime adviser, Faiz Shakir, told CBS News on Thursday that: “I assume that he would give it [running in 2024] a hard look. I don’t want to make the judgment for him. Obviously, it would be his choice to make. But I assume that he would want to reevaluate it.”
Continuing, Shakir added that “But if it were an open field? Yeah, I’m confident he would take another look at it and say, ‘Do I want to do this or not?’”
Shakir emphasized that those comments on a potential Bernie campaign come alongside the Sanders’ team’s cognizance that Biden is running again, saying “Personally, I take President Biden at his word and our orbit takes him at his word that he’s taking it seriously and presume that he is leaning toward yes.”
Shakir’s comments stand in contrast to what Bernie said back in mid-June of this year, when, after being asked if he would run again in 2024, he told CNN that “I think it’s a little too early. I think Biden will probably run again, and if he runs again, I will support him.” Bernie added to that, saying “Not if he runs” when asked if he’d run against Biden in a primary race.
Fox News Digital, adding more context on the ages of Biden and Sanders, noted that:
Were he to win the presidency in 2024, he would be 83 years old upon assuming office. Shakir said Sanders is “very aware that he’s older now, and he’d have to make a real judgment about his own vigor and his stamina and his desire and hunger and passion to do this a third time.”
[…]BIden, 80, is the oldest person to ever occupy the White House. Despite his age, he has given strong indication that he will run for re-election, reportedly toasting to his 2024 campaign at a state dinner with French President Macron last week.
Sanders, in some degree of contrast to Biden and other Democrats, has remained largely focused on economic issues instead of the cultural issues that dominate both GOP and Democrat thinking right now. In a late October, pre-midterms statement released by his office, for example, Bernie and his office said:
“The theme that I am going to be bringing forth and making as strongly as I can, is that if you have concerns about creating an economy that works for all people, and not just billionaires, you cannot vote for Republicans,” Sanders tells me from his home in Burlington, Vermont, on Tuesday afternoon. “That it is insane.”
Sanders has long spoken of elections and their consequences in dire terms. During his two campaigns for the presidency, Sanders crisscrossed the country warning that corporate power and authoritarianism would erode human rights. Two weeks from the 2022 midterm elections, many of his fears are nearly realized. Roe v. Wade has been overturned. The Democratic Party’s control of the White House and Congress has yielded some progress, but not early enough, to reverse the coming climate catastrophe. Former President Donald Trump and his allies are waging a war “on the foundations of democracy,” Sanders notes. Under the banner of such bleakness, “a lot of people are discouraged,” he says. “That discouragement may result in them not coming out to vote.”
But “even above all those enormously important issues,” Sanders adds, “is the fact that we have more income and wealth inequality today in America than we’ve ever had.” Corporate greed is a root cause of inflation, he explains, “making huge profits and ripping off the American people.” The policy solutions Sanders suggests are wonky, but the overall point is this: “Republicans are going to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid to pay for huge tax breaks to billionaires and the wealthiest people in this country. I don’t think that’s what the American people want.”
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