President Joe Biden Announces Reelection Bid

President Joe Biden announced his bid for reelection Tuesday morning, setting himself up yet again as the Democratic Party’s best available bulwark against an increasingly authoritarian Republican Party led by Donald Trump rather than as a deliverer of liberals’ loftiest dreams.

“When I ran for president four years ago, I said we are in a battle for the soul of America. And we still are,” Biden says in a three-minute-long video announcing his candidacy released Tuesday morning. “The question we are facing is whether in the years ahead we have more freedom or less freedom, more rights or fewer. I know what I want the answer to be and I think you do too. This is not a time to be complacent.”

The 80-year-old Biden is all but certain to be the oldest person ever to win a major party’s presidential nomination and will face only minimal opposition in a primary. Victory there seems likely to set up a rematch with Trump himself, if not another one of the “MAGA Republicans” Biden spends a significant chunk of the launch video warning about.

“Around the country, MAGA extremists are lining up to take those bedrock freedoms away,” Biden says in the video. “Cutting social security that you’ve paid for your entire life while cutting taxes for the very wealthy. Dictating what health care decisions women can make, banning books, and telling people who they can love. All while making it more difficult for you to be able to vote.”