It ‘wouldn’t be a total shock’ if Biden dropped out of 2024 race, biographer says

It “wouldn’t be a total shock” if President Biden cancels his reelection bid by the end of the year, his biographer said Sunday.

“It doesn’t take Bob Woodward to understand that Joe Biden is old,” author Franklin Foer said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I’m not a gerontologist, and I can’t predict how the next couple years will age Joe Biden.”

Asked about the prospect of the president dropping out of the race, he said, “It would be a surprise to me, but it wouldn’t be a total surprise to me.”

Foer went on to say religious considerations might influence the 80-year-old pol’s decision making.

President Joe Biden waves as he surveys damage caused by Hurricane Idalia, Saturday, Sept. 2, 2023, in Live Oak, Fla. (Julio Cortez/AP)

“When he talks about his life, he uses this word ‘fate’ constantly. Joe Biden is a very religious guy, and fate is a word loaded with religious meaning,” said the journalist, whose bio about Biden’s first two years in office comes out this week.

“He always talks about, he can’t say where fate goes,” Foer added. “And so I always, when I hear that, to me it’s the ellipses in the sentence when he’s talking about his own future that I account for in thinking about his calculus.”

After months of questions about whether he’d run for a second term, Biden announced his reelection campaign in April, though speculation about his plans persists.

Polls show him neck-and-neck with former President Donald Trump, who’s far ahead of his rivals in the contest for the GOP nomination in spite of ongoing criminal cases against him.

Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley speaks during a Republican presidential primary debate hosted by FOX News Channel, Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2023, in Milwaukee. (Morry Gash/AP)

Trump is the no. 1 choice for nearly six in 10 Republican voters, according to a recent Wall Street Journal poll. In a hypothetical Biden-Trump election, the incumbent drew support from 39% of voters and his predecessor, 40%.

A Biden ally said the aftereffects of the COVID crisis explain Biden’s position.

“The years of COVID from March of 2020 through the end of the public health emergency have been brutal on Americans, have been so painful,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” noting the painful death toll and harm done to families.

“There is a collective trauma that still is kind of working its way through the system,” he added, saying voters are “nervous about, well, what will it be like in two or three months? I think they’re a little bit nervous to let their hopes get up after such a challenging time.”

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is among the GOP candidates struggling against Trump, who’s 77 himself.

In a Sunday interview, she repeated calls for “competency tests” for presidential and congressional candidates alike after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) last week froze up in public for the second time in two months.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va) speaks during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, June 8, 2023. (Jose Luis Magana/AP)

“At what point do they get it’s time to leave? They need to let a younger generation take over,” said Haley, rattling off a list of elderly politicians from both parties.

“This is not just a Republican or Democrat problem. This is a congressional problem,” said the candidate, who wants competency tests for pols 75 and older. “And they’ve got to know when to leave it, it’s time to pass this down to a new generation of conservative leaders that want to take our country to a better place.”