What if Joe Biden decided against running for re-election?

The Democratic bench has plenty of talent

President Joe Biden is literally living history. With every passing day he sets a new record for oldest president the sole octogenarian ever to occupy the Oval Office.

When he began his campaign to unseat Mr Donald Trump, Mr Biden intimated that he would not seek a second term, presenting himself as an elder statesman who would calm the nation’s turbulent politics before a younger generation took over. And yet he is now giving every sign that he intends to stay in office for six more years, by seeking re-election in 2024.

It is not as though his age doesn’t show. The President stammers through his speeches, sequesters himself from the press and recently had a minor health scare in the form of a cancerous skin lesion. So why doesn’t Mr Biden want to go?

The proximate cause was the mid-term elections, which did not go nearly as badly for Democrats as Mr Biden’s lacklustre approval ratings suggested they might. That halted the sense, once well-established among Democrats, that he was leading the party to disaster and the likely re-election of Mr Trump in 2024. Most insurrectionist chatter of pushing the President out before he wanted to go was quelled. The exception is the declared challenge from Ms Marianne Williamson, a quackish self-help guru who thinks the Avatar movies hold the secret to Middle East peace.

The unexpectedly light rebuke by voters who only narrowly awarded Republicans the House of Representatives and even granted Democrats an extra seat in the Senate - gave the administration scope to crow about its accomplishments. The President had steered the country out of the pandemic, passed the largest climate-change-mitigation Bill in history, repaired international alliances and led the West in supporting Ukraine. A younger president with a similar record would have an unquestioned right to seek re-election.