President Biden announced on Tuesday that he will run for president again in 2024, dispelling doubts about whether the 80-year-old is fit for a second term and tightening his grip on the Democratic Party as its standard-bearer.

The president

announced his campaign in a video posted to his Twitter account

.

I said we are in a battle for the soul of America, and we still are,” Biden said. The question we face is whether we will have more or less freedom in the coming years. More rights or less.

The highly anticipated announcement brings about a possible rematch between Biden and former President Trump, who has

has already applied

and leads the field of Republican 2024 hopefuls.

Biden, in his own words a great respect for fate, has been considering the decision for months

. if we’re going to include the next idea, maybe quote polls? Whose skepticism are we talking about? the skepticism of many Americans about his ability to weather the rigors of the campaign and work both inside and outside the Democratic Party

. While most presidents hold off on announcing a re-election campaign to avoid federal election reporting restrictions going into effect, Biden’s age played an inordinate role in his decision. He is the oldest president in the country and would be just under 82 on Election Day in 2024.

Seventy percent of all Americans, including 51 percent of Democrats, said they did not want Biden to seek a second term.

compared to 26% of Americans who think he should

according to an NBC poll released Sunday.

Nearly half of all voters who said they did not want Biden to run again pointed to his age as a major reason. This new poll quotes age – want more polls on skepticism? Biden is the favorite for re-election despite poor polls. How is that possible?

Similarly, about half of Democrats think Biden should run for a second term, a slight increase from the

only

37% who said

in January that

he should seek office again,

in January,

according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey released Friday. But 81% of Democrats said they would be at least likely to support him if he were the nominee. Only 26% of Americans at large said they want to see Biden run again, the poll found.

But the president and his allies have dismissed the polls and instead pointed to US job growth and his track record as evidence of his success during his first two years in office.

The White House regularly touts the passage of a $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill, bipartisan legislation to overhaul the country’s crumbling infrastructure and boost US chip production, and a $700 billion milestone on climate change and the pricing of medicines.

Although the president had been expected for weeks to announce his re-election bid, he made it clear during a recent visit to Ireland that he “has already done the analysis” and that a formal announcement would be made “relatively soon”.

Trump’s running mate? Republicans are already vying for consideration

He hinted at his re-election pitch at the State of the Union in February, pitting his performance against a divided Republican party that has not yet decided on a strategy or candidate for 2024. He called on Congress to work with him to get the job done to revive the American economy and unite a country broken by partisan politics. While he had not yet officially launched his campaign, aides and Democratic officials had already quietly begun building campaign infrastructure in battlefield states across the country.

Biden took office amid a spreading COVID-19 pandemic that paralyzed the country for more than a year, vowing to bring the virus under control and repair the economic damage wrought by the global health crisis.

His first year in office was hampered by economic challenges, including record high inflation and supply chain bottlenecks exacerbated by the pandemic, which lasted longer than White House officials expected. The public mood began to sour in August 2021, as waves of new virus variants spread across the country, killing 13 US troops and dozens of Afghans during the messy withdrawal from Afghanistan. The president’s approval rating dropped to the low 40, where he remains.

But last February, as Biden continued to grapple with issues at home, Russia invaded Ukraine. The president responded by reviving transatlantic cooperation and winning bipartisan support to send tens of billions of dollars in economic and military aid to the embattled country.

The administration celebrated several legislative victories last summer, including the most sweeping gun reform bill in 30 years, the president’s signing of the Climate and Drug Pricing Act and a health care bill for veterans injured by exposure to wartime toxins. He also signed the ratification documents supporting Finland and Sweden’s membership in the NATO alliance, highlighting US leadership in expanding the defense pact.

The results of the November midterm elections gave Biden tailwind after the Democrats outperformed historical trends

defied

projections of a red wave” despite the president’s low approval ratings. The party narrowly lost the House of Representatives and picked up a seat in the Senate. Democrats also won control of four additional state legislative chambers and two governorships, the best first interim achievement for a party since the presidency of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Biden’s political fortunes took a turn for the worse in January, when the Justice Department appointed special counsel to investigate whether he had mishandled classified documents found in his former Washington, D.C., think tank office and in his home in Wilmington, Delaware. Republicans argued that Biden was being treated differently from former President Donald Trump, who is also under investigation for classified documents taken from his Mar-a-Lago resort during a raid in August. The facts of both cases are different. Biden’s lawyers immediately notified the National Archives upon discovery of the documents; Trump resisted handing over sensitive materials for several months.

The controversy over Biden’s document has sparked GOP-led surveillance investigations into the president, his administration and his family, but White House aides argue the special counsel’s investigation will have little effect on the 2024 election. President Mike Pence later announced classified documents had been discovered in his Indiana home, suggesting a more systemic problem with Washington’s handling of classified material.

A majority of Americans think both Biden and Trump mishandled classified files, according to an ABC News/Ipsos poll released in January. Seventy-seven percent said Trump acted improperly in the way he handled classified documents, compared to 64% who said the same of Biden.

It is still unclear who Biden will run against as the Republican presidential primaries are still taking shape. Trump

who is embroiled in a series of investigations and charged in connection with an alleged payment of hush money to a porn actor during the 2016 campaign is the leading candidate so far.

Nearly 70% of Republican primary voters said they would support Trump, according to the NBC poll.

Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, conservative radio host Larry Elder, and former governor of Arkansas. Asa Hutchinson is among those who have already entered the GOP race, but Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Governor of Virginia Glenn Youngkin and former Vice President Mike Pence also watch the White House.

The president’s spring decision is in line with reelection announcements made by his most recent predecessors. Former Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama launched their campaigns between April and June. (Trump filed his papers with the Federal Election Commission the day he was inaugurated, but did not officially begin his campaign until June). But unlike Biden, there was never any doubt that the previous incumbents would run.

TK awkward wording Biden’s announcement comes exactly four years after he applied for the 2020 race.