President Joe Biden is not yesterday’s man, or even the day-before-yesterday’s man. That will be the core message when he addresses the nation on Wednesday night barely three days after he exited the 2024 race for the White House and allowed Vice President Kamala Harris to be anointed as the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee.
It is only the fourth Oval Office address of his presidency overall – and could well be his last – as he seeks to burnish any symbol of relevancy in his last months of office.
Multiple reports say the octogenarian is desperate to defy a “lame duck” tag in the months before his successor is decided and will use his Oval Office speech to try and convince America he is alert, engaged, making tough decisions, and a man of action eager to stare down Russia as it continues its invasion of Ukraine.
The remarks at 8 p.m. Eastern Time – expected to run for between eight and ten minutes – will come one week after Biden was forced off the campaign trail in Las Vegas after testing positive for coronavirus.
“I’m not going anywhere,” a hoarse Biden said as he called Harris at a Monday campaign meeting in Delaware, adding he was going to be “working like hell” both as president and on the campaign trail.
He made clear in the phone call he still harbors hope for progress across a variety of fronts. “I’ve got six months left of my presidency, and I’m determined to get as much done as I possibly can, both foreign policy and domestic policy,” he said, citing initiatives to curb gun violence, expand child care and elder care, lower the cost of prescription drugs and stem climate change.
He also mentioned efforts to broker a cease-fire in Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, expressing optimism that it may come soon.
The 81-year-old Democrat repeated his vow of action on X and previewed he would discuss “what lies ahead, and how I will finish the job for the American people” in the primetime televised event.
But in a sign Biden is already yesterday’s man, AFP reports Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will sit down separately with Harris as he visits this week, while Trump said in a post on his Truth Social media platform that he will meet with the Israeli leader Friday at the Republican’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Despite these snubs, AP reports Biden simply does not want to fade away:
[Biden’s] “determined to get as much done” as he possibly can in his final six months in the White House as he tries to beat back a defining force that his lame-duck predecessors struggled to vanquish: diminished relevance.
He is the first sitting president not to seek reelection since Lyndon Baines Johnson stepped aside in 1968 due to the growing unrest over America’s involvement in Vietnam.
The AP report goes on to state William Howell, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, said lame duck status does inevitably constrain a presidency but it doesn’t necessarily have to make one inert.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has already challenged that notion, saying: “If Joe Biden is not fit to run for president, he is not fit to serve as president. He must resign the office immediately,” as Breitbart News reported.
Howell said Biden may hope to become a juggernaut on the campaign trail now he’s acceded to pressure from the deep-pocketed donors who threatened to withhold cash if he didn’t leave as directed.
“His most important job over the new few months is setting the conditions to make Kamala Harris successful,” Howell said.