A progressive grassroots organization that supported Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) 2016 and 2020 White House bids announced on Monday that it will launch a campaign to oppose President Biden’s reelection in 2024.
RootsAction wrote in a press release that Biden has been “neither bold nor inspiring” since taking office early last year. And because his “prospects for winning re-election appear to be bleak,” it will launch the #DontRunJoe campaign on Nov. 9, one day after the midterm elections.
“In 2024 the United States will face the dual imperatives of preventing a Republican takeover of the White House and advancing a truly progressive agenda. The stakes could not be higher,” RootsAction wrote in the release. “The threat of a neofascist GOP has become all too obvious. Bold and inspiring leadership from the Oval Office will be essential.”
“With so much at stake, making [Biden] the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer in 2024 would be a tragic mistake,” the progressive group added.
Since taking office last year, Biden has struggled with a cascading series of crises, from supply chain disruptions and high inflation to a chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Supreme Court overturning the nearly 50-year-old constitutional right to abortion.
The Biden administration has been criticized, especially by the more progressive wing of the Democratic Party, for failing to address the crises with strong action.
The president has also not heeded progressive calls on student loan debt and failed to pass a comprehensive federal voting rights bill into law, while his social spending and climate change package has stalled in Congress.
RootsAction was founded in 2011 to galvanize voters against what they call a rising extremist Republican Party. Members also want to dramatically address social, economic and environmental issues. The liberal group supported Biden as the nominee in 2020 but has since taken issue with the president’s more moderate agenda.
On Monday, the organization said moderate policies “have failed to truly address such pressing concerns as the climate emergency, voting rights, student debt, health care, corporate price-gouging, and bloated military spending in tandem with anemic diplomacy.”
Poll after poll has shown Biden’s job approval ratings remain at abysmally low levels ahead of the midterms. Around 71 percent of Americans do not want Biden to run for reelection, according to a Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey.
On Monday, a New York Times-Siena College poll showed 64 percent of Democrats would prefer a Democratic candidate other than Biden in the 2024 race. More than two-thirds of respondents in the poll cited age — Biden is 79 — and job performance, while about 10 percent said he was not progressive enough.
Biden won in 2020 with a historic number of votes, with more than 81 million Americans supporting him in the election. He has said he will run again in 2024 if his health allows, and Vice President Harris has affirmed the same.
Popular liberals who have sought the White House, such as Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), have said they will not run against Biden if he chooses to seek reelection.
“Biden triumphed over Donald Trump in 2020 with vital help from extraordinary grassroots efforts in swing states by progressive organizations,” RootsAction wrote on Monday. “A president is not his party’s king, and he has no automatic right to renomination. Joe Biden should not seek it. If he does, he will have a fight on his hands.”