PanamaTimes

Monday, Jun 01, 2026

Biden sounds ready to seek 2nd term while rallying Democrats

Biden sounds ready to seek 2nd term while rallying Democrats

President Joe Biden sounded like a candidate making his case for a second term Friday night as he rallied a raucous meeting of national Democrats who chanted, “Four more years!”
The only thing missing was an official announcement — that’s not expected for at least several weeks.

Speaking to the Democratic National Committee after a strong jobs report, Biden boasted about helping create a strong economy and said his administration had made the country’s most significant federal investments in public works, health care and green technology in decades. He also slammed Republican extremism, suggesting that party is still too beholden to former President Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again movement.

“Let me ask you a simple question. Are you with me?” a grinning Biden asked onstage in Philadelphia as hundreds of party leaders from around the country interrupted him with cries of “Four more years! Four more years!”

He later added, to nearly as loud applause, “America is back and we’re leading the world again.”

Biden has sought to seize the political offensive after a strong midterm election season for his party and as he looks toward 2024, with Trump having already announced another bid for the White House. It’s especially important given mounting pressures in Washington, including a special counsel investigation into his handling of classified documents and a Republican-controlled House eager to serve as a check against Biden and his agenda on Capitol Hill.

Speaking before Biden on Friday night, Vice President Kamala Harris was just as defiant about the GOP and its staunch opposition to issues like abortion rights.

“There are those who want to stand in the way of our momentum,” she said. “The extremist, so-called leaders, who want to distract and divide our nation as they ban books, as they reject the history of America, as they criminalize doctors and nurses and the sacred right to vote.”

At a DNC fundraiser before taking the stage, Harris referenced Democrats’ holding onto Senate control during fall’s midterms and reminded a smaller crowd: “It’s not the time to pat ourselves on the back. It’s the time to see it through.”

“And that’s going to take as much work, if not more, than everything that everyone here put into where we are today,” she said.

Looking to the future himself, Biden told the same reception: “No matter who is president, things are going to change radically in the next 15 years.”

“Are we going to be leading the pack?” he added. “Or are we going to be the end of it?”

Earlier in Philadelphia on Friday, Biden and Harris visited a water treatment plant and hailed $15 billion in funding to remove lead pipes from service lines around the country. That comes from a bipartisan infrastructure package, which is also bankrolling railway projects the president spent this week trumpeting.

“The issue has to do with basic dignity,” Biden said. “No amount of lead in water is safe. None.”

With the State of the Union address coming next week, Biden has renewed calls for political unity, something he’s acknowledged being unable to achieve despite his promises as a candidate in 2020. But those appeals haven’t tempered Biden’s broadsides against Trump and the former president’s MAGA movement.

“This ain’t your father’s Republican Party,” Biden said, adding that the GOP agenda was so extreme that “we have to keep pointing out what the other team wants.” Of Trump loyalists, he said, “These aren’t conservatives.”

That’s made some Democrats anxious to see Biden stay aggressive in touting his record.

“The president is trying to solve the problems of the nation on infrastructure, on microchips, on gun safety, on health care,” said Randi Weingarten, a DNC member and president of the American Federation of Teachers. “Compare (that) to the GOP, which seems to be on a revenge agenda.”

Biden’s speech comes the day before the DNC is set to approve an overhauled presidential primary calendar starting next year that would replace Iowa with South Carolina in the leadoff spot. New Hampshire and Nevada would go second, followed by Georgia and Michigan — a change the president has championed to ensure that voters of color have more influence deciding the party’s White House nominee.

The new calendar would be largely moot if Biden runs again, since party elders won’t want to oversee a drawn-out primary against him. Democrats have been solidly unified in their opposition to the new Republican-controlled House, while no major Democratic challenger is thought to be preparing to run against Biden.

Biden’s advisers haven’t waited for his official reelection announcement, already spending weeks making staffing arrangements and readying lines of political attacks against Republicans seen as early presidential front-runners, including Trump, who launched his campaign in November, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Alan Clendenin, a DNC member from Florida, said Biden has strengthened the economy, reestablished US global standing and promoted inclusive values — the opposite of what Trump and DeSantis stand for.

“They predicted gloom and doom. He’s proved them all wrong,” said Clendenin, who kicked off a DNC Southern caucus meeting by noting that Florida has begun lagging behind other states in key policy areas and joking of its governor, “That’s what happened when you’re led by the devil.”

Biden repeatedly denounced “extreme MAGA Republicans” as a threat to the nation’s democracy in the runup to the midterms and gloated a bit Friday about the results.

“People looked at me like I was nuts,” he said, referring to his repeated emphasis on MAGA Republicans last fall. “They’re nuts. I’m not nuts.”

The president, meanwhile, will have a harder time campaigning on future legislative accomplishments now that the GOP controls the House. A coming fight over extending the nation’s legal debt ceiling may only harden partisan clashes.

Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said he and the White House would continue talking about ways to avoid a debt limit crisis. But, referring to federal spending, McCarthy said, “The current path we’re on we cannot sustain.”

Biden has also suggested that simply bashing Republicans won’t be enough, however, noting that Democrats have seen their support among Americans without a college degree decline. He said Friday night that his party “stopped talking to” blue-collar workers.

“We have to get working-class people to say we see them,” the president added.

In a more lighthearted nod to the coming Super Bowl, Biden declared “Fly, Eagles, fly!” and called fans in Philadelphia “the most informed, obnoxious fans in the world.”

That would ostensibly include his wife, Jill, who is a diehard Eagles supporter.
Newsletter

Related Articles

PanamaTimes
0:00
0:00
Close
Japanese Technology Firm Fujitsu Launches Advanced Artificial Intelligence Tool for Corporate Disclosures
South Africa Officially Launches Nationwide Campaign for Highly Contested Local Government Elections
United Kingdom Commits Additional Funding for Unexploded Ordnance Clearance in Laos
Singapore Announces Stringent New Greenhouse Gas Regulations for Commercial Cooling Systems
Cambodia and Thailand Hold High-Level Border Security Talks at United Nations Headquarters
Myanmar Military Government and China Sign Major Agreement to Upgrade Media and Cultural Cooperation
Knife Attack at Swiss Train Station Leaves Three Injured in Suspected Act of Domestic Terrorism
Transnational Extortion Gang Threatens Canadian Police With Army of One Thousand Armed Operatives
Australia Imposes Forty-Two-Day Quarantine on Cruise Ship Passengers Following Deadly Hantavirus Outbreak
International Monetary Fund Unlocks Seven Hundred Million United States Dollars for Sri Lanka Following Economic Reforms
Australia Launches Record One Point Four Billion Dollar Lawsuit Against Chemical Giant 3M Over Contamination
China and Canada Foreign Ministers Meet in Ottawa in Effort to Stabilize Strained Diplomatic Ties
Indonesia Demands Urgent United Nations Security Council Reform Amid Escalating Global Conflicts
Extreme Weather Patterns Trigger Severe Drought in Madagascar and Destructive Flooding in East Africa
Indian State of Karnataka Faces Political Upheaval as Chief Minister Siddaramaiah Abruptly Resigns
Philippines and Japan Reaffirm Defense Ties as Crucial for Indo-Pacific Regional Stability
Norway Joins French Nuclear Deterrence Initiative in Major Shift for European Security Architecture
Global Critical Mineral Alliances Expand as Western Nations Move to Counter Chinese Supply Dominance
United States Imposes Fifty Percent Tariffs on Mexican Steel and Aluminum Ahead of Trade Pact Review
European Union and China Head Toward Major Trade Conflict Over Clean Technology Exports
United States Economic Growth Severely Downgraded to One Point Six Percent as Stagflation Fears Mount
World Health Organization Warns Central African Ebola Epidemic is Outpacing Containment Efforts
United States Treasury Department Conditions Sanctions Relief on Reopening of the Strait of Hormuz
Iranian Air Defenses Intercept and Destroy United States Military Drone Over Bushehr Province
Iranian Armed Forces Launch Ballistic Missiles Toward Unspecified Targets Prompting Regional Condemnation
United Nations Secretary-General Warns Global Order Facing Highest Level of Conflict Since 1945
Israel Issues Sweeping Evacuation Orders in Southern Lebanon Amid Intensified Hezbollah Conflict
Russia Announces Systemic Military Strikes Targeting Ukrainian Defense and Energy Infrastructure
United States and Iranian Negotiators Reach Draft Agreement to Extend Ceasefire and Resume Nuclear Talks
United Nations Security Council Deeply Divided Over United States Capture of Venezuelan President
US and Iran Exchange Direct Military Strikes Amid Fragile Gulf Ceasefire
World Health Organization Warns of Catastrophic Ebola Outbreak in DR Congo
Russia Threatens New Wave of Strikes on Ukrainian Infrastructure and Embassies
Scientists Warn Atlantic Ocean Currents Could Collapse Faster Than Projected
Anthropic Reaches $900 Billion Valuation in Historic AI Funding Round
Washington Imposes Crippling Sanctions on Iranian Maritime Authority
Japan and the Philippines Initiate Strategic Intelligence-Sharing Pact
Microsoft Deploys Autonomous Computer-Using AI Agents to Global Markets
Anthropic Secures $45 Billion Compute Infrastructure Agreement With SpaceX
U.S. Director of National Intelligence Resigns Amid Administration Shakeup
Micron Technology Crosses Trillion-Dollar Valuation Amid Unprecedented Hardware Demand
Canada and Germany Finalize Historic Long-Term LNG Export Agreement
China Expands International Travel Restrictions on Domestic AI Researchers
Japan Approves Sweeping Overhaul of National Intelligence Apparatus
Global Airlines Scramble Logistics as Middle East Airspace Remains Fractured
Japan's Naphtha Imports Plunge 47 Percent Amid Strait of Hormuz Closure
Global Crude Prices Retreat Below $96 as Gulf Tensions Momentarily Ease
Generative AI Outperforms Human Baselines in Landmark Global Creativity Study
NASA Partners With Private Aerospace to Unveil Permanent Lunar Base Architecture
South Korean Equity Markets Surge on Next-Generation Memory Chip Frenzy
×