The doubt is now removed. On Tuesday, US President Joe Biden formalized his candidacy for the 2024 presidential election through a short video posted on his Twitter account. This expected, but not surprising, gesture places him at the heart of an election to come in more than 18 months and in which already several candidates, both Democrats and Republicans, are waiting for him to cross swords. Panorama.
The Democratic candidates
Joe Biden : At 80, the current occupant of the Oval Office presents himself to his own estate by saying he wants to finish “the job” started since his arrival at the White House in early 2021. In his video, the president targeted supporters of the MAGA [Make America Great Again] of Donald Trump against whom he says he has been fighting since 2019 to preserve democracy and freedom in the United States. “When I ran for president four years ago, I said we were in a battle to save America’s soul. And we still are. »
Marianne Williamson : Known in specialized media circles as the former spirituality advisor to American star host Oprah Winfrey, this author versed in personal growth is launching for the second time in the race for the Democratic nomination. In 2014, she founded The Peace Alliance, an organization calling for the creation of a Department of Peace in the United States. “It is our job to promote a vision of justice and love that is so powerful that it will overcome the forces of hatred, injustice and fear,” she said. said while launching his candidacy.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. : With a dense and loaded family name in the American political landscape, this environmental lawyer, nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, embarked on the campaign in mid-April, attacking the measures taken by the Biden government to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, casting doubt on mandatory vaccination and titillating the skepticism of a section of the United States in the face of science. In the past, he has already publicly carried the erroneous belief linking vaccination and autism and compared anti-COVID policies to those of Hitler’s Germany, raising the ire of several members of his prestigious family, more often associated with the Democratic camp than to that of obscurantist-populism.
Republican candidates
donald trump : The ex-president made an early entry into the race last November, and this, in the hope of regaining the seat in the White House which he claims, wrongly, since his defeat in 2020, be robbed by fraudulent elections. Despite this “big lie”, the power of attraction of the populist is still very strong within a fringe of the Republican electorate who seem to excuse him as much for his contribution to the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021 – condemned by a parliamentary commission of inquiry – than for several other illegal acts scrutinized by justice. Ironically, his indictment in New York in early April in a bribe case, far from being a stain on his candidacy, stoked his support and boosted his fundraising.
Nikki Haley : Long considered a rising star among Republicans, the former governor of South Carolina and United Nations ambassador under Donald Trump presents herself as the candidate capable of bringing “a new generation of leaders” into the White House . But at 51, the ex-diplomat, a moderate Republican who likes to recall her Indian origins, could above all contribute to dividing the anti-Trump vote in the upcoming primaries, and thus, favoring the candidacy of the billionaire.
Asa Hutchinson : As former two-term governor of Arkansas, member of the House of Representatives, director of the Drug Enforcement Administration and undersecretary for border and transportation security within the Department of Homeland Security, the 72-year-old politician is certainly the most experienced in the race for the Republican nomination. He is also the only one, for the moment, to be openly critical of Donald Trump, an always delicate posture in a party torn, despite its defeats, between the populist sickly clinging to the past and another perspective for the future.
Vivek Ramaswamy : Pure wool Republican from the radical fringe, this entrepreneur, who founded the biopharmaceutical Roivant Science, launched his campaign during his appearance on the show of Tucker Carlson on the airwaves of Fox News, last February. The billionaire has made a name for himself in Republican circles by posing as a destroyer of “woke” and above all by opposing all social and environmental policies within American companies. “Faith, patriotism and hard work are gone, to be replaced by new secular religions like covidism, climatism and gender ideology,” he says in the video launching his campaign.
And the other candidates at the door…
Ron DeSantis : The presidential ambitions of the Republican governor of Florida have been known for several months, even if he has still not officially launched his campaign to face the still well in the saddle Donald Trump in a necessarily heartbreaking primary for the party. The man built his success in the Southern state by enshrining Trumpism in his local policies and posing as an “anti-woke” candidate, blocking, according to him, the rise of a radical left in the United States .
Mike Pence : The former governor of Indiana and former US vice-president could announce his candidacy by the end of June, he hinted in a recent interview with CBS News. Such a decision would give a particular tone to the Republican primary by placing him face to face with his former boss, Donald Trump, who launched his supporters against him on January 6, to prevent him from symbolically certifying the vote in favor of Joe Biden. An insurrection in which Pence refused to participate, thus triggering the insults and the contemptuous statements of the populist against him.
Tim Scott : A minority within his minority as the only Republican senator of the quartet of African-American senators sitting on Capitol Hill, the South Carolina politician no longer hides his presidential aspirations, but still seems to be waiting for the right moment before launching. He is seen by a handful of party donors as a potential alternative between the very similar radicalisms of Trump and DeSantis and as the one capable of “talking” to more moderate Republicans.
Joe Manchin : On the Democratic side, the troublemaker senator from West Virginia could make the leap in the primary of his party, and this, in order to transport in the race for the nomination the opposition to the policies of Joe Biden, that he articulates with ardor and passion within the Senate since the beginning of the current presidency. The elected official, difficult to classify, denounced, a few days ago, the “lack of leadership” of his boss and praised in passing that of the Republican leader in the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, on the thorny question of the management of American debt.