[guest post by Dana]

We’ve been expecting this. In his video announcement, President Biden’s message is clear from the get-go as the first thing we see is footage from the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. The Biden team is framing this election as a fight against Republican extremism.

Because Biden doesn’t see himself as having successfully restored the nation’s character, he is asking for four more years to finish the job:

When I ran for president four years ago, I said we are in a battle for the soul of America. And we still are.

While the numbers might not be there yet for Biden, do you really see any other Democrat with the popularity and necessary gravitas to successfully challenge the lifelong party loyalist and current president (and be able to keep Donald Trump out of the White House)?

[A] majority doesn’t want President Biden to run for reelection, either, as he prepares for an expected campaign launch that could come as early as this week.

70 percent of Americans think Biden shouldn’t seek a second term — including 51 percent of Democrats. Forty-eight percent of those who said he shouldn’t run again cited his age as a “major” reason.

So just how unpopular is Joe Biden? Yikes:

Biden is tied for second-lowest approval rating of any president in past 70 years: President Joe Biden’s 41% approval rating is similar to Ronald Reagan’s and Jimmy Carter’s at this point in their presidencies.

Despite this, I’m guessing a whole lot of Americans will choose to put their money on an often-confused octogenarian rather than on an unhinged grifter (assuming Trump wins the nomination):

…41 percent of registered voters overall said they’d definitely or probably vote for Biden in the general election if he does run, including 88 percent of Democratic voters.

Anyway, the Republican National Committee responded to Biden’s announcement with an A.I. generated video depicting a dystopian American post-Biden/Harris reelection:

A statement from Ronna McDaniel accompanied the video, in which she said that “Biden is so out-of-touch that after creating crisis after crisis, he thinks he deserves another four years.”

And this is Donald Trump’s opening salvo from his response to the Biden announcement:

You could take the five worst presidents in American history, and put them together, and they would not have done the damage Joe Biden has done to our Nation in just a few short years. Not even close.

–Dana