Biden celebrates beating the odds, but he faces a new challenge

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden on Wednesday celebrated avoiding the “giant red wave” that many had anticipated in this week’s midterm elections and reaffirmed that he intends to run again in 2024, even as he vowed to work across the aisle with ascendant congressional Republicans.

While the president appeared to have beaten the historical odds by minimizing his party’s losses, he still faced the sobering prospect of a Republican-controlled House for the next two years even if Democrats hold the Senate, jeopardizing his ambitious legislative agenda and presaging a new era of grinding conflict with subpoena-powered opponents.

But at a postelection news conference at the White House, a cheerful Biden appeared energized by the better-than-expected results, calling it “a good day for democracy” while signaling no course correction and acknowledging no mistakes.

“I’m not going to change,” he said. While open to cooperation with Republicans, he defiantly said he would block any efforts by the opposition to unravel the accomplishments of his first two years. “I have a pen that can veto,” he said, making a signing motion with his hand.

The mixed results from the midterm elections will take days or weeks to unfold as counting continues in key states and a Senate runoff looms in Georgia. It may take even longer to determine definitively what those results will mean for the rest of the Biden presidency.

By any measure, Biden scored the best midterm result of any president in 20 years, avoiding the Republican surge that many strategists in both parties predicted, even as it could leave him with a more hostile Congress and uncertain prospects for advancing his priorities for the remainder of his term.

The elections were not a clear mandate for Biden, but neither were they the repudiation that many of his predecessors endured during midterms. An aging president sometimes seen as frail and hobbled by the highest inflation in four decades, an overseas war roiling energy markets and anemic poll numbers somehow overcame expectations anyway – another chapter in Biden’s lifelong narrative of stubborn resilience in the face of adversity.

The results may encourage him to seek reelection and could for now quiet dissenting voices within his party that have been agitating for another standard-bearer in 2024 as he approaches his 80th birthday later this month. He has some breathing room to think it over, even as former President Donald Trump may jump into the race as soon as next week.

Biden indicated that he would talk it over with his family during the holidays and announce a decision “early next year.”

“Our intention is to run again,” he said. “That’s been our intention regardless of what the outcome of this election was.”

He added: “This is ultimately a family decision. I think everybody wants me to run, but we’re going to have discussions about it. And I don’t feel any hurry one way or another to make that judgment, today, tomorrow, whenever, no matter what my predecessor does.”

Asked if polling that shows most voters would rather he not run again would have any influence on his decision, he said crisply, “It doesn’t.” What would be his message to the doubters? “Watch me.”