Trump, Biden, Bernie playing a 3-way game of chicken in 2024

• The 2024 presidential race is already coming into view.
• It looks like the two oldest presidents in history are gearing up for a rematch.
• And don’t count out 80-year-old Bernie Sanders entirely.

The 2024 presidential campaign, in its early stages, is becoming a grand game of 3-way chicken coops.

In one corner, Joe Biden, at the age of 79, is the oldest president in 250 years of American history, but he has announced that he is running for re-election.

Senator Bernie Sanders is in the other corner. The 80-year-old socialist’s top political consultant has said he will make a third attempt to win the White House as a Democrat, but only if Biden is not running.

And the biggest wild card of all is Donald Trump. At 76, the man who pre-dated Biden as the oldest president in American history seems intent on using his former career for power and glory, for revenge, and perhaps even forgiving himself if it comes to that.

No one person can make an exclusive claim to their party’s primary polling place.

But each of the three men has control over their party’s leadership structure in what could be another wide-ranging presidential campaign.

To many observers, the trio created a power vacuum unlike any seen in modern American history. The same is true of Trump and Biden on the issue.

Former Senate GOP leader Trent Lott admitted in an interview that the next 2024 presidential candidates are interested in fresh faces, “They’ll have a meeting and shake hands and agree that neither of them will run.”

That feeling is growing.

Current Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell predicted a “crowded” field for the GOP in 2024. They will have to wait longer to make their way to the White House.

Utah Republican Gov. Spencer Cox, 47, said in an interview, “I think it’s time for some new candidates to get a fresh look.”

Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley added: “It’s a sad time when parties can’t field candidates in their 40s, 50s and maybe even 60s, but have to use people in their 70s and 80s. You lose years on that kind of reliable strategy when you get out of a democracy.”

The only candidate who can beat Trump?

Biden won the presidency by arguing that he was the only Democratic candidate who could defeat Trump.

Trump is poised to try again as he flirts with another run, though there are now several new headwinds about his own approval rating, high inflation and anger within the party, including a growing list of demands that Democrats have failed to deliver on, from the economy to climate change.

The issue is that Sanders’ 2024 ambitions will remain on hold until Biden makes his intentions public.

After spending the 2020 presidential campaign at home, Biden sought to portray himself as a young and energetic commander-in-chief.

But that didn’t always work out. Conservatives highlight his every misstatement or verbal stumble as evidence of mental decline. Biden fell off his bike on a trip to Delaware in June. And after a long trip to the Middle East, Biden returned to Washington with an unexpected parting gift: COVID-19.

— Kevin Liptak (@Kevinliptakcnn) June 18, 2022

By the time he finishes his second term in 2029, Biden will be 86 years old. It’s a fact the White House doesn’t want to talk about.

“That’s not a question we should be asking,” White House press secretary Karen Jean-Pierre told CNN in June about Biden’s health and fitness.

Biden confronted a reporter during a recent White House picnic for lawmakers when asked whether he should jump to a second term because of polls saying he shouldn’t run.

“They want me to run,” the president read the poll. Read the selection, Jack. You are all one. That poll shows that 92% of Democrats would vote for me if I ran.”

Age is also something that neither Trump nor Sanders want to discuss.

“78 is not old,” Trump told a New York Post gossip columnist before the funeral of his ex-wife Ivana, who died this week in a fall at age 73.

Although Sanders has not spoken publicly about his 2024 goals, a recently leaked memo written by a senior political consultant outlined a scenario that Biden would jump if he didn’t.

Sanders, who was recently asked about America’s overall leadership tenure, told Insider, “The issue facing America is not age, it’s the power of a few billionaires who control the country’s economic and political life at a high level.”

“George McGovern Syndrome”.

What kept all three men – who were well into retirement – engaged? Experts cite ego as the main reason for both Biden and Trump.

“The fact that they both made it to the White House makes them think they both know how to get to the White House,” Brinkley said. “Once you have power, it is very difficult to give it up.”

Biden’s desire to stay in office may also stem from his own sense of history. In particular, he has long feared that if Democrats field a more liberal candidate like Sanders, that would give Republicans a better chance of winning the White House.

“The problem with the Democratic Party is the George McGovern syndrome,” said the anti-war candidate Democrats ran against GOP President Richard Nixon in 1972. McGovern won one state – Massachusetts – and the District of Columbia. By the way, 1972 is the same election cycle when Biden was first elected to the US Senate at the age of 29.

With this story in mind, Democratic brass may continue to rally around Sanders — or New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — as party standard bearers.

Mark Longbaugh, a longtime Democratic operative who worked on Sanders’ 2016 and 2020 campaigns, said Trump is the single driving force behind what’s happening in the rest of the field. If the former president eventually enters the race, it will be easier for Biden to stick around.

“I think because of the way Biden and Biden’s core supporters have positioned Trump as the only person to beat, Trump is at the center of the decision,” he said.

But Longbaugh also said it’s not entirely certain that either will make it to the 2024 primary.

“I think there’s a lot of uncertainty about all three of those and their 2024 resumption,” Longbaugh said. “I could be dead wrong and Biden and Trump are in, and that’s it, and we’ve had a general election. But I see more games on the playing field than conventional wisdom.”

That’s the attitude the 47-year-old Utah governor said he hopes Cox will play for the first time.

“A lot can change in the next year, year and a half,” he said. “I really hope that governors on both sides, other candidates, are willing to stand up and challenge the status quo and say, ‘Hey, look, for the good of our country, we’re here. We’re not going to stand aside and go to war because we think we have a vision to offer.’

That Democratic bench could include Vice President Kamala Harris, 57. California Governor Gavin Newsom, 54; Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, 40; and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, 57

Possible Republican contenders for 2024 include familiar names such as former Vice President Mike Pence, 63. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, 43; former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, 50; former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, 58; and Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, 51; Marco Rubio of Florida, 51; and Tom Cotton, 45, of Arkansas

Lott, the former Senate GOP leader, said it is important for new people to take leadership at the highest levels of government.

From the age of 32 to the age of 67, he was in his own politics.

“You have to know when to hold it `em,” said Lotte to leave public office to work as a lobbyist, “and when to turn `Mm.”