"One thing I learned quickly," a former aide told me, "you don't tell Joe Biden what to say." It produced the debacle of the U.S. withdrawal from Kabul, when Biden dismissed pleas from the military for delay. Biden's midterm campaign theme, unsurprisingly, was an updated version of the message of his 2020 presidential campaign: a pitch for constitutional norms, a rejection of Donald Trump's extremism. Asked whether polling that shows most voters don't want him to run will affect his thinking, Biden said: "It doesn't." In a CNN exit poll on Election Day, 67% of voters said they did not want Biden to run again.

Source: Los Angeles Times November 25, 2022 21:49 UTC