London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Tuesday, Dec 16, 2025

Biden sounds ready to seek 2nd term while rallying Democrats

Biden sounds ready to seek 2nd term while rallying Democrats

President Joe Biden sounded like a candidate making his case for a second term Friday night as he rallied a raucous meeting of national Democrats who chanted, “Four more years!”
The only thing missing was an official announcement — that’s not expected for at least several weeks.

Speaking to the Democratic National Committee after a strong jobs report, Biden boasted about helping create a strong economy and said his administration had made the country’s most significant federal investments in public works, health care and green technology in decades. He also slammed Republican extremism, suggesting that party is still too beholden to former President Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again movement.

“Let me ask you a simple question. Are you with me?” a grinning Biden asked onstage in Philadelphia as hundreds of party leaders from around the country interrupted him with cries of “Four more years! Four more years!”

He later added, to nearly as loud applause, “America is back and we’re leading the world again.”

Biden has sought to seize the political offensive after a strong midterm election season for his party and as he looks toward 2024, with Trump having already announced another bid for the White House. It’s especially important given mounting pressures in Washington, including a special counsel investigation into his handling of classified documents and a Republican-controlled House eager to serve as a check against Biden and his agenda on Capitol Hill.

Speaking before Biden on Friday night, Vice President Kamala Harris was just as defiant about the GOP and its staunch opposition to issues like abortion rights.

“There are those who want to stand in the way of our momentum,” she said. “The extremist, so-called leaders, who want to distract and divide our nation as they ban books, as they reject the history of America, as they criminalize doctors and nurses and the sacred right to vote.”

At a DNC fundraiser before taking the stage, Harris referenced Democrats’ holding onto Senate control during fall’s midterms and reminded a smaller crowd: “It’s not the time to pat ourselves on the back. It’s the time to see it through.”

“And that’s going to take as much work, if not more, than everything that everyone here put into where we are today,” she said.

Looking to the future himself, Biden told the same reception: “No matter who is president, things are going to change radically in the next 15 years.”

“Are we going to be leading the pack?” he added. “Or are we going to be the end of it?”

Earlier in Philadelphia on Friday, Biden and Harris visited a water treatment plant and hailed $15 billion in funding to remove lead pipes from service lines around the country. That comes from a bipartisan infrastructure package, which is also bankrolling railway projects the president spent this week trumpeting.

“The issue has to do with basic dignity,” Biden said. “No amount of lead in water is safe. None.”

With the State of the Union address coming next week, Biden has renewed calls for political unity, something he’s acknowledged being unable to achieve despite his promises as a candidate in 2020. But those appeals haven’t tempered Biden’s broadsides against Trump and the former president’s MAGA movement.

“This ain’t your father’s Republican Party,” Biden said, adding that the GOP agenda was so extreme that “we have to keep pointing out what the other team wants.” Of Trump loyalists, he said, “These aren’t conservatives.”

That’s made some Democrats anxious to see Biden stay aggressive in touting his record.

“The president is trying to solve the problems of the nation on infrastructure, on microchips, on gun safety, on health care,” said Randi Weingarten, a DNC member and president of the American Federation of Teachers. “Compare (that) to the GOP, which seems to be on a revenge agenda.”

Biden’s speech comes the day before the DNC is set to approve an overhauled presidential primary calendar starting next year that would replace Iowa with South Carolina in the leadoff spot. New Hampshire and Nevada would go second, followed by Georgia and Michigan — a change the president has championed to ensure that voters of color have more influence deciding the party’s White House nominee.

The new calendar would be largely moot if Biden runs again, since party elders won’t want to oversee a drawn-out primary against him. Democrats have been solidly unified in their opposition to the new Republican-controlled House, while no major Democratic challenger is thought to be preparing to run against Biden.

Biden’s advisers haven’t waited for his official reelection announcement, already spending weeks making staffing arrangements and readying lines of political attacks against Republicans seen as early presidential front-runners, including Trump, who launched his campaign in November, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Alan Clendenin, a DNC member from Florida, said Biden has strengthened the economy, reestablished US global standing and promoted inclusive values — the opposite of what Trump and DeSantis stand for.

“They predicted gloom and doom. He’s proved them all wrong,” said Clendenin, who kicked off a DNC Southern caucus meeting by noting that Florida has begun lagging behind other states in key policy areas and joking of its governor, “That’s what happened when you’re led by the devil.”

Biden repeatedly denounced “extreme MAGA Republicans” as a threat to the nation’s democracy in the runup to the midterms and gloated a bit Friday about the results.

“People looked at me like I was nuts,” he said, referring to his repeated emphasis on MAGA Republicans last fall. “They’re nuts. I’m not nuts.”

The president, meanwhile, will have a harder time campaigning on future legislative accomplishments now that the GOP controls the House. A coming fight over extending the nation’s legal debt ceiling may only harden partisan clashes.

Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said he and the White House would continue talking about ways to avoid a debt limit crisis. But, referring to federal spending, McCarthy said, “The current path we’re on we cannot sustain.”

Biden has also suggested that simply bashing Republicans won’t be enough, however, noting that Democrats have seen their support among Americans without a college degree decline. He said Friday night that his party “stopped talking to” blue-collar workers.

“We have to get working-class people to say we see them,” the president added.

In a more lighthearted nod to the coming Super Bowl, Biden declared “Fly, Eagles, fly!” and called fans in Philadelphia “the most informed, obnoxious fans in the world.”

That would ostensibly include his wife, Jill, who is a diehard Eagles supporter.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
UK Mortgage Rules to Give Greater Flexibility to Borrowers With Irregular Incomes
UK Treasury Moves to Position Britain as Leading Global Hub for Crypto Firms
U.S. Freezes £31 Billion Tech Prosperity Deal With Britain Amid Trade Dispute
Prince Harry and Meghan’s Potential UK Return Gains New Momentum Amid Security Review and Royal Dialogue
Zelensky Opens High-Stakes Peace Talks in Berlin with Trump Envoy and European Leaders
Historical Reflections on Press Freedom Emerge Amid Debate Over Trump’s Media Policies
UK Boosts Protection for Jewish Communities After Sydney Hanukkah Attack
UK Government Declines to Comment After ICC Prosecutor Alleges Britain Threatened to Defund Court Over Israel Arrest Warrant
Apple Shutters All Retail Stores in the United Kingdom Under New National COVID-19 Lockdown
US–UK Technology Partnership Strains as Key Trade Disagreements Emerge
UK Police Confirm No Further Action Over Allegation That Andrew Asked Bodyguard to Investigate Virginia Giuffre
Giuffre Family Expresses Deep Disappointment as UK Police Decline New Inquiry Into Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor Claims
Transatlantic Trade Ambitions Hit a Snag as UK–US Deal Faces Emerging Challenges
Ex-ICC Prosecutor Alleges UK Threatened to Withdraw Funding Over Netanyahu Arrest Warrant Bid
UK Disciplinary Tribunal Clears Carter-Ruck Lawyer of Misconduct in OneCoin Case
‘Pink Ladies’ Emerge as Prominent Face of UK Anti-Immigration Protests
Nigel Farage Says Reform UK Has Become Britain’s Largest Party as Labour Membership Falls Sharply
Google DeepMind and UK Government Launch First Automated AI Lab to Accelerate Scientific Discovery
UK Economy Falters Ahead of Budget as Growth Contracts and Confidence Wanes
Australia Approves Increased Foreign Stake in Strategic Defence Shipbuilder
Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson proclaims, “For Ukraine, surrendering their land would be a nightmare.”
Microsoft Challenges £2.1 Billion UK Cloud Licensing Lawsuit at Competition Tribunal
Fake Doctor in Uttar Pradesh Accused of Killing Woman After Performing YouTube-Based Surgery
Hackers Are Hiding Malware in Open-Source Tools and IDE Extensions
Traveling to USA? Homeland Security moving toward requiring foreign travelers to share social media history
UK Officials Push Back at Trump Saying European Leaders ‘Talk Too Much’ About Ukraine
UK Warns of Escalating Cyber Assault Linked to Putin’s State-Backed Operations
UK Consumer Spending Falters in November as Households Hold Back Ahead of Budget
UK Orders Fresh Review of Prince Harry’s Security Status After Formal Request
U.S. Authorises Nvidia to Sell H200 AI Chips to China Under Security Controls
Trump in Direct Assault: European Leaders Are Weak, Immigration a Disaster. Russia Is Strong and Big — and Will Win
"App recommendation" or disguised advertisement? ChatGPT Premium users are furious
"The Great Filtering": Australia Blocks Hundreds of Thousands of Minors From Social Networks
Mark Zuckerberg Pulls Back From Metaverse After $70 Billion Loss as Meta Shifts Priorities to AI
Nvidia CEO Says U.S. Data-Center Builds Take Years while China ‘Builds a Hospital in a Weekend’
Indian Airports in Turmoil as IndiGo Cancels Over a Thousand Flights, Stranding Thousands
Hollywood Industry on Edge as Netflix Secures Near-$60 Bln Loan for Warner Bros Takeover
Drugs and Assassinations: The Connection Between the Italian Mafia and Football Ultras
Hollywood megadeal: Netflix acquires Warner Bros. Discovery for 83 billion dollars
The Disregard for a Europe ‘in Danger of Erasure,’ the Shift Toward Russia: Trump’s Strategic Policy Document
Two and a Half Weeks After the Major Outage: A Cloudflare Malfunction Brings Down Multiple Sites
UK data-regulator demands urgent clarity on racial bias in police facial-recognition systems
Labour Uses Biscuits to Explain UK Debt — MPs Lean Into Social Media to Reach New Audiences
German President Lays Wreath at Coventry as UK-Germany Reaffirm Unity Against Russia’s Threat
UK Inquiry Finds Putin ‘Morally Responsible’ for 2018 Novichok Death — London Imposes Broad Sanctions on GRU
India backs down on plan to mandate government “Sanchar Saathi” app on all smartphones
King Charles Welcomes German President Steinmeier to UK in First State Visit by Berlin in 27 Years
UK Plans Major Cutback to Jury Trials as Crown Court Backlog Nears 80,000
UK Government to Significantly Limit Jury Trials in England and Wales
U.S. and U.K. Seal Drug-Pricing Deal: Britain Agrees to Pay More, U.S. Lifts Tariffs
×