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BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — Earlier this week, Cathy Abernathy, a Republican strategist here, was asked by a local reporter if he could visit the Kern County Republican Party headquarters to watch Republicans watch Kevin McCarthy’s torturing on TV.

She couldn’t believe it.

“Do you really think in the middle of a workday that we’re holding watch parties?” Abernathy told him, before relaying the same message to me when I called looking for color from the district on Thursday.

In Washington, the McCarthy speakership saga had become the spectacle of the new year — non-stop, required viewing for the politics-obsessed. But in his district in California’s Central Valley, which would seem to have more invested in McCarthy’s speakership than any other place outside the Beltway, it was hardly bringing Bakersfield to a standstill.

“What’s the name?” asked Jackie Victoria, a Republican who was eating lunch at a pupuseria in the strip mall where McCarthy once ran a deli, and who, after speaking with friends, recalled she’d once worked in the cafeteria of the high school McCarthy graduated from. “Is he a Republican?”

One table over, a man asked, “Kevin who?”

Even at Luigi’s, a longtime favorite of McCarthy’s when he’s in town, the TVs were tuned to ESPN, not C-SPAN, as a series of his failed speakership votes went down.

When I stepped into the Italian restaurant and grocery mid-week, the owner, Gino Valpredo, who has known McCarthy for years, told me he “love[d]” McCarthy and assumed his speakership bid, despite defectors, would be a “shoo-in.”

But being several cooks down, he said, he’d only glanced at his phone. All he’d seen were “odds and ends.”

“I don’t know what’s going on,” he said, making him, perhaps, more like McCarthy than he realized.

The way much of official Washington has read into this week’s proceedings, the inability of Republicans to elect a speaker has been uniquely revealing of the modern GOP’s dysfunction. The multiple failed votes have revealed McCarthy’s political shortcomings — or Donald Trump’s, who endorsed him for speaker — or the limitations of the GOP’s new, narrow majority, foreshadowing the difficulty it will have governing over the next two years.

In Bakersfield, they’ve served as something else entirely: A reminder of how little many people care.

“I don’t give a shit, to be honest with you,” said Gary Toschi, a Republican supporter of McCarthy’s who coached McCarthy’s son in baseball years ago.

This isn’t principally a McCarthy thing. As far as politicians who aren’t presidents go, he is a well-known — and well-liked — commodity in this area, which he’s represented in the state Assembly or Congress for two decades. He won his last election, in November, with more than 67 percent of the vote.

But years of polling suggests the identity of a House speaker — or the reasons why who holds that position is important— aren’t at the tip of every American’s tongue. And even among those who are aware in Bakersfield — a landscape marked by pump jacks and sprawling fields of almond trees and table grapes — there is pessimism that the outcome will matter, either way.

Given the narrow majority Republicans were left with in the House after a less-than-red-wave year, Toschi said, “If [McCarthy] gets the speakership, he won’t be able to do anything, anyway.”

He said, “I would like for him to be speaker, and I think he deserves to be speaker.”

But the subject didn’t come up over lunch this week when Toschi, a crop adviser in Bakersfield, sat down with colleagues and growers he knows. They spoke instead about Damar Hamlin, the Buffalo Bills safety who went into cardiac arrest during a game against the Cincinnati Bengals on Monday night, and about the weather in Kern County. Rain and powerful winds were sweeping in.

There is a political class in Bakersfield — and in Sacramento, and throughout California — that is watching McCarthy’s fate as closely as anyone. Republicans here followed his rise to prominence from the beginning, first in the California state Assembly, then in Congress, as a dealmaker, recruiter and prolific fundraiser. They remember when opposition from the conservative House Freedom Caucus forced him to abandon his bid for speaker in 2015, and his subsequent whiplashing in the Trump era.

They spoke about it in emotional terms. On conservative airwaves in Bakersfield, radio hosts devoted hours to “poor old Kevin,” or to how “stupid” the party looks. “No one should go through what Kevin McCarthy is going through,” the radio show host Ralph Bailey told his listeners on Thursday. “No one should be treated as disrespectfully as they are treating Mr. McCarthy.”

The Bakersfield Californian ran with the headline, “GOP’s McCarthy rejected for House speaker — again and again.” On Wednesday night, the local NBC affiliate, KGET TV, polled viewers on whether McCarthy should withdraw his bid for speaker, with an anchor reading from the about evenly divided answers on air.

“It’s humiliating for Kevin,” Rob Stutzman, a Republican strategist who worked as an adviser to then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger when McCarthy was in the state legislature, told me. “Tough to know where he pivots to.”

For Republicans here, McCarthy represents something of a political lifeline. With the party all but irrelevant in a state controlled by Democrats, a national figure with clout in D.C. can advance ideological causes. He can also push provincial interests. On issues ranging from water to oil drilling, Abernathy said, “it’s really important” for the area to have a prominent voice in Washington.

“This is huge,” she said.

Abernathy, who as chief of staff to then-Rep. Bill Thomas, a Republican, had given McCarthy his job in Thomas’ office in the 1980s, said people driving by her home this week and seeing her working in her yard at night “all stop and say, ‘He’s going to get this, right?’”

Those who are paying attention and do care are nervous. I ran into a young Republican who told me he was scrolling news for updates while “trying to keep my blood pressure down.” And Democrats are laughing as loudly here as anywhere. At a downtown sandwich shop where McCarthy is known well to its business-attired clientele (not his own, but Sequoia Sandwich Company), a Democrat working in the local prosecutor’s office said his dad, also a Democrat, was “watching C-SPAN more than he had in years.” Father and son were reveling together in McCarthy’s “very bad time.”

But Bakersfield is still a world away from Washington, where Bad Lip Reading is having a field day with conversations on the House floor, C-SPAN has been branded “America’s Hottest TV Drama” and Cheryl Johnson, the House clerk, is suddenly a celebrity.

“I hear his name a lot, so obviously he’s good at what he’s doing,” Anna Medina, a Republican who owns a barbecue supply store in Bakersfield, told me.

The news that he was not, in fact, doing as well as he would like, came to many in his hometown as something of a surprise.

“Really? Oh, my gosh,” said Ricardo Beal, who, with his wife, Caroline, owns a barber shop in the same strip mall as the pupuseria.

Beal said he’d prefer to see McCarthy elected speaker, figuring “you’re going to be fed first if you’re close to the pot.”

But so long as McCarthy has some position of prominence in the conference, he said, whatever comes of his speakership campaign is “not going to bother me.”

One door down from Beal’s shop, at the Peruvian restaurant and meat market he owns, Abel Roman, a Republican, said even the most influential members of Congress aren’t very powerful on their own. The ability of a small band of House rebels to hold up McCarthy’s election has been proof of that.

Whatever happens to McCarthy, Roman said, “I don’t feel like it’s really going to matter.”

But could it?

He shook his head. “Maybe if he was the president.”

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Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories 

Marking the second anniversary of one of the nation’s darkest days, President Joe Biden paid tribute Friday to the heroism displayed on Jan. 6, 2021, while also warning that the forces that fueled the violence at the U.S. Capitol still lurk.

Biden touted the nation’s healing over the last two years but condemned the riot at the very citadel of the nation’s democracy. He derided the mob “as sick insurrectionists” who wreaked havoc and drew blood in the name of Donald Trump.

“All of it was fueled by lies about the 2020 election,” Biden said. “But on this day two years ago, our democracy held. We the People, as our Constitution refers to us, ‘We the people’ did not flinch.”

Biden also honored 14 Americans who stood up for democracy after the 2020 election, awarding medals to members of law enforcement, including Capitol Police officers who held off rioters, as well as election officials who stood their ground in the face of Trump’s onslaught of lies.

Two years later, the images from that day remain horrifying. The scene that unfolded — mobs pushing through police barricades, breaking windows, then occupying seats of power — was one that Americans are accustomed to watching in distant lands with authoritarian regimes.

But Biden made clear that the violence — which included gunshots fired in the Capitol, one death, and an armed occupation of the Senate floor — was born from the man who swore an oath to protect the very democratic traditions that rioters tried to undo in his name.

“Our democracy was attacked. The U.S. Capitol was breached, which had never happened before in our nation’s history, even in the Civil War,” said Biden, who warned that the anti-democratic forces had not subsided.

“We know it could happen again,” Biden said. “There’s no guarantee. Except for us. Except for all of you.”

The event, emotional at times, largely focused on those who sacrificed so much that day. Biden described in vivid detail the assaults at the capital and awarded one of the nation’s highest civilian honors to several law enforcement officers, including Michael Fanone, Harry Dunn and Eugene Goodman.

Others hailed were local officials such as Russell “Rusty” Bowers, the former speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, as well Georgia poll workers Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman, who both withstood threats on their lives from Trump supporters in the weeks after the 2020 election.

Three of the medals given to law enforcement officers were done so posthumously: Brian Sicknick and Howard Liebengood of the U.S. Capitol Police and Jeffrey Smith of the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police. Sicknick suffered a stroke the day after the riot; both Smith and Liebengood died by suicide in the wake of the insurrection.

“All of America watched it on television. America owes you,” the president said. “It owes you all a debt of gratitude, one we can never fully repay unless we live up to what you did.”

Trump spent the end of 2020 declaring the election was “rigged” and making baseless accusations of widespread voter fraud that numerous federal courts and senior members of his administration said did not exist. Trump was enabled by dozens of fellow Republicans willing to object to the count, a maneuver they knew would delay but not change the outcome.

This year, the Jan. 6 anniversary fell at a moment of political opportunity for Biden. He addressed the nation at the same time the Republican-led House of Representatives remained in chaos trying to to choose its next speaker, and Trump, the GOP’s only declared presidential candidate to date, continued to espouse widely-rejected election denialism.

Homegrown threats against the nation’s democracy have been a familiar theme for Biden, who launched his presidential campaign because he felt Trump was tearing at the nation’s fabric.

As the general election campaign ramped up last fall, Biden delivered a pair of speeches urging vigilance against violent anti-democratic forces, one set against the backdrop of Independence Hall and the other, just days before the midterms, coming after the brutal assault of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband.

Though the midterms have passed and the House Jan. 6 committee has all but finished its work, Biden will continue to sound the alarms in the months ahead, believing the threat has not dissipated.

The president’s speech Friday came as House leadership remained in limbo, with a right-wing faction of the GOP paralyzing the process to select a speaker. Many of those same lawmakers — as well as others expected to play prominent roles in the new Congress — voted against Biden’s certification and have pushed false claims of election fraud.

And while many of the most prominent election deniers lost in November, West Wing aides also point to Trump’s shadow looming over the political landscape. Though the former president has been politically weakened in recent months, many close to Biden believe Trump will still emerge as the GOP presidential nominee next year. As Biden takes steps to likely launch his own campaign in the coming months, some in his orbit are preparing to make Jan. 6 a central issue in the campaign.

Eli Stokols contributed to this report.

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Just In | The Hill 

Police in Albuquerque, New Mexico, are investigating a recent spate of shootings that appear to be targeting the homes and offices of local elected officials.

Gun shots were reported near the office of New Mexico state Sen. Antonio “Moe” Maestas (D) on Thursday morning, in the most recent of four shootings involving elected officials, according to the Albuquerque Police Department.

No one was injured in Thursday’s shooting, or any of the previous shootings, according to police.

“Fortunately, nobody has been injured by these shootings,” Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina said in a statement. “But every time someone fires a gun into a home or business, there is a potential for tragedy. Our detectives are working overtime to track down the offender or offenders and hold them responsible.”

The first of the shootings occurred on the afternoon of Dec. 4, when eight rounds were fired at the home of Bernalillo County Commissioner Adriann Barboa. The city of Albuquerque lies within Bernalillo County.

A week later, on Dec. 11, more than a dozen gunshot impacts were identified after a shooting at the home of then-Bernalillo County Commissioner Debbie O’Malley. On Tuesday, at least eight shots were fired at the home of New Mexico state Sen. Linda Lopez (D).

“Our elected officials have chosen to serve. They should never be made to feel in danger in the comfort of their own homes, nor should anyone,” Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller said at a press conference on Thursday. “But we are concerned, of course, that these could be connected and that these could be targeted.”

Elected officials, at all levels of government, have faced increasing threats of violence in recent years. There were more than 9,000 threats recorded against members of Congress in 2022, according to the U.S. Capitol Police.

In the most high-profile incident as of late, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) husband, Paul Pelosi, was violently assaulted at the couple’s San Francisco home by an intruder. The man charged with the assault, 42-year-old David DePape, was reportedly searching for the former Speaker.

​State Watch, lawmaker security, paul pelosi attack, threats against elected officials Read More 

Just In | The Hill 

Story at a glance

On Friday the Food and Drug Administration approved the drug Leqembi for patients with mild or early-stage Alzheimer’s.

  The delay in cognitive decline brought about by the drug likely amounts to just several months.

Leqembi, from Japan’s Eisai and its U.S. partner Biogen, is a rare success in a field accustomed to failed experimental treatments for the incurable condition.

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. health officials on Friday approved a closely watched Alzheimer’s drug that modestly slows the brain-robbing disease, albeit with potential safety risks that patients and their doctors will have to carefully weigh.

The drug, Leqembi, is the first that’s been convincingly shown to slow the decline in memory and thinking that defines Alzheimer’s by targeting the disease’s underlying biology. The Food and Drug Administration approved it for patients with Alzheimer’s, specifically those with mild or early-stage disease.

Leqembi, from Japan’s Eisai and its U.S. partner Biogen, is a rare success in a field accustomed to failed experimental treatments for the incurable condition. The delay in cognitive decline brought about by the drug likely amounts to just several months, but Dr. Joy Snider and some other experts say it could still meaningfully improve people’s lives.

“This drug is not a cure. It doesn’t stop people from getting worse, but it does measurably slow the progression of the disease,” said Snider, a neurologist at Washington University in St. Louis. “That might mean someone could have an extra six months to a year of being able to drive.”

Snider stressed that the medicine, pronounced “leh-KEM-bee,” comes with downsides, including the need for twice-a-month infusions and possible side effects like brain swelling.

The FDA approval came via its accelerated pathway, which allows drugs to launch based on early results, before they’re confirmed to benefit patients. The agency’s use of that shortcut approach has come under increasing scrutiny from government watchdogs and congressional investigators.

Last week, a congressional report found that FDA’s approval of a similar Alzheimer’s drug called Aduhelm — also from Biogen and Eisai — was “rife with irregularities,” including a number of meetings with drug company staffers that went undocumented.

Scrutiny of the new drug, known chemically as lecanemab, will likely mean most patients won’t start receiving it for months, as insurers decide whether and how to cover it.

Some 6 million people in the U.S. and many more worldwide have Alzheimer’s, which gradually attacks areas of the brain needed for memory, reasoning, communication and daily tasks.

The FDA’s approval was based on one mid-stage study in 800 people with early signs of Alzheimer’s who were still able to live independently or with minimal assistance.

Since then, Eisai has published the results of a larger 1,800-patient study that the FDA will review to confirm the drug’s benefit, paving the way for full approval later this year.

The larger study tracked patients’ results on an 18-point scale that measures memory, judgment and other cognitive abilities. Doctors compile the rating from interviews with the patient and a close contact. After 18 months, patients receiving Leqembi declined more slowly — a difference of less than half a point on the scale — than patients who received a dummy infusion. The delay amounted to just over five months.

There is little consensus on whether that difference translates into real benefits for patients, such as greater independence.

“Most patients won’t notice the difference,” said Dr. Matthew Schrag, a neurology researcher at Vanderbilt University. “This is really quite a small effect and probably below the threshold of what we’d call clinically significant.”

Schrag and some other researchers believe a meaningful improvement would require at least a difference of one full point on the 18-point scale.

Leqembi works by clearing a sticky brain protein called amyloid that’s one hallmark of Alzheimer’s. But it’s not clear exactly what causes the disease. A string of other amyloid-targeting drugs have failed and many researchers now think combination treatments will be needed.

Aduhelm, the similar drug, was marred by controversy over its effectiveness.

The FDA approved that drug in 2021 against the advice of the agency’s own outside experts. Doctors hesitated to prescribe the drug and insurers restricted coverage.

The FDA did not consult the same expert panel before approving Leqembi.

While there’s “less drama,” surrounding the new drug, Schrag said many of the same concerns apply.

“Is this slight, measurable benefit worth the hefty price tag and the side effects patients may experience?” he asked. “I have pretty serious doubts.”

About 13% of patients in Eisai’s study had swelling of the brain and 17% had small brain bleeds, side effects seen with earlier amyloid-targeting medications. In most cases, those problems didn’t cause symptoms, which can include dizziness and vision problems.

Also, several Leqembi users died while taking the drug, including two who were on blood-thinning medications. Eisai has said the deaths can’t be attributed to the drug. The FDA label warns doctors to use caution if they prescribe Leqembi to patients on blood thinners.

Insurers are likely to only cover the drug for people like those in the company study — patients with mild symptoms and confirmation of amyloid buildup. That typically requires expensive brain scans. A separate type of scan will be needed to periodically monitor for brain swelling and bleeding.

A key question in the drug’s rollout will be the coverage decision by Medicare, the federal health plan that covers 60 million seniors and other Americans. The agency severely restricted coverage of Aduhelm, essentially wiping out its U.S. market and prompting Biogen to abandon marketing plans for the drug.

Eisai executives said they have already spent months discussing their drug’s data with Medicare officials. Coverage isn’t expected until after the FDA confirms the drug’s benefit, likely later this year.

“Once we have a Medicare decision, then we can truly launch the drug across the country,” said Eisai’s U.S. CEO, Ivan Cheung.

Betsy Groves, 73, of Cambridge, Mass., was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2021. A former lecturer at Harvard’s school of education, she noticed she was having trouble remembering some student names and answering questions.

Her initial diagnosis, based on a cognitive examination, was later confirmed by a positive test for amyloid.

Groves says she is “more than willing” to try Leqembi, despite potential side effects and the need for infusions.

“For me, the minute that drug comes on the market — and I get my doctor’s approval — I’m going to take it,” Groves said.

​Medical Advances, Changing America, News, Well-Being Read More 

Just In | The Hill 

A couple weeks ago I picked up a book about the making of the multibillion-dollar Chinese tech giant Alibaba. One of my favorite parts was when Jack Ma, Alibaba’s founder, gave advice to the author about a career transition: “Find the poorest part of China and just travel through the region. When you find that place, stay for a few days. If you’re comfortable there, then move on and find an even poorer area to stay. If you don’t feel comfortable where you are then force yourself to stay even longer. Then ask yourself, why do you feel uncomfortable?”

Ma, who nearly failed out of college and taught English before founding Alibaba, was trying to teach the author the skills of an outsider: resilience, risk taking, empathy across lines of difference, and the ability to navigate uncertainty.

Ma is not alone in valuing these skills. Many recent reports on the future of work note that the increase in automation and artificial intelligence combined with the shift to a more diverse, global, and flexible workforce are making these “soft skills” in greater demand. This year the director of product management at LinkedIn said “soft skills were featured in 78 percent of jobs posted globally over the last three months.” And another report said the companies seeking to upskill their employees in interpersonal and empathy skills nearly doubled. 

The idea of discomfort building softs skills is not a new one to anyone who has operated at a distance from power — like women, minorities, non-degree holders, and immigrants.

Just last week I was talking to two successful women who often find themselves in rooms where they are the minority. They shared stories of how they developed empathy to read a room: “Who will take me seriously? Who is my ally? Who doesn’t even know I am there?” And then they told me something interesting: “This skill is our superpower,” they agreed: “Everyone underestimates us.”

This leaves us with an interesting paradigm for our workforce. For the last few centuries, “outsider talent” has been honing some of the most critical skills for the future of work. Unfortunately, our educational and corporate institutions still handicap talent with the skills of the past. 

Take higher education, for example, which historically prioritizes test taking and pedigree in recruiting. The psychologist Jonathan Haidt in his book “The Coddling of the America Mind” highlights the focus of elite parents on de-risking and micromanaging children’s experiences in the name of achievement. “Efforts to protect kids from risk prevent them from gaining experience. Such protections come with costs, as kids miss out on opportunities to learn skills, independence, and risk assessment.”   

This phenomenon is explored in a McKinsey study done last year that looked at the correlation between key skills of the future (risk taking, coping with uncertainty, and empathy) and levels of education. It found that these skills are completely uncorrelated to education — meaning it’s possible, even likely, that a person of high intelligence and educational pedigree is totally unprepared to deal with such things as flexibility or uncertainty. These kids may end up at the best schools, but they may not end up with the skills needed to succeed. 

This is not the case for another outsider, Kennedy Odede, who was born and raised in Kibera, one of the largest slums in Kenya. He said his greatest skill has been “learning to listen to other people’s feelings” or what leading psychologist and New York University Professor Niobe Way calls relational intelligence, or simply “listening with curiosity.” Professor Way’s research over the past decade finds that listening with curiosity is necessary to building relationships and resolving conflict. This helped Kennedy survive danger at a young age and now it helps him raise millions of dollars to improve life across the slums in Kenya.

Companies need to catch up to this new reality fast. The same businesses that are looking for soft skills and doubling their training in this category are excluding nearly two thirds of American workers because they do not have college degrees. A study published in 2020 by a group of multidisciplinary researchers found that “as many as 30 million American workers without a four-year college degree have skills to realistically move into new jobs that pay on average 70 percent more than their current ones.” The key to doing this? Look at their skills and experience, not their degrees.  

The same goes for many “knowledge worker” jobs. These industries continue to hire from a handful of top schools and use interviewing tactics like the long heralded “case study” that reveals very little about a candidate’s empathy, flexibility, and risk-taking skills. They are missing out on outsider talent from key community colleges that have learned the skills of the future from being an outsider, an immigrant, or a minority. 

In America there are nearly two job openings for every candidate, and according to reports from companies like Manpower Group, the result is a significant talent shortfall. While this may be true, we are missing something else. Major employers continue to be distorted by credentialism and Ivy League educations, while higher education continues to rely on outdated measures of success like test-taking skills. These all reveal very little about “soft skills.”

To reboot our economy and repair our social systems it is imperative that educational institutions and corporations open their eyes to all the talent they cannot see. 

Blair Miller is an executive advisor to Two Sigma Impact and “leader in residence” at the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership at City University of New York. She holds an MBA from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and a BA in English literature from the University of Virginia.

​Finance, Opinion Read More 

Just In | The Hill 

If President Biden opts to follow in the footsteps of his recent predecessors, he could wait until the spring to announce he’s running for re-election.

But Biden is under growing pressure to say officially whether he’s seeking a second term. The will-he-or-won’t-he narrative by political watchers has been swirling for months while some Democrats spent the midterm campaign season playing coy over whether they’d support a 2024 candidate of their own party.

All indicators are pointing toward another bid by Biden but the constant questions surrounding his announcement has proven to be an anomaly specific to the 46th president.

“You have an unprecedented factor, which is that Joe Biden is very old, and he would be by far, the oldest president,” said Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian at New York University. “It’s only fair, I think, for the president and his family to think through the enormous physical cost of going for another term.”

Former President Obama announced his plans to seek reelection on April 4, 2011 at 49 years old. Similarly, former President George W. Bush announced his candidacy for reelection on May 16, 2003 at 56 years old and former President Clinton announced his candidacy for reelection on April 14, 1995 at 48 years old.

Biden is 80 years old this year, making him the oldest president to make a run for the White House. If he finished a second term, he would be leaving office at the age of 86. 

Allan Lichtman, a distinguished professor of history at American University, called it “absurd” to think Biden is behind the curve because he hasn’t announced yet, adding that the president’s age is merely a subject that captures attention.

“Biden’s age raises for the media questions about whether or not he would follow the precedent of virtually every other modern president and run for reelection,” he said. “I would say that it’s just something for the media to talk about. Just another issue, another question that can pique people’s interest.”

Former President Trump, meanwhile, is his own outlier on the matter.

Trump announced an official run for a second term in June 2019, but was holding large rallies with staunch supporters pretty much since he took the White House in January 2017, making no secret of his intention to run again.

Trump also took the unusual move of announcing his 2024 presidential run late last year just after the midterms before any other major candidate, including Biden, has indicated officially they want the job. 

The Trump announcement sparked speculation that Biden would feel pressured to announce sooner, but many Democrats at the time disputed the notion that Biden should quickly follow.

Mary Kate Cary, a former White House speechwriter for President George H. W. Bush, acknowledged that Biden is faced with some unusual circumstances that previous presidents did not have to consider.

“The two biggest factors are that Trump has already announced and that’s unusual as well. The second is that, I suspect because of Biden’s age, it’s not a foregone conclusion that he was going to run for reelection,” said Cary, a senior fellow at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. “I think that’s what’s making it different than Obama, Bush, where it was just assumed, if you were in office, you were running as the incumbent and running for reelection. And it’s not as big an assumption this time.”

Biden has said he will officially announce early this year, after taking the time to talk to his family over the holidays.

The Obama, Bush, and Clinton announcements were early for their time by historical norms. Former President Reagan announced on Jan. 29, 1984, although the Reagan-Bush ’84 reelection campaign committee was formed in October 1983. 

Naftali said that was another factor that should be considered. 

“I think we, the members of the chattering classes, have created an expectation that is not historically founded. Why would it be late?” Naftali said “By the models that go back to Reagan, somebody who doesn’t announce in January after a midterm is not late.”

“If Biden wants to follow the Clinton, Bush, Obama model, well, he would announce in the Spring of this year,” he added. 

But the Reagan model of waiting for the election year to announce may be a thing of the past also in part because campaigns over time have also become more expensive.

“It has been normalized to get earlier and I can explain it to you in three words: money, money, and money,” Lichtman said. “Campaigns are exponentially more expensive than they were during the Reagan era.”

Lichtman added that the larger media market is another different factor.

“There was just so many more media outlets today that you’re trying to get their attention. And that takes time, effort, and energy. Not just a few networks and major newspapers anymore,” Lichtman said.

There’s also a matter of increased campaign competition.

George H.W. Bush was the last president to lose his reelection bid before Trump. Bush announced his unsuccessful reelection bid on Oct. 11, 1991, well past the usual spring timing and the 1992 race had some of its own unprecedented factors. 

Bush faced a primary contest against Republican Pat Buchanan, but won the GOP nomination. Then, third-party candidate Ross Perot entered the general election, which Clinton ultimately won.

Cary said she was surprised that a Democrat, like California Gov. Gavin Newsom, hasn’t jumped into the race to primary Biden. But, she’s not ruling it out.

“I think it’s still a very fluid situation and there’s certainly a lot of younger voters who would be very interested in someone of a younger generation running, because it is pretty amazing how old both of these candidates would be,” she said, referring to Biden and Trump.

Bush, who was 67 at the time, kicked off his third year in office with a public and embarrassing health incident. The president vomited on the Japanese Prime Minister while on a foreign trip on Jan. 8, 1992 and fainted while first lady Barbara Bush held his head up.

Republican critics often cite Biden’s age by way of an incident in which Biden fell off his bike while riding in Delaware. Biden also once stumbled up the stairs to Air Force One. 

Another factor, and one that has plagued Biden from much of the last year, is his approval rating, which has only in recent weeks ticked up but has yet to clear 45 percent. 

Obama, who made his official reelection announcement through an e-mail and video sent to supporters 20 months out from Election Day, announced while his approval rating stood at 47 percent. 

A month later, by early May, it rose to 56 percent, according to Pew Research Center. In the month in between, the U.S. had killed Sept. 11 plotter Osama Bin Laden, a huge legacy moment for Obama.

Biden’s approval rating hit his highest in more than a year on Thursday, coming in at 43.3 percent in new polling. He did not break 43 percent in 2022 and hit his lowest point in July around 37 percent.

But, experts say, his current approval rating shouldn’t factor into his decision to run again this far out.

“The approval rating almost two years out from an election don’t mean very much,” Lichtman said. “They might mean something, you know, if he had to worry about a serious primary challenge, but I don’t think he does.”

​Administration, 2024 presidential election, Biden Read More