What's Joe Biden waiting for?

On reelection watch.

(Joe Biden via NBC News)

As President Joe Biden prepared to deliver his State of the Union address, speculation was rampant that an announcement of his plans to seek a 2nd term in 2024 wouldn’t be far behind.

“Biden likely to announce 2024 reelection bid ‘not long after’ State of the Union address,” read a CBS News headline.

“Biden's 2024 re-election announcement could come after his State of the Union speech,” blared a headline on Fox News. “But how soon?”

That was almost two months ago now. And still no announcement from Biden.

So, what gives?

Well, first a little bit of history.

Donald Trump didn’t actually formally announce he was running for a 2nd term until June 2019 — although he filed a statement of candidacy for the race with the Federal Election Committee on his first day in office: January 20, 2017. (He said at the time the paperwork “does not constitute a formal announcement of my candidacy for the 2020 election.”)

Barack Obama announced his bid for a 2nd term via a video released on April 5, 2011. “As my administration and folks across the country fight to protect the progress we've made — and make more — we also need to begin mobilizing for 2012, long before the time comes for me to begin campaigning in earnest,” Obama said.

And, it wasn’t until May 2003 that George W. Bush formally filed the paperwork to make himself a candidate for a 2nd term. “Right now, this is the building block phase, the legal phase, the fund-raising phase,” said Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer.

So, Biden isn’t actually behind his predecessors when it comes to formally making clear his plan to run for a 2nd term. If he hasn’t announced in, say, two more months, then he would be outside of recent historic norms.

Presidents typically wait longer than challengers to formalize their candidacies for one simple reason: The average person hates politics.

The longer a president can look solely like a president — and not a candidate for president — the better (or so goes conventional wisdom). Rack up policy accomplishments. Deliver federal funds — via the infrastructure bill — to as many communities as possible. Look big and magnanimous — and as nonpartisan as possible.

You might, logically, ask this: Why not wait then as long as possible — like into the actual election year — to announce a reelection bid?

Also simple: It takes a very long time to build a national campaign and, especially, raise the hundreds (and hundreds) of millions of dollars it takes to run said campaign. (Biden raised more than $1 billion from donors for the 2020 campaign.)

What every incumbent president is trying to do then is find the sweet spot on the calendar — between taking advantage of being president and the necessities of running a modern (and well financed) campaign.

In every campaign there are other factors that go into the when (and even the how) of announcing.

This campaign, for example, has been extremely slow to develop on the Republican side — with only former president Donald Trump and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley currently in the race.

That slowness — coupled with Trump’s ongoing legal problems that seem likely to come to a head sometime very soon — make it easier for Biden to hold off on an announcement.

Trump has also focused most of his energy and his attacks on fellow Republicans — especially Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — to date, leaving Biden to do his own thing largely un-attacked.

On the other hand, Trump is a former president of the United States. And most polling shows him running even or close to it with Biden. So, it might behoove Biden to get going sooner(ish) rather than later.

(Sidebar: I could also accept the other side of that argument — that leaving Trump in the race on his own would allow the always self-defeating former president to do more harm to himself than good.)

Then there’s this: Biden is notoriously indecisive about big decisions — like running for second term. As Politico wrote last year:

President Joe Biden is driving officials across his administration a little nuts with what they say is a pattern of indecisiveness, according to several people familiar with the matter.

On several consequential issues — potential student loan forgiveness and the repeal of tariffs against China, among others — the decision-making process has dragged on for over a year, to the frustration of many Democratic officials inside and outside the administration.

People familiar with the dynamic say the process gets drawn out in part because in meetings Biden pushes for every last possible detail – his own version of the Socratic method, or Socratic badgering depending on who you ask. Biden dislikes vague answers and prefers officials to just say they don’t know but will find out. That often results, however, in scheduling another meeting — and more delays.

This is a pattern with Biden. When he was trying to decide whether or not to enter the Democratic primary against Hillary Clinton, there were a slew of stories about the frustration among some that the outgoing VP simply couldn’t make up his mind. (Biden ultimately decided against the race, citing the lack of an appropriate time window in which to run.)

To be clear: All signs point to Biden running again. His wife, Jill Biden, told the Associated Press late last month that her husband “says he’s not done. He’s not finished what he’s started. And that’s what’s important.”

But, his natural indecision will likely stress Democrats out between now and whenever he decides to make it official. Which, if history is any guide, is sometime within the next month.