Look for Joe Biden to Win a Second Term

William S. Bike
4 min readMar 16, 2023

Despite 2020, it’s tough to beat a president seeking re-election

Of course Joe Biden is all smiles. He’s probably going to win a second term as president. (White House photo.)

By William S. Bike

Joe Biden is looking like a president who is going to win a second term.

Despite President Donald Trump losing in 2020, it’s tough to beat a president who is seeking re-election. In recent years, pundits thought Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama were beatable for a second term, but in the end they prevailed, and pretty easily at that.

Incumbency is always an advantage. It’s part of the human psyche to be comfortable with the familiar and to fear change so in the end, those few swing voters who are left tend to stick with incumbents.

It takes a disaster, like the recessions of 1980 and 1992 or COVID in 2020 to get people to make a change when a president is seeking a second term. Without the recessions of 1980 and 1992, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush would have cruised to second terms, and without his disastrous COVID response, Trump also would have won, particularly if he had just followed the George W. Bush or Barack Obama existing plans for dealing with pandemics instead of pretending COVID didn’t exist.

Also, Bidenomics is working and surprisingly Biden has emerged as a good president and world leader…

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William S. Bike

Author of "Winning Political Campaigns," a how-to book on all aspects of political campaigning, and commentator on history and baseball.