Sanders will give 2024 ‘a hard look’ if Biden doesn’t run: adviser

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will likely take “a hard look” at launching a third bid for the presidency if President Biden chooses not to run in 2024, a longtime adviser to the progressive senator said on Thursday.

“I assume that he would give it a hard look,” Faiz Shakir told CBS News. “I don’t want to make a judgment for him. Obviously, it would be his choice to make. But I assume that he would want to reevaluate it.”

Sanders previously sought the Democratic nomination in both 2016 and 2020. Currently 81 years old, the senator is “very aware that he’s older now,” Shakir added.

“He’d have to make a real judgment about his own vigor and his stamina and his desire and hunger and passion to do this a third time,” Shakir said. “But if it were an open field? Yeah, I’m confident he would take another look at it.”

While Biden has yet to make a formal announcement, he and White House aides have previously said that he plans to run again in 2024. On the Republican side, former President Trump jumped into the race with an unusually early campaign announcement last month, leaving open the possibility of a rematch with Biden.