Some mixed messages from Politico today. On the one hand there’s a story about his new economic team that opens like this:

Joe Biden’s choices for his economic team reflect the new reality for the president as he prepares to launch his re-election bid: The historic legislative part of his first term is over.

The next two years will be dominated by implementing the massive spending bills that he jammed through Congress. But they’ll also be about emerging battles: avoiding landmines at home and abroad, engaging with hostile House Republicans in what could be a bruising fight over the debt limit and using executive authority to boost the economy along with his reelection odds…

Biden, who consistently gets dismal marks from the public on his handling of the economy, has voiced frustration to his team that they haven’t done enough to convey the administration’s accomplishments, particularly on cable news, which he regularly watches. He’s counting on the new aides to help resolve that issue.

In short, Biden is making moves to shore up his chances at reelection. This next story headlined “Biden may not run — and top Dems are quietly preparing.” Obviously both stories can’t be true but Politico published them both at exactly 4:30 am this morning.

Joe Biden’s closest advisers have spent months preparing for him to formally announce his reelection campaign. But with the president still not ready to make the plunge, a sense of doubt is creeping into conversations around 2024: What if he decides not to?…

While the belief among nearly everyone in Biden’s orbit is that he’ll ultimately give the all-clear, his indecision has resulted in an awkward deep-freeze across the party — in which some potential presidential aspirants and scores of major donors are strategizing and even developing a Plan B while trying to remain respectful and publicly supportive of the 80-year-old president…

People directly in touch with the president described him as a kind of Hamlet on Delaware’s Christina River, warily biding his time as he ponders the particulars of his final campaign. In interviews, these people relayed an impression that the conventional wisdom in Washington, D.C. — that there’s simply no way he passes on 2024 — has crystallized too hard, too soon.

The story goes on to touch on the three things that everyone admits are the driving factors for Democrats in 2024. The first is Biden’s age and the second is Trump. The third and most awkward factor is how Democrats could sidestep his Vice President without offending their own base.

A decision from Biden to forego another run would amount to a political earthquake not seen among Democrats in more than a half century, when Lyndon B. Johnson paired his partial halting of the U.S. bombing of Vietnam with his announcement to step aside, citing deepening “division in the American house now.”

It would unleash an avalanche of attention on his vice president, Kamala Harris, whose uneven performances have raised doubts among fellow Democrats about her ability to win — either the primary, the general election, or both…

Biden and much of his inner circle still insists he plans to run, with the only caveat being a catastrophic health event that renders him unable.

Having read the whole story, I get the impression there’s really not much doubt Biden is going to announce his run in April. Honestly, the vague whispers from unnamed sources that he may not run feels very coordinated, as if the whole story was put together by Anita Dunn or someone on Biden’s comms team looking to keep his name in the press without having to actually do anything. Creating a bogus will he or won’t he narrative serves their purpose.

Biden will run and that will solve the Harris problem and the fear of Trump problem for Democrats. But that still leaves the age problem and that’s the one that is going to be the real problem for them. In 2020 Biden had the advantage, if you can call it that, of a pandemic to excuse rarely leaving his own basement. This time he won’t have that excuse.

So I think the strain on him is only going to increase next year and there’s really no telling how long he can hold up. I’m not wishing him ill but even a healthy 80-year-old is someone who is one small illness or accident away from being hospitalized. The chances that he could possibly keep doing this for six more years seems very small to me. I really wish Democrats would find someone else, but it seems they’ve learned nothing from the sad story of John Fetterman.