Should Biden really run again? He prolongs a difficult conversation.

President Biden has a way of explaining away his blunders, allowing him to defuse the situation without causing himself long-term political damage.

‘No one ever doubts that I mean what I say’ he often says. The problem, he admits, is that “sometimes I say everything I mean.”

That’s how it went this week when Biden told donors Tuesday evening near Boston that “I’m not sure I would run” if former President Donald J. Trump didn’t try to win back the Oval Office.

It was a slap on the forehead for a president whose… declining approval ratings have forced him to turn his re-election campaign into a referendum on his predecessor, and a reminder that the political forecast for the next eleven months suggests America will be awash with two candidates most of the country doesn’t want.

Within hours, Mr. Biden reversed the sentiment. After returning to the White House, he approached reporters and said he would not drop out of the race even if Mr. Trump did.

Then came Wednesday.

After delivering a speech calling on Congress to pass a multibillion-dollar aid package for Ukraine, Mr. Biden walked away and reporters shouted questions at him.

One thing caught his attention: Could another Democrat beat Mr. Trump?

The president could have left and closed the door. At least the talk of his 2024 decision may have been put to bed for this week. But he couldn’t resist. Once again, he reminded America why Democratic allies, not Mr. Biden himself, are often seen as his best messengers.

“Probably 50” Democrats could beat Trump, he said. Than, seemed to laugh off his comment with a wry smilehe added, “I’m not the only one who can beat him, but I will beat him.”

Whether Mr. Biden was joking, or again accidentally said everything he meant, is for him to know. But his perhaps overly candid moments, combined with many voters’ dissatisfaction with his performance, have contributed to his motivation for running — that he is the indispensable Democrat best positioned to remove Mr. Trump from the White House to keep, protect democracy and preserve the “soul of America.”

If he isn’t indispensable, that opens the door to an uncomfortable question from skeptics in his party: Why not give another Democrat a chance to run for president?

The reasons why Mr. Biden is running for office again are fairly obvious. He considered a presidential bid in 1984, mounted his first White House campaign four years later, served as Barack Obama’s vice president for eight years, wanted to run for office in 2016 and ultimately won the nation’s highest office in 2020.

People who think about running for president for 36 years usually don’t give up the White House without a fight. No president since Rutherford B. Hayes has served the full four years of his first term and then declined to seek re-election.

Mr. Biden had given some Democratic voters the impression that he could step aside gracefully: During his 2020 campaign, he stood on a stage in Detroit with three next-generation Democrats — Sen. Kamala Harris of California, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan — and said, “I think of myself as a bridge, and not anything else.”

But his own ambition and the enormous political advantage of his incumbency always indicated that he would remain president until the mid-1980s.

Former California Sen. Barbara Boxer, a devoted Biden supporter who has known him since the early 1980s, said voters she heard from in Southern California were far more interested in preventing Trump from running again power than they were concerned about Mr. Biden’s age. or competence.

“They say, ‘We have to win this,’” Ms. Boxer said. “They don’t talk about Joe that much. They say our democracy is at stake. They just assume it will be Joe.”

Ron Klain, Mr. Biden’s first chief of staff, conceded in an interview Thursday that “it’s possible there are other Democrats in America who can beat Trump.” But because Mr. Biden is the only one who actually did it, Mr. Klain said, he has the best chance to do it again. Mr. Klain said he did not know who the 50 Democrats mentioned by Mr. Biden were.

“This is a life-or-death moment for democracy, and we need someone who has defeated Trump before,” Klain said.

Kevin Munoz, a Biden campaign spokesman, rejected any accurate reading of Mr. Biden’s latest comments. The campaign, Mr. Munoz said, would not be “distracted by the same Beltway narratives that President Biden has proven wrong for years.”

And Mr. Biden’s latest verbal adventures haven’t exactly led to a reckoning in Democratic politics. Most simply rolled their eyes at his struggle to keep the political conversation on favorable ground — especially during a week in which Trump vowed not to be a dictator “except on Day 1.”

“He is one of the most honest people you will ever meet when it comes to expressing what he is feeling in this moment,” former Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota said of Mr. Biden, with whom he spent 18 years in government served. Senate. “There is not a single politician alive who has not wanted to reframe things. We do it all.”

Mr. Trump, at 77, has not been a particularly smooth administrator himself. He has long strayed from the message and has his own growing record of verbal slip-ups. He has confused Mr Biden with Mr Obama, suggested America is about to enter World War II, praised Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group, and told his supporters not to worry about voting .

David Axelrod, the Democratic strategist who helped pick Mr. Biden as Mr. Obama’s running mate in 2008, said it was understood at the time that Mr. Biden’s occasional deviation from the prescribed political script was part of the package.

He said Mr. Biden’s blunders gave him an authenticity in the minds of voters that other veteran politicians in Washington lacked, even if they caused some headaches for Mr. Obama and his aides.

“Joe Biden has been a man who has spoken his mind in politics for 50 years,” said Mr. Axelrod, who has repeatedly suggested that the president’s age will be one of the biggest concerns for voters in 2024. “At times that has gotten him into trouble, but it’s also part of the whole package of a man who is authentic and willing to say exactly what he thinks.