How Jill Biden helped Joe get to yes on running for reelection at 80

Four years ago, Jill Biden was hesitant about her husband making a White House run, fearing the toll it could take on him and the family.

In the months before Joe Biden formally announced he'd make a reelection bid, she had no such reservations.

Privately, the first lady encouraged her husband to run again while giving him the space he needed to process the decision in the way he traditionally does: with extensive deliberations, consideration of the burden it would place on his family, and a bit of classic Biden hemming and hawing. She was involved in all the high-level discussions around the decision, giving counsel when she felt it was necessary.

“She is usually in the room when senior campaign staff are presenting strategy to her husband. She will ask questions. But she never weighs in on the decision,” said a former senior Biden adviser.

Her gentle encouragement of her husband’s reelection run comes as she's relishing her role, hanging out at the Super Bowl and the women’s Final Four, and actively posting on social media. Unlike the cliche applied to wives of major political figures — that they’re the “secret weapon” behind their husband’s success — there’s nothing that secret about the role she is playing.

Nearly a dozen aides and advisers in Biden world described the first lady as someone who has grown more willing to endure the rigors and demands of being in the political spotlight herself — and more convinced of her husband’s fit for the job. Close advisers say she feels a comfort level with her role inside the White House, balancing the ceremonial responsibilities of the office with the weight of serving as a trusted adviser to the president.

“She is always his final gut check” is how the former senior adviser put it.

Advisers are envisioning a role for Jill Biden on the campaign in which she serves as a character witness for her family — especially Hunter Biden — and a conduit to suburban swing voters who, they believe, relate to her.

“She sees herself as a wife and a mom and a nana. And what wife, mom and Nana wouldn't defend their family?” one senior Biden adviser said. “She is going to defend her family and take issues with attacks on her family. But she has been in politics a long time. And so they're well aware that nasty attacks have come in the past and they'll come now and they'll come in the future.”

And at a time when suburban women are drifting toward Democrats and the nation’s schools have become political battlefields, the White House sees utility in having a prominent educator standing beside her husband. The issue of “book banning” featured prominently in Biden’s reelection launch video.

“She can reach suburban women, in particular, in a way that really resonates with them. She is really effective in talking about how the Biden agenda is good for moms, for women, for working women,” former White House communications director and 2020 deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said. “I think she brings a credibility that comes from having kept her job as a teacher, even as they came into the White House, both when he was V.P. and now.”

Aides expect the first lady to keep up an intense travel schedule — she already boasts the most travel among the four White House principals — but her responsibilities on the reelection trail won’t just be public facing. Instead, she’ll serve as a confidant for her husband as he tries to defy naysayers who fear he is too old and too much of a political relic.

She can be defensive of him, bristling at the criticisms that he has lost a step. And he can be reliant on her. Multiple aides recall that in meetings they both attend, the president will frequently look over to his wife, who is often wearing her glasses and taking notes, and ask, “Hey Jill, what do you think?”

Decades ago, Jill Biden was a reluctant political spouse. She was set to live her life as an educator before she met and married Biden, then a senator.

“She was a schoolteacher and she had less than no interest in politics or involvement in politics. She was really not a political person at all. She cared about what was happening in her community, but it wasn't like she thought about political strategy or anything like that. That was not her deal,” said a veteran Biden aide who was on the Biden campaign in 1987.

She was reluctant about Biden running in 2020 but ultimately came around to his conviction that he was the best candidate to take on Donald Trump in that political moment. As first lady, she has had a consistent presence within her husband’s close-knit team. Some aides have described her as “the closer” — the confidant the president trusts to give him unfiltered advice before he reaches a decision.

But it has not been without hiccups.

Last summer, she came under fire from Latino groups after saying the “diversity of this community — as distinct as the bodegas of the Bronx, as beautiful as the blossoms of Miami and as unique as the breakfast tacos here in San Antonio — is your strength.”

And just last month, she invited both the winners and the losers of the NCAA championship to the White House — a move added another layer of controversy to a game that was already mired in racial tension. The White House later clarified that the winning LSU squad would get the customary visit. Biden’s defenders say she was being “a grandma and genuine person [saying] like ‘everyone did great’” as one former 2020 aide put it. Nevertheless, both instances served as a reminder that even first ladies can get caught up in cultural land mines.

This will be Jill Biden’s fourth presidential campaign, after eight years serving as second lady. Over that time, she has become part of the Biden political brand as well. In the three-minute campaign launch video, she can be spotted working the rope lines, embracing the vice president and posing for a picture with the newly confirmed justice of the Supreme Court.

It is, in a way, a distillation of the role that the first lady has come to embody — not quite center stage but her presence clearly felt — and will continue to play as the campaign heats up.

On announcement day, she tweeted out a picture of herself outside of her classroom’s building, with a caption that read: “Just like four years ago–I’m off to teach and Joe’s launched his (re-election) campaign! Let’s finish the job.”