Will Barack Obama be the last two term President?

[Medal506]

Will Obama go down in history as the last two term president?

Let’s say Biden loses re election to DeSantis and DeSantis goes on to lose re election to another democrat in 2028. That would make three one term presidents in a row which I don’t believe has happened before.

Could Obama go down as the last two-term president and if so, could we see the possibility of the US Constitution being amended to support only one term for a U.S. President?

[Schiff for Senate]

The last two-term president in a while? It's possible, but I'd say it's unlikely overall.
The last two-term president ever? Lol, of course not.

[TML]

In terms of amending the constitution to limit presidents to only one term, aside from the current political climate being very unfavorable to new constitutional amendments, this would make presidents tank in popularity quicker (and thus rendering them lame ducks sooner) - just look at South Korea, where pretty much every single president since 1987 (when its constitution was amended to limit its presidency to a single five-year term) had approval ratings start very high and then tank by the middle of their respective terms, never to fully recover to what they were at the beginning of their terms.

[ListMan38]

Henry Clay getting Ws 170 years after his death

On a serious note, probably not. Biden could very well get another term if Trump gets nominated a third time, or pulls a Teddy 1912

and 1837-1861 was 6 consecutive 1 term administrations (Van Buren, Harrison/Tyler, Polk, Taylor/Filmore, Pierce, Buchanan)

[Ferguson97]

Last ever? No that’s extremely stupid.

[Mr. Smith]

Perhaps for a long time, but unlikely forever, barring some kind of internal collapse leading to Union Dissolution or a Fascist take over of course.

Rule nothing out.

[MarkD]

Last ever? No that’s extremely stupid.

Agreed. And it's pretty much just as stupid to think we're going to adopt a constitutional amendment to limit presidents to just one term. Virginia is the only state to still do that to their governor, and that state is likely going to change their term limit rule to two terms, like Kentucky and Mississippi have.

[Mister Mets]

A different way to phrase it would be whether Obama ends the norm of two term Presidents.

Probably not. Incumbents tend to win, especially if the party hasn't been in the White House too long.

I don't think we're in an extended period of parties getting consistently kicked out after one term. We had an unusual cycle with a deeply flawed and abrasive Republican incumbent, a very old Democrat who had lucky breaks (the vaccine came out after the election) and hit an electoral sweet spot during an unusual political environment (a once in a century pandemic.)

[pbrower2a]

In the last century an incumbent President has a huge edge when running for election most of the time. The advantage is so strong that what may have been our worst President ever (Donald Trump) came close to getting re-elected. Gerald Ford was the worst campaigner ever for President, and he came close to getting elected for the first time. Incumbency fails in an economic meltdown (Hoover), when Americans no longer want four more years of much the same for twelve (the elder Bush), or when the political culture no longer fits the President (Carter).

Most of the time a President shows why he was elected the first time, or at least why his predecessor was (Truman, LBJ).

[Alben Barkley]

Biden is going to win re-election, possibly by a landslide margin, so hell no.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Biden is going to win re-election, possibly by a landslide margin, so hell no.

lol no

[TodayJunior]

No. Biden will easily cruise next year...especially against Trump. Things are getting better on the whole and Trump of all people put his eggs in the "you're far worse off now than you were four years ago" basket. Good luck with that.

Some Texas polls are showing a Biden lead already, so 2020 + NC, TX, ME-02 and stretch states like AK and OH are likely to fall into the Democratic column. Since no one wins ALL the tossups, I'll let Trump have FL and IA. The math is 380/158, almost identical to Bill Clinton's reelection in 1996.

https://www.270towin.com/maps/w8ld4

[Progressive Pessimist]

Come on! I know that things are (or possibly were) getting better for Biden, but his realistic ceiling next year in a potential rematch against Trump still probably won't be better than the 2020 map plus North Carolina.

[TodayJunior]

Come on! I know that things are (or possibly were) getting better for Biden, but his realistic ceiling next year in a potential rematch against Trump still probably won't be better than the 2020 map plus North Carolina.

North Carolina is the obvious one.
Maine-02 is winnable by a Democrat - they keep electing Golden.
Ohio can be won at the national level esp with Brown on the ballot
Why not Texas? It’s basically one cycle behind AZ/GA, and with a 1996-ish popular vote win, it’s ripe for the picking.
Alaska - why not? Dems captured the at large district for the first time in how long? Decades. Trump also isn’t exactly loved there.

Florida - trump wins it probably around 1-2%. Iowa? Probably the same.

[Vosem]

Biden is going to win re-election, possibly by a landslide margin, so hell no.

He would be 83, so that still doesn't guarantee him being a two-term President.

Anyway, certainly not last ever, but it seems like there's a general global trend of democratic leaders serving shorter total terms in office (this is an extreme generalization but I think it's true), so I wouldn't be surprised if there was a long gap until the next two-term President. Counting anybody whose term in office rounds up to 8 years as a "two-term President" (because leaving out TR and Truman feels silly), here are the gaps between two-term Presidents (or more) in our history, counting Cleveland as a 2-term President:

1797-1801: 4 years between Washington and Jefferson
1825-1829: 4 years between Monroe and Jackson
1837-1869: 32 years between Jackson and Grant
1877-1885: 8 years between Grant and Cleveland (1st term)
1889-1893: 4 years between Cleveland (1st term) and Cleveland (2nd term)
1897-1901: 4 years between Cleveland (2nd term) and TR
1909-1913: 4 years between TR and Wilson
1921-1933: 12 years between Wilson and FDR
1961-1981: 20 years between Eisenhower and Reagan
1989-1993: 4 years between Reagan and Clinton
2017-??: 6 years and counting between Obama and someone

So a 32-year gap would not be unprecedented, and there was a 20-year gap in moderately recent history.

[Ferguson97]

Biden is going to win re-election, possibly by a landslide margin, so hell no.

He would be 83, so that still doesn't guarantee him being a two-term President.

Of course, but I think that the spirit of the question was "elected to two terms".

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

No, we don't know what's gonna happen to the R party without MI, PA and WI they won't win and these are Big Labor states

[Vosem]

Biden is going to win re-election, possibly by a landslide margin, so hell no.

He would be 83, so that still doesn't guarantee him being a two-term President.

Of course, but I think that the spirit of the question was "elected to two terms".

Oh, in that case my post was thinking about something very difficult (rounds up to 8 years in office, or more). I counted TR and Truman, each of whom was technically only elected once -- both saw the top of the ticket die very early into their term, and I think both had the cultural impact of two-term Presidents -- and I counted Lincoln, McKinley, and Nixon as one-termers, although they all had more influence than usual for one-term Presidents (Lincoln in particular, but McKinley and Nixon are also remembered a lot for their eras).

Two-term Presidents:
1789-1797: Washington
1801-1809: Jefferson
1809-1817: Madison
1817-1825: Monroe
1829-1837: Jackson
1861-1865: Lincoln (only by your definition)
1869-1877: Grant
1885-1889, 1893-1897: Cleveland
1897-1901: McKinley (only by your definition)
1901-1909: T. Roosevelt (only by my definition)
1913-1921: Wilson
1933-1945: F. Roosevelt (three-termer by my definition, four-termer by yours)
1945-1953: Truman (only by my definition)
1953-1961: Eisenhower
1969-1974: Nixon (only by your definition)
1981-1989: Reagan
1993-2001: Clinton
2001-2009: Bush
2009-2017: Obama

?

[pbrower2a]

Ruling out untimely death (Kennedy, Harding, Garfield), completing an agenda and having nothing new to offer (the elder Bush), an economic (Hoover) or diplomatic (Carter) disaster, being clueless on how to campaign even at the state level (Ford), or being caught in  demographic change without being able to meet its challenge (Trump), Presidents who seek re-election or a first term after succeeding a Presidency cut short get re-elected.

Due to age alone (President Biden is undeniably past prime), the current President has questions related to extreme age as President. He is in great shape for someone aged 80, but he is 80. Recent approval polls suggest that with a solid campaign for re-election he wins it.

We may have other existential questions of the Presidency. Continued existence of the United States of America? If you are looking at empires similar in scale the USA looks like one of the most durable. It is one of the most flexible, consistently able to weather demographic and technological change. It wins most of its wars or forces some settlement that keeps the USA intact. It outlasted Jacobinism, fascism (including Ku Kluxism), Maoism, and the Soviet Union. It solved such vices as slavery and male chauvinism, and it is more likely to defeat the folly of racism than to succumb to it. If you are to ask what political entity is most likely to be in existence one thousand years from now, then it is the USA. Maybe some disaster such as the asteroid strike that finished off the non-avian dinosaurs could finish off the USA, but it would also finish off every other political entity as well.

The biggest international trend likely to transform America is the spread of Islam, the most aggressive religion in proselytizing.  That would be (should it happen)  the instance of an irresistible force meeting an immovable object. In such a case, the irresistible force adapts to the immovable object, changing the culture while leaving the institutions intact. Christian fundamentalism is on the fade in part due to intellectual absurdity that gets more blatant seemingly with every year.

Second, we might have questions about the Presidency. If the Presidency should transmute into a Constitutional monarchy we would no longer need a President. In theory we could go Parliamentary in style or have a Constitutional Amendment that limits the Presidency to one term. Or we could have a military  coup that establishes a Pinochet-like tyrant. Such is unlikely for a very long time. The most likely time for a military coup was on January 6, 2021, and the Armed Forces played its role perfectly. The Joint Chiefs of Staff made clear that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had won and would be inaugurated on schedule.

If you don't see incumbency as an advantage in a Presidential election, then just look at these two:

2016



2020

   

Sure, liberals despised Trump even more in 2020 than in 2016, but hating the current President does not give a single voter more power as a voter. Trump kept his 2016 support intact in part because he kept up his cultural war against the liberals that he and his supporters continued to excoriate. Trump was certifiably awful as President, so he didn't convince enough new voters to go from opposing him to supporting him to offset new voters whose demographic realities and cultural values were incompatible with him.

The most reliable trend in electoral demographics is that comparatively young voters replace older voters leaving the electorate due to debility or death.  Voters over 50, which included almost entirely the Silent, Boom and X generations were on the whole about 5% more R than D in voting, and they seemed to remain so in 2020. Voters under 40 in 2016, largely Millennial, were about 20% more D than R.   About 1.6% of the electorate dies or otherwise becomes incapable of voting each year, and those are predominately over 50. New voters are predominately younger (under age 40). Over four years the electorate changed, and the effect was to replace voters about 5% more R than D with voters about 20% more D than R. That's a 1.6% shift in voting proclivity overall, and that explains just about everything in the big story. People did not change their minds about Donald Trump, but instead different minds were around in 2020 than in 2016, and that was the difference.


...Barring some political calamity or pervasive change in American culture analogous to the rise of the Religious Right in the late 1970's, someone running on the Biden agenda  will win about 53-45, which is about what Obama did in 2008. Because the swing would be strongest in those states barely on Trump's side in 2020, that would give the Biden agenda roughly 360 electoral votes with North Carolina and Florida, and about 400 if one adds Texas. Those who already support Biden think that he is solving many problems and  those who still can't understand how someone so offensive as he could win still see him as a dreadful President.     

[All Along The Watchtower]

Let’s Go Brandon 

[AnOdyssey]

Will Barack Obama be the last two term President? No, and if the Republican clown car circus keeps going into 2024, we will see Biden re-elected.

[BigVic]

Unless there is an amendment passing where the 22nd Amendment is changed to "No President shall serve more than one, six year term, non-renewable"

[pbrower2a]

Obama had to be more similar to some other President in the past if he were to get re-elected. He isn't Ike, but the temperament and appeal was closer to Ike than to any other.
When all is said and done, I think that the Obama and Eisenhower Presidencies are going to look like good analogues. Both Presidents are chilly rationalists. Both are practically scandal-free administrations. Both started with a troublesome war that both found their way out of. Neither did much to 'grow' the strength of their Parties in either House of Congress. To compare ISIS to Fidel Castro is completely unfair to Fidel Castro, a gentleman by contrast to ISIS.

The definitive moderate Republican may have been Dwight Eisenhower, and I have heard plenty of Democrats praise the Eisenhower Presidency. He went along with Supreme Court rulings that outlawed segregationist practices, stayed clear of the McCarthy bandwagon, and let McCarthy implode.

 
gray -- did not vote in 1952 or 1956
white -- Eisenhower twice, Obama twice
deep blue -- Republican all four elections
light blue -- Republican all but 2012 (I assume that greater Omaha went for Ike twice)
light green -- Eisenhower once, Stevenson once, Obama never
dark green -- Stevenson twice, Obama never
pink -- Stevenson twice, Obama once

No state voted Democratic all four times, so no state is in deep red. [/quote]

You can ignore the counts of electoral votes which apply to 2008.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

No Biden is gonna win 2 T