Under the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, no one can be elected to more than two four-year terms as president. However, if the president dies in office, resigns, or is impeached and convicted, the vice president can serve out the president’s term and then run twice more if there is less than two years left in his predecessor’s term.
To illustrate: John F. Kennedy became president on January 20, 1961, and died on November 22, 1963. So he had served more than two years of his term by the time he died. Lyndon Johnson filled out his unexpired term, then in 1964 he ran for and won a four-year term as president.
He was eligible to run for another four-year term in 1968 and had every intention of doing so. But by 1968 he was deeply unpopular because of the Vietnam war, which had dragged on for years with no “light at the end of the tunnel.” When Sen. Eugene McCarthy entered the New Hampshire primary as an antiwar candidate and received 42% of the Democratic vote — an unheard-of embarrassment for an incumbent president — Johnson realized he stood a very good chance of not even winning his party’s nomination, let alone the 1968 general election. He decided to quit the race and leave office when his term expired on January 20, 1969.
So yes, if Biden were to die on January 19, 2025, Harris would be sworn in as president. But because that one-day term would end at noon the very next day, come January 20 (and assuming she won the November 2024 election), she would have to take the oath of office again.
And if she wanted a second term, she would be eligible to run again in 2028. I was never good at math, but even I know one day is considerably less than two years.
If the sitting President dies in office for any reason, then the Vice President will take over and be considered President, with all the authority and limits that go along with the job. They would serve for the duration remaining in the term. it would be as if they were serving their first term. 8 Vice Presidents have become President upon the death of the sitting President, and of those 8, 4 have gone on to be elected. So, yes, if Biden was to somehow drop dead on his last day in office, then Kamala would be President, for that last day and that would be her first term, meaning she could still run in 2028.
The Constitution and amendments are not some secret document held in a vault somewhere. Let’s look at it and see what it says:
22nd Amendment:
No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of President more than once.
It’s rather compact language, but the bolded part refers to a VP who steps up due to the death or resignation of the president.
So if Harris served *more than 2 years* of Biden’s term, she could only serve once. But it’s already past that point. If Biden died tonight, Harris would finish out the remaining 5 months of his term, and then if she wins, she would be eligible for 2 full terms of her own.
LBJ finished out the last year and 2 months of Kennedy’s term, so he was eligible for 2 full terms of his own, but he declined to run for that second term.
