Sign up for The Decision, a newsletter featuring our 2024 election coverage.
It was a very hard thing for President Joe Biden to do, and it was the right thing for him to do.
Biden announced today that he would step aside as the Democratic presidential nominee.
In a letter to the nation, America’s 46th president said, “I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President.”
The decision by the 81-year-old Biden was very nearly inevitable, as his chances to defeat Donald Trump collapsed and the odds of a Republican landslide victory increased, but its announcement was nevertheless a stunning moment. In an instant, Democrats were liberated from an issue, Biden’s age, that had hung like a millstone around their necks. This will unleash an enormous amount of energy within the party. What was looking like a rout is now a race.
There will be plenty of commentary on what this means for both parties. But I find my thoughts this afternoon going to President Biden and his family—and to this agonizing denouement for a man who was first elected to public office more than half a century ago, at the age of 29.
Biden was clearly reluctant to make this decision; it was in many ways forced upon him, and by a particularly painful process. The party he loved and to which he has dedicated his entire adult life turned on him, including former colleagues and trusted friends. They were right to urge Biden to step aside—it had to be done, and those in Biden’s party took no delight in doing it—but from the president’s perspective, this felt like a betrayal.
I imagine this triggered Biden’s insecurities, the sense that he was never taken as seriously as he should have been. He has created a narrative about himself, and not without reasons, as Comeback Joe. His political career was declared finished multiple times, including in 1987, when he withdrew from the presidential campaign because he was caught plagiarizing the life story of Neil Kinnock; in 2016, when President Barack Obama pushed his own vice president aside in favor of Hillary Clinton; and in 2020, when his campaign was flat on its back until it was resurrected in South Carolina. So it’s not surprising that Biden, facing the worst crisis of his political life, would tell himself that this is just another obstacle to overcome, another chance for the scrappy kid from Scranton to prove the experts wrong, and in doing so, it would only add to his legend.
But this is different. This is a story without a comeback. Persistence, determination, and grit have nothing to do with this. Biden is in the midst of a rapid and irreversible physical and mental decline. This was evident even before the June 27 debate with Trump, but on the CNN stage in Atlanta, his debilities were on excruciating display. Many Americans, including those who have been most supportive of Biden, felt that night should never have been allowed to happen; that those who loved him should have protected Biden from the unforgiving glare of the spotlight; that Biden in this state should have been seen only within the privacy of family, not broadcast to the world.
His public appearances since then haven’t been quite as bad as what we saw on the debate stage, but they have been bad enough.
Biden’s withdrawal, then, wasn’t simply necessary because he had lost the confidence of the country and even his own party. For him to agree to step aside means, on some level at least, he is acknowledging that he is entering a difficult final chapter of his life. There is grief in that. Coming to that point will of course stir up powerful emotions—denial, anger, bitterness that those he trusted have betrayed him. That isn’t true, but it feels true to him, as it might to many of us.
Coming to terms with mortality is never easy. We rage against the dying of the light. Many elderly people face the painful moment of letting go, of losing independence and human agency, when they are told by family they have to give up the keys to the car; Biden was told by his party to give up the keys to the presidency. Of course this proud man would fight to hang on.
But in the end, and to his credit, Joe Biden got to where he needed to be, and not a moment too soon. Staying in the race would have been an act of monumental selfishness. As it is, what he did will be seen as an act of impressive selflessness.
It’s not clear whether Trump can be beaten. Democrats have dug themselves into a deep hole. But at least they now have a fighting chance.
