President Joe Biden announced on Sunday his decision to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race.
“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President,” Biden explained in a social media post. “And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.”
The decision represents the latest swerve in a wild-ride-of-an-election-year summer that has included a jaw-dropping debate performance from Biden, an unusually high number of high-profile, third-party candidates running, and the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. Now Americans await the prospect of something very few have ever witnessed: a brokered political convention.
[I]f frailties and senility prevented Biden for running for reelection, why do not these handicaps force him to resign as president.
The pressured withdrawal solves one problem. It creates many others.
A Detroit Free Press poll released this weekend showed Biden down seven to Trump in, for Democrats at least, must-win Michigan. Increasingly, since the June debate in which the president exhibited what appeared to many as signs of senility, a path to victory for Biden looked closed. Democrats can now at least hope. They enjoy a fighting chance.
But Kamala Harris, who Biden endorsed in a statement following up the announcement ending his run, polls in the same depressing range as Biden. Dumping her risks alienating black women, one of the most loyal blocs within the party. Sticking with her looks like if not a suicide mission than at least replacing one underdog with another.
The party’s bench includes politicians accustomed to working across the aisle. Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan each look capable of generating more support than Harris, a solid debater, grating and uninspiring speaker, and altogether awkward presence. As a Bay Area politician, she did not really need to speak to independents let alone Republicans to win elections.
But skipping over Harris, picked as a running mate explicitly because of her race, risks sparking more chaos within the party. In other words, many Democrats who want to win in November should expect the term “racist” hurled at them should they work to dump Harris — unless, of course, they can convince Michelle Obama (a far more formidable potential candidate than Harris) to run.
Beyond this, the party that has spent the better part of the last four years moralizing about the threat to democracy posed by their opponent now jettisons the primary votes of 14 million regular Democrats in favor of a few thousand elites who decide the nominee. Though Biden did not inspire loyalists among party regulars as Obama or Clinton did, they exist and his forced exit leaves them upset and disenfranchised.
All of the Democrats who pushed to dump Biden voted for him and urged others to vote for him during primary season. The entire episode seems a tacit admission of the bad judgment of party elites.
Biden sees no shortage of Judases. More than three dozen Democrat House members and a handful of Democrat senators openly called for him to dropout. So did The New York Times, George Clooney, and countless Democrats across the country.
But behind the scenes Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Senator Chuck Schumer, and other leading Democrats orchestrated this moment. Biden, sick with Covid on the beach in Delaware, ends a political career that started 55 years ago on a discordant note.
And for his critics, the question remains: if frailties and senility prevented Biden for running for reelection, why do not these handicaps force him to resign as president of the United States as well? Biden, gone as a candidate, now morphs into a campaign issue.
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