Washington Post columnist Matt Bai criticized President Biden on Monday for clinging to power too long, saying that the president's legacy would be that he "didn't know when to leave."
"After a lifetime of noble service, he will be chiefly remembered — like so many in his generation — as a man who didn’t know when to leave," Bai wrote.
The president dropped out of the 2024 race at the end of July, roughly a month after a poor debate performance against President-elect Donald Trump in June. Vice President Kamala Harris took over the Democratic presidential campaign and ultimately lost.
"By the time Biden took the stage for his debate with Trump in June, it was clear that history had been hijacked by a dangerous delusion — one shared and fostered by his senior aides and even the reporters who covered him most closely," Bai wrote, after noting that Biden did deserve credit for his legislative achievements.
Bai described what might have been Biden's thought process in the final year of his presidency and said he didn't want to yield power.
"Then there was the awkward problem of who, exactly, would succeed him. Having rallied around Vice President Kamala Harris in the tumultuous, racially charged summer of 2020, despite her rather abysmal showing as a short-lived presidential candidate, Democratic leaders and Biden’s own aides worried that she couldn’t win. (A competitive primary could have answered that question, of course, but modern Democrats are terrified of any process they can’t orchestrate.)," Bai wrote.
The columnist also shared that despite abysmal approval ratings, Biden thought he was the best option to beat Trump. After Harris lost, the president reportedly felt regretful about dropping out, and still believed he would have beaten Trump.
"Even now, during the waning hours of Biden’s term, it’s impossible to look at him and think: here’s a guy who should have been running for president again. Twenty years on, it will rank among the most self-evidently foolish acts of denial in which any incumbent party has ever engaged," he continued.
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"While [Gerald] Ford and [George H.W.] Bush were each awarded the Profile in Courage Award given by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Carter won the Nobel Prize, Biden, I fear, will have to satisfy himself with a train station in Wilmington, Delaware, and a rest stop on Interstate 95," Bai concluded.
Just days after Harris' loss, Bai called out the president and his closest aides for preaching the message, "You’re not really seeing what you think you’re seeing."
"Biden has always served his country ably and with integrity. I’m not sure we can say the same, though, for the Democratic aides and leaders who thought voters could be made to distrust their own experience," he wrote in a Nov. 8 column.
