President Biden did the right thing by his country, his party, his legacy and his historical role. Pulling out of the presidential race was the hardest decision he has made in a political career spanning more than half a century. If it leads to the defeat of Donald Trump, it might also be the most consequential.
Had Biden stayed in the race and lost, he could no longer have claimed victory in the battle he declared on behalf of the soul of America. Now, America’s soul has a fighting chance.
So does Biden’s major legislative and regulatory legacy on behalf of public investment, labor, civil rights, financial transparency, greater economic competition, the environment and the climate.
Biden did not reach this decision easily. And who could have expected otherwise? No candidate in the modern era of primaries had ever been pushed to abandon a nomination he had won fair-and-square only weeks before the party’s convention.
This is why, for most of the three weeks after the president’s June 27 debate disaster, Democratic leaders largely hung back. They tried to be as gracious as they could be in avoiding the appearance they were shoving him out of the way. The truth is, as my own reporting has found, most lawmakers who came to see his effort as unsustainable were happy to support the pre-debate Biden. Despite Biden’s suspicions to the contrary, they really do appreciate him. These people admire his extraordinary record. They thought at the beginning of the year — and well into it — that he could handle the campaign and the next four years.
A disastrous debate performance during which Biden often seemed lost for words extinguished that faith.
“Going into the debate, Trump was seen as the risk to the country, and that’s still true,” Peter Welch (D-Vt.), the first senator to call on Biden to withdraw, told me. “But coming out of the debate, many voters started seeing Biden’s health as a risk to the country.”
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Democrats in ever larger numbers called on Biden to “pass the torch.” The phrase was carefully chosen, one House member told me. It was designed to stress that the president’s withdrawal would not be a passive act of surrender but an active decision by a man who could burnish his legacy by moving on in the interest of defeating the man he repeatedly cast as a threat to American democracy.
Now that Biden has acted, Democrats need to settle swiftly on a new nominee — and a process to bring the party together. Being Democrats, they are split on both these questions.
Many in the party, particularly Black leaders but also other Biden loyalists, will be outraged if there is not a quick move to replace Biden with Vice President Harris, whose chances Biden boosted with an immediate endorsem*nt. But others say that an open, democratic process is required to build confidence in the party and its ultimate choice.
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They both have a point. Choosing someone other than Harris, who has already been well vetted, would invite turmoil the party can’t afford. Dumping your entire ticket three months before an election is not a good look. But Democrats need to get to a Harris nomination through a process the whole party will see as fair.
Doing so would only strengthen Harris’s candidacy. So would a strong running mate. Govs. Roy Cooper of North Carolina and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan are among the many good options Harris would have.
Biden’s decision will bring new energy to a party that had already gained confidence in its capacity to win, courtesy of Trump’s 92-minute disquisition on Thursday that drove even ardent loyalists to weariness and exhaustion. Trump’s lack of discipline and his vaudevillian affection for his old act led him away from the recommendations of his advisers. They understood that natural sympathy had rushed Trump’s way after a failed assassination attempt. They promised he would tell his moving personal story and call for national unity.
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But the New Trump was a momentary invention that could not survive contact with Trump’s own natural instincts. The return of the old Trump put the Democrats back in business. But for the business to be solvent, they needed Biden to move.
Although the choice was excruciating, the president should be — and deserves to be — at peace with this outcome. None of what happened reflects badly on his record as president. He didn’t fail in that debate. His age failed him.
All along, Biden cast himself as the person who could best preserve democracy by stopping Trump a second time. Paradoxically, perhaps, he stayed true to that mission by removing himself from the contest. He did the hardest thing a politician can do: relinquish power. His decision saved his legacy.
What do you think President Biden should do with the rest of his time in office? Share your responses with us, and they may be published in The Post.
