The fact that a party can oust its incumbent three and a half months before the election is an unbelievable act even by US standards. In the end, the fight became an undignified spectacle.
Joe Biden chooses an unusual exit. No formal speech in the White House, no grand appearance, but a mundane written statement that the US President simultaneously distributes on several social media channels while he himself sits in corona isolation in his private home in the state of Delaware.
“Dear fellow citizens,” he writes – and only gets to the point four paragraphs later: “Although it was my intention to seek re-election, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country if I retire and focus exclusively on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.”
The 81-year-old added that he would tell the nation more about his decision in the coming days. In another social media post, he said he would like his vice president, Kamala Harris, to take his place and run as the Democratic presidential candidate in the November election. Then there was silence again.
Chaos – and an opportunity
The dramatic step is something like the worst-case scenario in a US election year that is already unprecedented – and in which more is at stake than ever before.
According to the American media, it has never happened before that a US presidential candidate has dropped out so close to the election. And that a party publicly kicks its own incumbent in the White House out of the race about three and a half months before the election is an unbelievable act even by US standards.
Biden’s Democrats and the country now face chaotic weeks. But it is also an opportunity for the party: to finally put a paralyzing and painful debate behind them, to breathe enthusiasm into the previously unenthusiastic base and to bring momentum to their own election campaign just before the end.
The Democrats have never been euphoric about Biden’s election campaign so far. From the very beginning, the party had concerns about his age. But there were no alternatives. The Democrats rallied behind the incumbent out of a sense of duty. For a long time, they only expressed their concerns behind closed doors about whether, at over 80, he was the right man for another four years in one of the toughest jobs in the world.
An undignified spectacle at the end
However, Biden’s complete failure in the TV debate against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at the end of June was a turning point: in view of his disastrous performance in front of millions of viewers, many in the party no longer wanted to remain silent. It led to public rebellion. Several dozen Democrats publicly called on their party colleague to withdraw from the race.
A defiant Biden fought tooth and nail for three and a half agonizing weeks against an early exit, declaring, among other things, that only God could make him drop out of the race. In his desperate efforts to stave off the revolt, he made more embarrassing mistakes, lapses, blunders – each one worse than the last.
And with every day that Biden continued to fight against the inevitable, more Democrats felt compelled to publicly take a stand against him and, in doing so, to reveal painful insights into his condition: for example, that he no longer recognized some of them when they met recently. His fight for political survival became an undignified spectacle. Biden himself is not innocent of this either.
A tarnished political legacy
It is bitter that Biden’s long political career is now ending in this way. He could have gone down in history as the president who drove Trump out of the White House and thus stabilized the country, who led the USA out of the corona crisis, revived the economy, and initiated unprecedented investments in climate protection and infrastructure. But his dishonorable departure caused lasting damage to his political legacy. Now he will also go down in history as someone who stumbled badly at the end and still refused to let go. Out of pride? Out of vanity?
Biden only managed to enter the White House on his third attempt – as the oldest US president of all time. Perhaps the fact that it was so difficult for him to get there made it harder to let go. The Democrat himself claims that he only decided to run for re-election out of a sense of responsibility. Until the very end, he claimed that there was no one in the entire country who was better suited for the job – and that only he could defeat Trump again.
That turned out to be presumptuous. As an incumbent with a very respectable record, he should have had an easy time against a now convicted criminal who tried to sabotage the election result four years ago and incited his supporters to a violent attack on the US Capitol. But for months, Trump was ahead of him in the polls. Biden’s external condition has long overshadowed his substantive successes.
The emergency solution
The fact that the party did not have an alternative candidate ready is primarily the fault of Biden himself. In 2020, he ran as a transition candidate to beat Trump and then pass the power on to the next generation.
But he did not give up power and failed to systematically groom someone as his successor.
Yes, his deputy Harris herself fell short of the great expectations and hopes placed on her. She has been invisible over the past three and a half years, sometimes seemed unconfident, inauthentic, and made mistakes herself. But Biden also gave her unsolvable tasks, such as “curbing the causes of flight.” Only recently has she been able to gain some profile on the issue of abortion.
In their desperate situation, the Democrats are now looking primarily to Harris as Biden’s successor and are generously overlooking her previous weaknesses, mainly for pragmatic reasons. As Biden’s vice president and, above all, as the first woman and first black person to take the job, it would be difficult to ignore her. In addition, she is nationally known and could probably access the campaign apparatus and probably also the donations collected by the previous Biden-Harris campaign. It remains to be seen whether the party will follow Biden’s suggestion and send her into the election as number one.
Whether she has a chance of beating Trump is even more questionable.
Source: Stern
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
