Show of hands: How many people believe President Joe Biden is stepping down from the top of the Democrat ticket because he wants to focus on his presidential duties?
I thought so.
After weeks of escalating pressure from Democrats for Biden to step aside, because the nation finally saw the depth of his cognitive decline, he finally relented on Sunday. Now, the president wants us to believe he is quitting so he can get serious about being president for the next six months. Nobody believes that.
For the record, Biden said on Sunday, “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.” This is obviously and blatantly untrue. No Democrat calling for him to step aside ever said he should do so to fulfill his duties as president.
More than a few commentators have drawn a comparison between Biden today and President Lyndon Johnson in 1968, but that isn’t correct either. At the end of a lengthy televised address to the nation about the war in Vietnam and efforts to begin a peace process, Johnson said, “I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office,” and announced, “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.”
His March 31, 1968 announcement came less than three weeks after winning the New Hampshire primary as a write-in candidate, narrowly defeating anti-war Sen. Eugene McCarthy. The primary season was just getting underway when Johnson bowed out, and while he was the incumbent, there was no assurance he would win his party’s nomination.
With roughly 500,000 American troops deployed to Southeast Asia, Johnson certainly had his hands full. Between prosecuting the war in Vietnam and pursuing peace, his decision not to seek reelection had an air of nobility about it. Biden’s decision has the air of ignominy. His poor prospects for victory in November were the result of a variety of deeply unpopular policies, sagging poll numbers, and wide public awareness of his frailties.
Unlike Johnson, Biden did not withdraw at the front end of the nominating process. He quit months after clinching the nomination with more than 98% of the delegates to the convention. He sought his party’s nomination and was absolutely prepared to accept it next month. Unlike LBJ, Biden spent weeks stubbornly rebuffing a chorus of Democrats urging him to step down, dragging his party into an abyss of confusion and infighting.
Everybody knows the truth about Joe Biden's decision to quit the presidential race. His fellow Democrats determined that his failing cognition had made him unelectable, and they relentlessly pressured him to drop out. His own party decided that he did not have what it takes to succeed in a presidential campaign.
This truth was noticed earlier this month by former Obama administration official and retired Admiral Jamie Barnett, who wrote on July 2, “President Joe Biden should not just leave the presidential race. He should resign the presidency. Now.” The admiral’s suggestion wasn’t predicated on the president’s cognition - it wasn’t predicated on anything other than beating Donald Trump - but it wasn’t unreasonable. If an incumbent president cannot campaign for a second term, he is, by extension, unable to govern for the remainder of his first term.
After announcing his quitting, Biden offered his endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris. But this doesn't necessarily confer on her the president’s 3,900+ convention delegates. There’s no mechanism at this time for how Democrats might re-allocate those delegates, setting up a convention scenario with the potential to make the 1968 Democratic Convention look like an ice cream social.
If convention delegates do follow Biden’s lead and nominate Harris for president, she may fare no better than him in a face-off with Trump. Many people see her as a silly, unserious person with a questionable command of the English language and whose position in the Biden administration is the result of Biden’s 2020 promise to “pick a woman to be vice president.” Biden did not promise to choose the most qualified person to be a heartbeat for the presidency; Harris was little more than a DEI hire.
The Bhagavad Gita records Lord Krishna saying to Prince Arjuna, “Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.” Having crippled his party by quitting one month before the convention, Joe Biden’s decision may well be the electoral death of whatever ticket Democrats nominate in Chicago. It’s not the legacy Biden wanted, but it’s the one history will record.
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