It’s perfectly clear that Biden wanted to take on Trump, beat him, and serve another term.
Even as polling collapsed, and donors and fellow Democrats defected, he clung to that dream. He had to be nudged out. Obama and Pelosi talked to him, gently. Others went public, openly worried he’d drag the entire party down.
“This has got to be one of the hardest decisions he’s ever made,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) said. “… [H]e wanted to fight and keep going … but as he heard more and more input, I think he was wrestling with what would be the best for the country.” (See story here.)
Even his public announcement reflects that he badly wanted to stay in the race:
“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President. 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 to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.”
This required swallowing a lot of ego, if he has any; even if he’s totally public-spirited, it was self-repudiation, an admission he’s not the best person to carry the torch for what he believes in.
Since he’s clearly not doing this for himself, the logical question is, for party or country? He says both, implying no distinction exists between the two.
Partisans for the other side would dispute this; but I won’t go in that potentially endless debate here. I’ll just say neither party is perfect, but that doesn’t mean they’re equally good or bad. We all have our preferences.
Trump scares the crap out of Democrats. That’s what was behind this, nothing else. They need a strong candidate to prevent him from regaining the White House and wreaking havoc on all they hold dear. The polls warned that wasn’t Biden, and Democrats took the warning to heart.
They didn’t want to jettison Biden because they don’t love him, or don’t like what he’s done as president (although in some cases that’s true), but because they feared Trump would clean his clock in November.
Biden has done well by the country. He didn’t just fill the chair so Trump couldn’t. He was productive legislatively, and threaded the needle on terribly difficult foreign policy challenges, although not perfectly with Israel and Gaza.
Unlike Trump, whose presidency was chaotic, he governed competently. His party stands for inclusiveness and expanding individual rights, which Trump’s party does not.
The dystopian picture Trump painted of America is a pack of lies. Crime is not worse. The economy is not crumbling. Our elections aren’t rigged. Immigrants don’t vote, commit more crime than citizens, or drain Social Security; and we need their work.
Nor will he make the economy better; deporting immigrant workers, imposing tariffs, and raising deficits by cutting taxes for the rich will cause more inflation.
Biden dropped out for his party’s sake, but you can make a strong case that it serves the country, too, as he believes.
