In the end, the pressure on President Biden to step aside, orchestrated by increasingly blatant leaks from Democratic leaders and public abandonment by party lawmakers, got to be too great, as was obviously inevitable.
Not even an incumbent president of some accomplishment can run for reelection when donors pull the plug, when nearly two-thirds of Democrats don’t want him seeking a second term, and when a public declaration that Joe Must Go is a surefire ticket to television appearances.
Soon after Biden, recovering from COVID, rocked the 2024 race yesterday by endorsing Kamala Harris, which may well have handed her the nomination, the tectonic plates shifted. Not long after Biden declared it “in the best interest of my party and my country for me to stand down,” Harris said she was “honored to have the president’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination.”
Politics is a cold business. Journalists and commentators quickly moved on to speculating who Harris’ running mate will be.
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What I will never understand is why Biden sent so many signals that he was absolutely, positively staying in the race. He said he looked forward to hitting the campaign trail this week. He had campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon make a rare TV appearance to say the boss wasn’t dropping out, and had a White House spokesperson rip news stories that suggested otherwise.
Harris brings undeniable strengths and weaknesses, but at 59, she is now the youngest candidate in the race to take on Donald Trump.
And the latest stunning turn – a president bowing out after all the primary votes have been cast – came a week after Trump was nearly assassinated, the bullet grazing his ear as he turned his head just enough that it saved his life.
As Trump said at a weekend rally, “I took a bullet for democracy.”
On yesterday’s “Media Buzz,” which ended before Biden’s announcement, Kevin Corke, in Rehoboth Beach, said the Democrats would be “done for an awful long time. The idea that a Black woman would be passed over, the way it would be perceived in the community, would be devastating.”
The person most responsible for Biden stepping aside is Nancy Pelosi, who warned the president in private, then had allies such as Adam Schiff go public, then used leaks to the press to make Biden’s position untenable.
The former speaker has not endorsed Harris. Neither has Barack Obama, who let it be known he thought his former VP would lose and said yesterday there should be a process for deciding the nomination.
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This may be because they believe Harris would gain more momentum by defeating someone in a mini-primary, rather than looking like a choice imposed by the party bosses. That certainly can look undemocratic, though most Biden delegates would probably follow the president’s lead.
The biggest mistake many journalists make is basing their assessment of Harris’ chances on her poll standing today.
Trump very much wanted to run against Biden, especially since that disastrous debate. But it was also Trump, while cursing Kamala from a golf cart, who predicted he’d be running against her.
The vice president had a rocky first two years, often at odds with the West Wing, but in the last year has gained in poise and confidence.
Here are her assets and liabilities:
Harris can claim a share of credit for Biden’s legislative accomplishments (though that was always too backward-looking). But that means she’s also saddled with his failures, such as Afghanistan and the border fiasco (of which she was nominally in charge in a no-win situation). Biden waited way too long to crack down on asylum seekers.
She’s already being asked if she was part of a coverup – vouching for the president’s mental acuity while seeing signs of his decline close up. That’s a tough one.
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Biden could never quite capture the country’s attention, in part because his inner circle kept him away from journalists – even two Super Bowl interviews –for reasons we now understand.
Harris has to demonstrate that she can drive a message and should do plenty of interviews.
Whether another Democrat challenges her or not, Harris, who began making calls yesterday, has to put together a team in a hurry to challenge a well-oiled Trump campaign that has been operating smoothly all year.
It was Axios that reported “several top Democrats privately tell us the rising pressure of party congressional leaders and close friends will persuade President Biden to decide to drop out of the presidential race, as soon as this weekend.” Yet deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks told reporters that Biden “is not wavering on anything. The president has made his decision.”
And the New York Times was right in reporting that “several people close to President Biden said on Thursday that they believe he has begun to accept the idea that he may not be able to win in November and may have to drop out of the race, bowing to the growing demands of many anxious members of his party.”
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Now here’s the final irony: Some Republicans and conservatives, including National Review, are saying that if Biden isn’t fit to run a campaign, he can’t run the country now – and should resign.
Which, of course, would give Kamala Harris a four-month head start as president.
