Withdrawing from a presidential re-election campaign three months before Election Day is a momentous, world-history-changing decision that can’t be undone. President Joe Biden knew his withdrawal was irreversible in July when he stood aside and threw his support behind Vice President Kamala Harris for the Democratic presidential nomination. Biden, who was trailing Donald Trump in the polls (in part because of his doddering performance during their debate), was just as aware that stepping aside was an eleventh-hour, high-stakes gamble. If Harris didn’t pull off a come-from-behind victory over Trump, then his decision to bow out would be second-guessed.
The best thing for Biden to do was praise Harris for fighting the good fight. Actually, that’s the only decent thing to do.
Because she didn’t pull it off, the best thing for Biden to do was praise Harris for fighting the good fight. Actually, that’s the only decent thing to do.
It was disappointing, then, to read USA Today’s Wednesday report that, according to an interview he gave Sunday, Biden believes he would have defeated Trump if he’d stayed in the race.
Not only does his saying so suggest he’s overestimating his political skills and the country’s willingness to elect him again (at the time, only 36% of those polled approved of the job he was doing as president), but it also ungraciously insults Harris. His statement implies that she didn’t or couldn’t do enough to win — and that he would have.
“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,” Biden wrote in a July 21 letter addressed to “My Fellow Americans.”
Three days later, from behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, he addressed the nation in prime time. He said he believed his record, leadership and vision “merited a second term” but he’d “decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation.”
The 82-year-old president was sitting behind the same desk Sunday when Susan Page, USA Today’s Washington bureau chief, asked him, “Do you believe you could have won in November?”
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.
JOE BIDEN IN A JULY 21 LETTER TO THE COUNTRY
Biden responded: “It’s presumptuous to say that, but I think yes, based on the polling that…”
Before he could finish, Page asked, “Do you think you would’ve had the vigor to serve another four years in office?” Biden began by saying, “I don’t know.” He said he hadn’t planned on challenging Trump in 2020 and only did so because “I really thought I had the best chance of beating him. But I also wasn’t looking to be president when I was 85 years old, 86 years old…. Who the hell knows? So far, so good. But who knows what I’m going to be when I’m 86 years old?”
While there’s something refreshing about a politician directly answering a yes-or-no question, Biden has enough experience as a politician and in diplomacy to have answered the question in a way that didn’t seem either delusional or disrespectful.
The easiest thing to say would have been that he is not looking backward. That the American people have spoken. That the vice president ran a great race in tough, unprecedented circumstances, and he is proud of the work they accomplished together.
Instead, he suggested there was polling indicating he could have won.
Perhaps the most frustrating part about Biden’s answer is that it appears to contradict his answer to a question Page had asked earlier in the interview: “Why do you think Democrats lost so much of their support in November?”
He said, “Well, number one, I think that, as I said, if you look around the world, almost every democracy out there ‘lost’ this time.”
To Biden’s point, a Pew Research Center report from February 2024 found that enthusiasm for the concept of democracy is waning around the world. But incumbent parties, wherever they fall on the political spectrum, have been taking a beating, and not just this election year. Steven Levitsky, a political scientist at Harvard University, told The Associated Press a week after Trump’s 2024 win that incumbents had been removed in 40 of 54 elections in Western democracies since the start of the global Covid pandemic in 2020.
Incumbent parties, wherever they fall on the political spectrum, have been taking a beating.
So, Biden’s on firm footing when he points out global trends. But while he’s aware of the anti-incumbency spirit that’s taken over the world and aware that anger at inflation is driving it, he has somehow still managed to tell himself that, despite his unpopularity, despite concerns about his age, he could have won another term.
Even if he believes it, he didn’t have to express that belief in a way that suggests that Harris’ entering the race was a mistake. He and Democrats gambled. And they lost. But they gambled because it seemed so sure they’d lose if they didn’t.
Harris was thrust into the game late, with her team far behind and asked to pull off a miracle. It’s neither self-aware nor generous for the person who subbed himself out of the game to claim that the substitution is why they lost.