Joe Biden gave America a fighting chance to defeat Donald Trump | Moira Donegan

The best time for Joe Biden to drop out of the presidential race would have been a few weeks ago, in the panicked days following his disastrous debate performance. The American public saw on stage a man incapable of waging a vigorous campaign against Donald Trump, a would-be dictator, and who was unable or unwilling to make a principled and reasoned case for abortion rights, the Democrats’ main argument.

The weeks that followed were filled with whining from pundits, gossip and leaks to the press from the president’s allies and Democratic Party insiders who wanted him to step down, and anxiety from the party base and the public that saw Democrats descend into infighting rather than offering a meaningful alternative to Trumpian authoritarianism. The best time to step down would have been before all of this, when the depth of concerns about Biden’s electoral viability became clear. He could have spared his party and his country these weeks of chaos.

The second best moment is now. By withdrawing from the presidential race, Biden has given the country a chance to defeat Trump and avoid the worst of what the far right has planned for America. He has chosen to preserve the prospect of a Democratic victory in November, even at the cost of his own ego, even at the cost of what must be a profound personal humiliation. Many politicians, and especially Trump himself, have made it clear that they no longer value anything but their own glory. Biden has shown that there is something he values ​​more than himself. Whatever you think of Biden as a man, it was an honorable gesture that he made on Sunday.

Nor was it, by any stretch of the imagination, an easy sacrifice to make. The speed and tenor of the leaks from both the pro- and anti-withdrawal camps within the Democratic Party in recent weeks have made clear that Biden deeply desires to stay in the race; that he has been in clear denial about his electoral prospects for some time, and that he resents calls to drop out. He retreated to his beach house over the weekend, where he reportedly simmers with resentment. It cannot have been easy: a confrontation with his own mortality, with the injustice of age, and with the cruel pragmatism of electoral politics.

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The well-being of the country depended on his choice to make that sacrifice, and it’s not always clear that he did. In a post-debate interview with George Stephanopoulos, which was meant to bolster Biden’s credibility after his horrendous performance, the news anchor asked the president how he would feel if he stayed in the race and lost. Would he feel like he had helped usher in another Trump administration? Biden’s answer is telling: He’s not talking about the nation, but about himself. “I’ll feel good as long as I give it my all and do the best I know how, that’s what it’s all about,” he said.

But that’s not the point: A Trump victory would bring untold suffering and indignity to Americans: the immigrants he promises to deport, the women he promises to deny access to abortion, the millions of people who deserve to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and access education and health care. In 2020, Biden won the party’s nomination in part on his determination to defeat Trump, his promise to combat the threat of authoritarianism above all other priorities. Here, selfishness seems to trump that promise. Clearly, he was tempted to do the wrong thing. Let’s face it, he did the right thing.

At 59, Harris is not a young woman, but she is downright spry by the standards of elite American politicians.

Shortly after announcing his withdrawal from the race, Biden issued a statement endorsing his running mate, Kamala Harris, for the top spot. The move was a shrewd one, avoiding a chaotic contest, ending the bizarre and destructive fantasies of a snap primary, and effectively sealing Harris’s nomination ahead of the convention in Chicago next month. The move will also allow the new ticket to take credit for Biden’s accomplishments like a fundamentally strong economy, a cap on insulin costs, an explosion in green energy production, and a broad and popular climate and jobs bill, while being able to pivot and readjust some of Biden’s more unpopular or morally indefensible choices, like his support for Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza.

The move also reverses the role that age-related vulnerability plays in the race. At 59, Harris is not a young woman, but she is downright spry by the standards of elite American politicians. Trump, by contrast, is 78, a rambling and largely incoherent speaker, and visibly weaker than when he began running for president nearly a decade ago, in 2015. Trump has always played the politics of male dominance, and his petty displays of masculinity, such as standing up to Hillary Clinton in the third presidential debate in 2016, have long led liberals to worry that a woman could not defeat him; they were also part of Biden’s pitch to voters in the 2020 primaries.

But Trump is not the character he once was. He is tired and diminished, less focused and less energetic, burdened by the bad press of trials (like the one in which he was convicted of sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll) and prosecutions (like the one in which he was convicted of 38 felonies). He is also burdened by bitterness and resentment, devoting a good portion of most of his public appearances to listing the various people he hates and the wrongs he has suffered. He is unpopular, unpleasant, undisciplined and unattractive. He is the reason Roe v. Wade was overturned, and he wants to be a dictator. He is eminently beatable. And finally, the Democrats may have a candidate who can beat him.

But most importantly, with Biden out and Harris in office, Democrats may now have a candidate who is eloquent, comfortable, and active in advocating for an issue that Biden has never been able to campaign on convincingly: abortion rights. Biden has shied away from abortion, and his discomfort has sent Democrats into a tailspin, leaving a public health crisis, a civil rights emergency, and a crucial Republican legacy on the table. With this issue now firmly on the table, the race is going to be dramatically changed.

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