Here’s how Biden does the inevitable and withdraws from presidential race
President Biden’s desperate attempts to quell calls for him to end his presidential campaign are not working. Increasing numbers of prominent Democrats are either openly calling for him to step aside or expressing uncertainty when asked if he can beat former President Donald Trump.
This shows the game is up. It’s no longer a question of if; it’s only a matter of when and how Biden will withdraw.
Politicians never give up power easily. They have spent their entire lives questing for it. No one gives up his life’s dream without a struggle.
But other politicians in similar straits eventually conclude it’s time to go. The idea that a person is a political liability to the party is like a beachhead for an amphibious landing. Once the beachhead is secure, it’s only a matter of time before the invading forces press inland to victory. Just ask Richard Nixon or former British Prime Minister Liz Truss, each of whom eventually yielded to the inevitable despite valiant resistance.
Biden’s time to crush this beachhead was in the first 48 hours after his disastrous debate performance. He needed to show publicly he can speak clearly without a teleprompter and reassure allies privately in person and by phone that he is really all right. His utter failure to do so for days led Democrats across the country to one logical conclusion: He isn’t doing it because he can’t.
Biden’s drop in the polls has only reinforced that sense. In theory, a candidate can come back from a 6-point polling deficit in the four months remaining in the campaign. In practice, Biden pre-debate already had the lowest job approval ratings of any first-term president in history at this stage in his term. It’s hard to see how a historically unpopular incumbent who suffered from others’ belief he was too old to do the job can recover.
Moreover, Biden needs to win the national popular vote by at least 2 points to have any prayer of winning the Electoral College. Private polling that a progressive group, Open Labs, leaked showed Biden behind or tied in normally Democratic states like Minnesota, New Mexico and Virginia. Those data were entirely consistent with a national 6-point deficit, which is a 10.5-point drop from Biden’s 2020 victory margin.
Democrats won’t want to risk Biden dragging the entire ticket down with him, especially given how much the party faithful hate and fear Trump. There’s only one solution to this dilemma: Biden must go.
This won’t likely happen in the next two weeks. Biden hosts the annual NATO summit in Washington this week. He will not do this as a lame duck, especially given how much he prides himself on his foreign policy leadership. The GOP convention is held the following week. Republicans will use that week to lambaste Biden. He will not want to give them the added boost of withdrawing during their moment in the sun.
That means any move will likely come in late July or early August. There are only three reasonable scenarios Biden could follow.
The first involves orchestrating Vice President Kamala Harris’ ascent. This could be limited to Biden and party leaders collectively endorsing Harris as part of the president’s withdrawal announcement. That could push her bid over the finish line, but their support would not legally hand her the nomination. Once Biden bows out, his delegates are unbound and can back anyone they want. They probably would follow the party poobahs’ lead, but there is no guarantee of that.
The safer, and more dramatic, course is for Biden to resign the presidency, too. That automatically elevates Harris to the Oval Office. No one will want to challenge the incumbent president, especially given the reason she ascended.
This scenario also avoids the challenge of a sitting vice president trying to chart her own course when the president still sets the policy and political agenda. Hubert Humphrey failed in this endeavor in 1968 as President Lyndon Baines Johnson stubbornly refused to alter his course on the Vietnam War until it was too late to help his veep. Wise heads will want to avoid this conundrum, which means Biden has to totally withdraw from public life.
The last scenario is the riskiest for Democrats, but also the one with the potentially highest reward: an open convention. Biden could do to Harris what Obama did to him and withhold his endorsement. That would signal her competitors that it’s fair game to take her on, and some clearly would. This could lead to a bloodbath, or it could lead to a welcome airing of intra-party disputes with a nomination that unifies the party. This would also keep the Democratic race front and center for most of August, denying Trump airtime he would otherwise garner as the GOP nominee.
Biden could surprise everyone and stubbornly hold out despite the pressure and political logic. That’s what he, but almost no other Democrat, wants. Expect him instead to yield, sooner rather than later, to his fate.
Henry Olsen, a political analyst and commentator, is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
