Anyone who watched the debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump can’t be surprised the current president has withdrawn from the race.
Anyone who watched the debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump can’t be surprised the current president has withdrawn from the race. From the first question, it was clear that the current president was not up to the task.
His fellow Democrats undid Biden. The drums calling for him to step aside started slowly, then built to a crescendo conducted by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, no doubt eager to put a fellow San Francisco Democrat in the White House.
The development is probably unwelcome in Republican circles. Since the debate, Biden’s numbers have softened while Trump pulled ahead in what, up until last month, were thought of as the swing states. As states like Virginia, New Hampshire, Minnesota, New York, and New Jersey came into play—all states the Democrats thought they would win easily in 2024—senior party leaders panicked, concluding that a ticket led by Biden would lead the entire party into electoral oblivion.
The tweet announcing Biden’s withdrawal was followed shortly by one announcing his support for Vice President Kamala Harris’ bid to move up to the top of the ticket. It’s the logical, politically correct move—but one that’s not likely to produce a better result than what Democrats could already see coming.
If, as most of the polls have suggested since pollsters started asking, a Harris-led ticket fares little better against Trump than one led by Biden. Why go through the trouble of making a switch?
There’s no good answer. The best anyone can come up with is that the odds are slightly better with Harris at the top of the ticket that the Democrats won’t be wiped out everywhere from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Zebulon, North Carolina, than they are with Biden as the presidential candidate.
