- President Joe Biden has withdrawn from the 2024 presidential race.
- Democrats took a big gamble by replacing him late in the campaign.
- Their biggest hope is that the age issue has been resolved.
Democrats took the unprecedented risk of barring President Joe Biden from the 2024 presidential race. They had no other choice.
Biden was well on his way to becoming a one-term president. His approval rating was a sluggish 38% and barely changing. The Biden campaign had significantly outspent Donald Trump on television advertising, but Trump’s lead was growing in some areas. Needing a way to turn the race around, the Biden campaign bet on holding the earliest presidential debate in history. The president’s disastrous performance marked the beginning of the end of his reelection.
Calls for Biden to resign grew among Democratic lawmakers on Friday, with at least nine saying he should step down after just one day, underscoring how untenable the situation has become.
Americans have long said they don’t want a 2020 rematch. But to make matters worse for Biden, voters were far more skeptical of Biden’s age than Trump’s. Even when the former president was convicted of a felony, polls showed voters were more concerned about Biden’s age than about Trump’s proven or alleged criminal history. Trump’s triumphant response to the assassination attempt crystallized the idea that two men of similar ages have two very different images.
Democrats’ best hope is that the age issue won’t be a talking point. Republicans have signaled their intention to link Vice President Kamala Harris and others to statements defending Biden’s acumen. Even Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio had questioned whether Biden should remain in office before the announcement. At the very least, the party will not be hanging on to every word Harris or Biden’s successor once they’re in office.
It wasn’t just about Biden.
Democrats were growing worried that they might lose the election. Democrats began this election cycle knowing that holding onto the Senate would be extremely difficult. Party leaders were hopeful they could retake control of the House. But if Trump was headed for a landslide victory, it would almost certainly have been accompanied by a Republican split in the three branches. As Atlantic editor Ron Brownstein pointed out, based on upcoming Senate district maps, Democrats could face a minority for years. A Republican president and a Republican Senate could solidify a conservative federal court in the meantime.
Even after this shocking news, Democrats face the possibility of losing in November. There is some evidence that Democrats might benefit from a new presidential candidate, but it’s not clear cut. No one has seen anything like this in modern times. Whoever emerges, Harris or anyone else, will have to cram a comeback campaign into roughly 100 days.
Biden still regrets being swept aside by Democrats in 2016, and his allies are less than happy that history is repeating itself.
But if Democrats truly believed this was an existential election, taking an unprecedented risk was their only option.
