Photo: Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Sipa USA (Sipa via AP Images)
“A real hero” “This is what America First looks like when it’s a lived ethic, rather than a mask of narcissism and ambition,” New York Times columnist and podcaster Ezra Klein wrote of President Joe Biden on X, within 30 minutes of the president’s announcement Sunday that he was — finally — ending his bid for a second term. “This is what America First looks like when it’s a lived ethic, rather than a mask of narcissism and ambition,” Klein added.
Klein was not the only notable liberal to engage in hagiography of the president.
“In a world increasingly filled with leaders who have changed laws, killed people, and stormed parliaments to cling to power, Joe Biden has just turned the tables,” wrote former Obama adviser and “Pod Save the World” host Ben Rhodes.
“Mr. Biden has spent his life trying to do good for the nation, and he did it in the most epic way possible when he chose to end his reelection campaign,” historian Jon Meacham wrote in The New York Times on Monday.
It is rare to see political leaders willingly step down from the stage of power. That is a problem with the nature of political power and the individuals it addresses. But that is no reason to view Biden’s choice as a radical sacrifice for the public good. The alternative would be disastrous: Biden, 81, would persist in his stubborn refusal, turn into a mumbling, resentful King Lear, demand loyalty while being unable to remember the names of his cabinet members (he referred to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin simply as a “black man” in an interview last week), and other embarrassments.
It is entirely reasonable to reluctantly step aside in the face of an increasingly likely electoral defeat. Commentators who claim that this is primarily a story of a great leader brought down by the eternal forces of time and mortality are ignoring the core reasons for Biden’s unpopularity with young people and in swing states like Michigan—not least his unconditional support for Israel’s genocidal war, which will forever tarnish his legacy.
If Biden’s hagiographers agree on the grave risk of a second Trump presidency and also agree that Biden is right to withdraw from the race, then the president’s decision should indeed come as a relief. Still, Biden’s weeks of intransigence and hubris, which have reduced the time Democrats have to reorient themselves to a new candidate to face Donald Trump, should at least temper the current praise for the president.
In a letter written just two weeks ago defending his candidacy to congressional Democrats, Biden wrote: “We had a Democratic nominating process and the voters spoke clearly and decisively. I received over 14 million votes, or 87 percent of the votes cast in the entire nominating process. … It was an open process for anyone who wanted to run.” The idea that Biden pulled off an open primary is laughable: The Democratic National Committee treated Biden’s nomination as a fait accompli, when polls more than a year old indicated that Democratic voters would prefer another candidate. The entire party machine bears responsibility for treating our current gerontocracy as the only possible option for so long.
“Biden was forced to withdraw from the race by his declining physical and mental dexterity, rather than by any political failure,” the Financial Times reported. While it is technically true that it was Biden’s dismal debate performance and repeated public gaffes that forced powerful allies like former President Barack Obama and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to urge him to withdraw, it was not his age and diminished acumen that lost Biden support in key swing states among young people and thousands of Muslim and Arab voters, among others.
Biden’s greatest presidential achievements—the historic (if inadequate) inflation-reduction bill, the American pandemic stimulus package, and a significant pro-union record—must be built upon, pushing the Democratic Party further to the left. Biden’s successes, however, do not erase a darker record.
Taking office just months after nationwide uprisings against America’s racist policing system, Biden—who speaks proudly of his Senate record of collaborating with segregationists—has chosen to further fund police departments while suppressing Black-led protest movements. Willing to sacrifice the lives and well-being of millions more vulnerable people on the altar of capital and politics, Biden declared the Covid-19 pandemic “over” in just his second year.
The president has overseen a brutal border crackdown, including a draconian executive order last month to temporarily block asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border. And, most damningly, he has displayed unforgivable and unwavering support for Israeli genocide while demonizing those who protest for Palestinian lives and freedoms.
Organizers of the Uncommitted movement — a sizable bloc of protest voters who pledge to vote “uncommitted” in order to pressure Democrats to end their support for the assault on Israel — have stressed that their position applies to any Democratic candidate.
“I think it would be a huge mistake for the Democratic Party to shift gears but stay the course on this particular issue that galvanized so many people in an unprecedented way during the primaries and who continue to show up and try to make their voices heard in a system that they feel continues to ignore them,” Halah Ahmad, a political analyst and spokesperson for Listen to Wisconsin, the state’s “uninstructed” campaign, told The Intercept earlier this month.
As Biden’s vice president and a near-certain successor to the presidency, Kamala Harris is tainted by this administration’s intolerable support for Israel’s horrors, as well as other reprehensible choices—like closing the southern border to asylum seekers. If Harris simply continues in Biden’s footsteps, as an avatar of unchanged Biden policies in a younger body, it would be both a grave moral failure and an electoral misstep.
Harris should, as her meme-worthy comment suggests, try to “free herself from the weight of what happened” but adapt to this tense context into which she simply did not fall, like a coconut. Instead of writing paeans to Biden, the focus should be on pressuring Harris—and the entire Democratic leadership—to change course. The left would be naive to place significant hopes in Harris, the former prosecutor, beyond the urgency of beating Trump. Biden’s withdrawal from the race, however, is an opening to press voters’ non-negotiable demands. A crucial starting point: calling for an immediate ceasefire and an end to American funding and arming of Israel’s war.
