Too much of not enough

Joe Biden drops out.

I didn’t know I would be this sad. Although I’ve been hoping Joe Biden would withdraw from the presidential race, and that Kamala Harris would become the Democratic nominee, now that the first half of that wish has been granted, I feel as though a good friend has just moved away.

Biden was never my first choice for President – I wanted Obama when they both ran in the 2008 race, and I wanted Elizabeth Warren in 2016. My ambivalence never had much to do with the person, only the politics. Joe Biden has always seemed too much of not enough, if that makes sense. He’s never been a compelling public speaker, never somebody with an expansive vision for the nation. He’s a good-spirited wonk, a technocrat with the gift of Irish gab. While likable enough, there’s a reason Biden yard signs have always been in plentiful supply.

As Vice President his lack of rizz didn’t matter much. Biden was the steadying hand in Obama’s first term, a trusted advisor and friend in his second. As a candidate against Trump, Biden won because he felt like a safe harbor in hurricane conditions. Now, though, despite his myriad successes, Biden has stirred up his own little tempest.

His debate performance shocked the nation and the world. He looked and sounded terrible. At times, he was incoherent. While commentators rightly pointed out that Trump was also terrible, Trump’s horribleness was, at least, familiar. Biden’s was not.

After days of speculation about what had gone wrong - a cold? Jet lag? - Biden belatedly gave an interview to George Stephanopolous which did little to assuage concerns. Nor did a raspy call to Morning Joe. The revelation that the campaign had forwarded interview questions to four Philadelphia radio stations only compounded the problem. A press conference at the NATO summit in which he provided detailed answers to a series of foreign policy questions bought him a day or so, but it was too little too late. A flaccid interview with NBC’s Lester Holt did nothing to help him. A covid diagnosis following the Trump assassination attempt was almost certainly the straw that collapsed the campaign.

Olivier Douliery/Pool vi AP

While many decry the “bullying” that has now prevailed to make Biden withdraw, I believe he has nobody to blame but his advisors and himself. For too long, they kept Joe under wraps. Press conferences were far and few between. Lengthy interviews with provocative journalists rarer still. His public appearances were short and overly stage-managed, giving the impression – rightly or wrongly – that the Republicans’ attacks on his mental acuity were more accurate than the party was willing to admit.

I’m angry that those who should have known better were more interested in maintaining their personal power than having the gut-wrenching conversations we’ve put ourselves through over the last three weeks. Biden himself promised to be a “bridge” candidate, which many of us interpreted to mean that he would only serve one term before either stepping down or withdrawing and throwing his considerable power behind Vice President Harris. When that didn’t happen, the Biden campaign should have made the strongest possible case for their man to stay on. The problem was that the case could not be effectively made with the man Joe Biden has become.

President Biden hasn’t led a perfect political life; he’s been on the wrong side of many past issues. No politician with his tenure could claim otherwise. But he’s also grown, or “evolved” as politicians are apt to say; it was the Catholic Biden who first came out in favor of gay marriage during the Obama administration. It was Biden who shepherded the Affordable Care Act through Congress. Biden who made good on Trump’s promise to withdraw from Afghanistan. Biden who saw us through covid and the recovery that followed.

But it was also Biden who let Benjamin Netanyahu run roughshod over him after the horrific October 7th Hamas attack. It was also under Biden that Putin launched his war against Ukraine, obviously believing that he would get away with it following decades of appeasement. Biden deserves full credit for arraying the international response to Putin’s aggression, but at the same time, the alliance has been unable to resolve the war. Finally, it was Joe Biden’s ego and stubbornness that brought us to this troubled electoral moment.

So, is the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning for the 2024 presidential election?

Obviously, I’m just another jerk-off with an opinion. I don’t pretend to know what’s best for the nation, other than knowing that another Trump victory would be a disaster. Clearly, Trump has the wind at his back right now, and I don’t know whether another Democrat will defeat him. All I can say is that a Biden candidacy felt doomed. Maybe he would have turned it around, but I doubt it. Every gaffe, every cough, every fumble would have been treated as a four alarm fire. Whether those attacks would have been “fair” or not is beside the point; Biden put himself in that position. Nobody else. And I’m sad because of it. I like Joe Biden and while I wanted to see him go, I feel somewhat verklempt at his departure.

Time is a pernicious bitch. In the end she comes for us all, no matter how decent or well-intentioned we may be. Joe Biden is decent. Of that I have no doubt. Joe Biden is well-intentioned. I have no doubts about that, either. I hope that when morning breaks on January 21, 2025, Joe Biden is at his home in Delaware enjoying life as a civilian. I hope he sleeps late morning, and I hope his final years are filled with family, friends, and faith. I hope he is rightly lionized for his contributions to the nation. And I thank him.

A good ending to this story remains possible. Now it’s up to the rest of us to make it happen. To quote Randi Mayem Singer, “As a writer, my favorite ending to Donald Trump's story would be him losing to a black woman.”

That would be the best ending of all.