For the better part of a year, the 2024 general election looked like it would be the slow-motion collision of Donald Trump and Joe Biden. By the middle of 2023, Trump had catapulted to an unchallenged lead with Republican primary voters. Despite his low approval ratings, Joe Biden never faced a significant primary challenger.
Over the past month, however, the long-germinating rematch fell apart. Biden has finally announced that he will drop his reelection bid—the first incumbent since 1968 to pass up on the chance for reelection.
Biden’s train-wreck performance in the June 27 debate with Trump dealt a brutal blow to his reelection effort. It fed fears that Biden would not be able fundamentally to change the dynamic of the race and launched an escalating offensive from the progressive coalition: editorials called for him to stand down, and on-background grousing from elected Democrats swelled into on-the-record demands that he “pass the torch.” Donations dried up, and the Democratic establishment sent indications that it was willing to inflict further political pain on Biden if he did not accede to their wishes.
Biden knew that he could not fight a two-front war against his fellow Democrats and a Republican Party unified around Donald Trump. Already, Biden’s Democratic critics had given Trump considerable ammunition that he could have used against the president in the general election. For instance, Massachusetts congressman Seth Moulton penned an op-ed for the Boston Globe raising doubts about Biden’s memory. Such allegations could have served not only as fodder for campaign ads in the fall but also as substance for calling into question Biden’s fitness to remain as president. Unlike Trump in the aftermath of the Access Hollywood video, Biden faced several more months in the general election campaign. And while damaging, the Access Hollywood video was a one-time leak. Every Biden appearance after the first debate has been scrutinized through the lens of his age and ability to serve; the verdict has not been positive. It would have been a brutal three-and-a-half more months of that, with the highest stakes in play.
Still, it would be a mistake to attribute Biden’s downfall solely to that debate. His reelection challenges were more structural. He has had a net-negative approval rating since September 2021, shortly after the Afghanistan withdrawal. Inflation, a proliferation of international crises, and his hard run to the left on identity issues fundamentally undercut his presidency. Biden’s age was as much a symbol as a cause for voter doubts about him; his increasingly disjointed public appearances only confirmed the sense that he was not up to the job of the presidency.
In his withdrawal announcement on X, Biden also endorsed Kamala Harris as the party’s nominee, initiating a rush of support for her from other Democratic officials. Virginia senator Mark Warner, South Carolina representative Jim Clyburn (a kingmaker in 2020), and Bill and Hillary Clinton are among the numerous high-level Democrats who have come out for the vice president. Other top Democrats have been more circumspect. Barack Obama simply endorsed “a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges.” Biden cannot simply hand the nomination to Harris, of course; she would likely have to earn it through that “process,” whatever that turns out to be. Regardless of whether Harris is the party’s ultimate nominee, however, Biden’s decision to step aside terminates a period of paralysis that has gripped the Democratic Party for the last month.
In this historic clash between the progressive establishment and the sitting president of the United States, the progressive establishment won. From the beginning of his Washington career in 1972, Joe Biden was always a party man. Now the party has decided that it is time for him to go.
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