We have seen nothing like this in modern presidential history.
Before today, I was inclined to agree with Noah that Joe Biden was toast — unelectable even against Donald Trump, with a campaign irreparably damaged from all the major Democratic figures admitting what we could all see: that Biden would be incapable of winning or serving another term. But, I did not really believe until today that Biden would drop out of the race. After all, while Biden has always been a hollow man and a transactional politician who would never stand up to the demands of his party’s various constituent groups, the one thing he’d never before been asked to surrender was his own position. (Even his 1987 withdrawal was done in good part to retreat to his perch as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee during the pivotal Robert Bork hearings.) But the pressure from donors and Democratic power brokers was too much in the end. Biden, or someone in his corner, finally threw in the towel.
Biden’s letter insists that he will continue to serve out his term, although his visible decline makes even that a farce, and one that will continue to dog his party’s presidential ticket.
We are in completely uncharted territory in modern presidential history. Nobody has ever before dropped out after winning the primaries. Lyndon Johnson quit in March 1968, and Bobby Kennedy was shot in June. It’s late July. Biden has already had a general-election debate, which is what finished him. Parties picked nominees at their conventions later than this in the era before modern primaries started, in 1972 for the Democrats and 1976 for the Republicans, but the whole business of elections ran differently then.
It looked for all the world as if this would be a historically depressing and uneventful race, like 1892, when the Cleveland–Harrison rematch resulted in collapsed turnout and an incumbent so depressed after his wife’s death in October that even he didn’t bother to vote for himself. Now, we’ve had Biden’s withdrawal just eight days after Trump survived an assassination attempt. We have never seen anything like this.
Democrats would be best off lining up behind Kamala Harris. That means absorbing the downsides she brings. She has been even more unpopular than Biden throughout their tenure. She’s closely tied to Biden’s record and to the cover-up of his decline. She has failed at everything she has been assigned to, can’t keep staff, and is a cringeworthy public speaker. And her menacing pre–vice presidential record is full of its own minefields. But with the Democrats’ need to avoid having the bottom drop out in Senate races, Harris could at least fire up some base enthusiasm, immediately inherit Biden’s campaign war chest, restart fundraising, and avoid the potential catastrophe of a contested convention. She’ll probably get a short-term poll bounce from relieved Democratic voters and a national press corps that is likely to go all-in to praise her. She may also be able to pick a female running mate to drive up the gender gap, which may not help win the election but could at least salvage turnout.
But maybe this will turn things around. Biden’s age, a massive drag on the Democrats, is now mostly off the table as an issue. Trump, at 78, is now the old candidate. And at this writing, Trump’s favorability rating in the RealClearPolitics average is still -10.9, with 53.7 percent disapproval and 42.8 percent approval. He has been underwater by double digits continuously since a brief recovery in April and May 2022 (when Trump was out of public view and inflation was spiking, triggering nostalgia for his presidency). He has been disapproved by more people than approve of him continuously for nine years. So, his broad-based lead in the polls does not really reflect that Americans have stopped disliking Trump. I’m inclined to the view that it’s too late for Democrats to come back — but, if they do, it will be because they got rid of their unpopular nominee and Republicans are stuck with theirs.