Wednesday night’s address was moving, and also confirmed that he’d made the right decision.
President Joe Biden delivers a prime-time address to the nation in the Oval Office announcing his decision to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race.(Evan Vucci / AP Photo / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
President Joe Biden has endured more than a lifetime of disappointment and tragedy: the shocking car-crash death of his wife Neilia and his toddler daughter Naomi in 1972, just after he was elected Delaware senator at the age of 29. The cancer death of his beloved son Beau in 2015. When Barack Obama chose him as vice president in 2008, that revived Biden’s lackluster 2008 presidential campaign, and ultimately his entire career. And though he passed over the 2016 election partly because of Beau’s death, he ran and became president in 2020.
Wednesday night, as he explained why he was no longer running for president, he sometimes seemed as fragile as in the June debate that ended his career. But he was more clear and resolute. He explained his decision to stand down and not seek reelection this way.
“I believe my record as president, my leadership in the world, my vision for America’s future, all merited a second term. But nothing, nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition.
“So I’ve decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation. It’s the best way to unite our nation. I know there was a time and a place for long years of experience in public life. There’s also a time and a place for new voices, fresh voices, yes, younger voices. And that time and place is now.”
Biden mentioned his vice president, Kamala Harris, only once, although he has warmly endorsed her before.
“I would like to thank our great vice president, Kamala Harris. She is experienced, she is tough, she is capable. She’s been an incredible partner to me and a leader for our country.”
Maybe most significantly, he promised to work for “Supreme Court reform,” which, when he got elected, he shunned. At the time, he turned the clamor for court expansion and other ideas over to a commission that recommended basically nothing. There’s nothing he can do now, given the composition of the House and Senate. But if he could make court reform a mainstream issue—a Joe Biden issue—it could be taken up with fervor from now on.
I sat back and listened to his litany of accomplishments.
“Today we have the strongest economy in the world, creating nearly 16 million new jobs—a record. Wages are up, inflation continues to come down, the racial wealth gap is the lowest it’s been in 20 years. We are literally rebuilding our entire nation—urban, suburban and rural and tribal communities.
“Manufacturing has come back to America. We are leading the world again in chips and science and innovation. We finally beat Big Pharma after all these years to lower the cost of prescription drugs for seniors.”
All true.
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So is this: “Nowhere else on Earth could a kid with a stutter from modest beginnings in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and in Claymont, Delaware, one day sit behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office as the president of the United States, but here I am.”
He added: “I’m the first president of this century to report to the American people that the United States is not at war anywhere in the world.” That might be the most important claim of all.
He said nothing about Israel/Gaza. Am I allowed to hope he will now be unfettered to be tougher on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who meets with Biden and Harris today, and with his obvious favorite, felonious ex-president Donald Trump on Friday? We can dream.
I said something rather mean about 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden back in 2019. He said he wanted to advance women in politics. He denounced American politics as a “white man’s culture.”
“You’ve got Joe Biden as the white grandfather in all of this, the white man saying it’s a white man’s culture. OK. It’s got to change,” CNN’s Erin Burnett said to me.
“I have an idea for how he can change it,” I replied. “Don’t run.”
“Come out and support a woman,” I continued. “There’s six women in the race, four female senators. If you want to change it, that’s a way to change it.
“You know, I admire Joe Biden,” I went on. “I am a fond Democrat. He was a great vice president. But if you want to change it, don’t run.”
I turned out to be wrong.
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The fact is, none of the great women who were running back then, including then-Senator Kamala Harris, were going to win the nomination whatever Biden did. For various reasons.
And now that Biden has stepped aside and endorsed Harris, he’s clearly done more to advance the cause of a woman president than any man in history. Vice President Harris is our presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. Joe Biden did that, by picking her in the first place, and stepping aside for her now.
So I apologize for my glib insult, President Biden. You will go down in history for many reasons, but especially for advancing the cause of a woman president. Kamala Harris has to win it on her own, but you handed her the baton, and that means more to me than I’d ever imagined.
Joan WalshTwitterJoan Walsh, a national affairs correspondent for The Nation, is a coproducer of The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts The Tonight Show and the author of What’s the Matter With White People? Finding Our Way in the Next America. Her new book (with Nick Hanauer and Donald Cohen) is Corporate Bullsh*t: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power and Wealth In America.