The president talked about his emotional decision to leave the race and his plans to campaign for the Harris-Walz ticket in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.
In his first sit-down interview since dropping his 2024 campaign, President Joe Biden told CBS News reporter Robert Costa that he bowed out because he feared being a distraction in the Democrats’ efforts to defeat Republican nominee Donald Trump. Their discussion, which aired on CBS Sunday Morning, touched on that infamous presidential debate, Biden’s plans for the rest of his campaign, and what another Trump presidency could look like.
“Although it’s a great honor being president, I think I have an obligation to the country,” Biden said. “The most important thing,” he continued, is “we must, we must, we must defeat Trump.”
I’m not from the US. Is it really his choice? I thought it would be more democratic and the party members would vote for who they run, how they run, etc?
Well, effectively, what happened is that the Democratic Party had a primary election, where people voted on who they wanted the Democratic nominee to be. The thing is, conventional political wisdom is that the incumbent president has a large advantage simply from being the incumbent - people who are uncertain tend to stick to the status quo, and name recognition is as high as one could wish for. So, in the primary, no one serious ran against him because:
A. It would have been a waste of time and money
and
B. Doing so would’ve marked one out as very much ‘not a team player’, so to speak.
Thus, he won the primary election. However, after the primaries, he had a disastrous debate performance, and several highly influential members of the Democratic Party not only called for him to step down, but alleged mental decline (not necessarily dementia, but a serious decline in Biden’s sharpness and energy which raised questions about his ability to run the kind of vigorous campaign needed), even just since January of this year. Biden resisted calls to step down at first, and since he was the winner of the primaries, he was the only one who could realistically make the choice. He eventually bowed to public and private pressure and stepped down.
Thank you for the detailed explanation!
I see. Yes I watched the debate and he really didn’t do well, like he was on some medicine and partly asleep. My favorite part was when they discussed who is better at golf. Was a very important thing to get clear for people like me, that are worried of climate collapse.
But this isn’t new to Biden, is it? Confusing names and numbers has always been a Biden thing, I think, it’s not necessarily a health decline. Like my favorite American president quote is “America is a nation that can be defined in a single word: ashofootnae ehfoot, excuse me, at the foothills in the Himalaya…”
That’s why I thought the democrats had a meeting after the debate and saw that Biden’s campaign is not going well and the public thinks (doesn’t matter if rightfully or not) Biden is too old and mentally declining. Maybe, in order to save the sinking ship, it’s best to play a rather risky move of changing the nomine just a few months before election. Or maybe he was also peer pressured.
Anyway, if it was Biden’s initiative he does deserve a lot of respect for it!
There’s some argument over whether it was primarily Biden in decline or just the perception of Biden in decline, but, to be fair, insofar as judging the mood of the electorate is concerned, the two are one and the same.
I would go even further and say that the perception of the voters outweighs reality.