US President Joe Biden’s decision to leave the presidential race received a great response in the world press. Radar Armenia presents the remarkable part of CNN analyst Stefan Collinson’s article “Biden made the most difficult decision any politician could make” about Biden’s presidency and upcoming events.
Biden, long searching for a fighting spirit, reached a decision that, in some ways, represents a humiliating end for a politician who has sought the highest office for years and has often been forced to miss the steps of power.
It is not easy for the US president, the most powerful man in the world, to separate his ambitions from the nation’s fate. The deepening rift between Democrats and Biden in recent weeks has been a harsh lesson in the brutality of politics, given that the president ousted Trump after perhaps the most tumultuous presidency in recent memory. It must be a particularly bitter pill for Biden that he will no longer be able to lead the campaign against Trump, who has repeatedly argued over the past three years that Biden is too frail and mentally impaired to serve effectively as president.
The compulsion to withdraw the candidacy during the re-election process will also be painful for the president because he had to give up the fight for the White House twice before in 1987, after it was revealed that Biden had plagiarized a British politician, and in 2008 when he could not provide equal competition with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Sunday’s decision was the latest harrowing twist in a string of tragedies in Biden’s life since he lost his first wife and infant daughter in a car crash in 2015 while running for senator from Delaware. He had to bury another child, his beloved son Bo, and in recent years, was personally involved in helping another son, Hunter, overcome the horrors of drug addiction and the personal crisis that followed a criminal trial and court-ordered conviction.
But it’s increasingly likely that Biden’s legacy will be defined not by ousting the most unprepared president in modern American history but by paving the way for Trump’s more extreme second term. If this gambit by Biden works and another Democratic candidate can beat Trump, he could go down in history as one of the most successful one-term presidents. He has created an opportunity for victory by sacrificing himself when he puts aside his ambitions for the good of the party and the country. But exiting the race so late will raise questions about whether Biden has given his party and his Democratic heir apparent the impossible task of mounting a battle within days against the Republican Party that won a unity victory in Milwaukee last week.
At the age of 81, seeking a second presidential term has proven to be an impossible mission. Despite his best efforts, Biden may have saved his party a significant headache if he came to the same conclusion before the midterm elections.
If history is any guide, Biden’s approval ratings will rise in the coming days. When Lyndon Johnson announced in 1968 that he would not run for a second term, the masses greeted and loved him at public events nationwide. Johnson made his move in March during the intra-party campaign. His departure, however, set off a chaotic chain of events that worsened with the assassination of Democratic primary candidate Robert F. Kennedy and culminated in a violent convention in Chicago. By the way, Chicago will host this year’s convention. However, the then-joint Democratic nominee, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, lost to Republican Richard Nixon. Years earlier, in March 1952, Harry Truman, another Democratic president, had decided not to seek a second term, and Stephenson, a Democrat, lost to Republican Dwight Eisenhower. But if Biden receives a burst of support from Americans for his selflessness and nostalgia for his presidency, it won’t necessarily carry over to his successor.
No modern president has ever dropped out of the presidential race this late. And Harris, or another candidate who picks up the baton, now faces one of the most daunting missions in US electoral history against an opponent like Trump, who has already proven he will stop at nothing to win.
