NYTimes Editorial Board: Biden Should Drop Out

To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/28/opinion/biden-election-debate-trump.html

President Biden has repeatedly and rightfully described the stakes in this November’s presidential election as nothing less than the future of American democracy.

Donald Trump has proved himself to be a significant jeopardy to that democracy — an erratic and self-interested figure unworthy of the public trust. He systematically attempted to undermine the integrity of elections. His supporters have described, publicly, a 2025 agenda that would give him the power to carry out the most extreme of his promises and threats. If he is returned to office, he has vowed to be a different kind of president, unrestrained by the checks on power built into the American political system.

Mr. Biden has said that he is the candidate with the best chance of taking on this threat of tyranny and defeating it. His argument rests largely on the fact that he beat Mr. Trump in 2020. That is no longer a sufficient rationale for why Mr. Biden should be the Democratic nominee this year.

At Thursday’s debate, the president needed to convince the American public that he was equal to the formidable demands of the office he is seeking to hold for another term. Voters, however, cannot be expected to ignore what was instead plain to see: Mr. Biden is not the man he was four years ago.

The president appeared on Thursday night as the shadow of a great public servant. He struggled to explain what he would accomplish in a second term. He struggled to respond to Mr. Trump’s provocations. He struggled to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his lies, his failures and his chilling plans. More than once, he struggled to make it to the end of a sentence.

Mr. Biden has been an admirable president. Under his leadership, the nation has prospered and begun to address a range of long-term challenges, and the wounds ripped open by Mr. Trump have begun to heal. But the greatest public service Mr. Biden can now perform is to announce that he will not continue to run for re-election.

As it stands, the president is engaged in a reckless gamble. There are Democratic leaders better equipped to present clear, compelling and energetic alternatives to a second Trump presidency. There is no reason for the party to risk the stability and security of the country by forcing voters to choose between Mr. Trump’s deficiencies and those of Mr. Biden. It’s too big a bet to simply hope Americans will overlook or discount Mr. Biden’s age and infirmity that they see with their own eyes.

If the race comes down to a choice between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, the sitting president would be this board’s unequivocal pick. That is how much of a danger Mr. Trump poses. But given that very danger, the stakes for the country and the uneven abilities of Mr. Biden, the United States needs a stronger opponent to the presumptive Republican nominee. To make a call for a new Democratic nominee this late in a campaign is a decision not taken lightly, but it reflects the scale and seriousness of Mr. Trump’s challenge to the values and institutions of this country and the inadequacy of Mr. Biden to confront him.

Ending his candidacy would be against all of Mr. Biden’s personal and political instincts. He has picked himself up from tragedies and setbacks in the past and clearly believes he can do so again. Supporters of the president are already explaining away Thursday’s debate as one data point compared with three years of accomplishments. But the president’s performance cannot be written off as a bad night or blamed on a supposed cold, because it affirmed concerns that have been mounting for months or even years. Even when Mr. Biden tried to lay out his policy proposals, he stumbled. It cannot be outweighed by other public appearances because he has limited and carefully controlled his public appearances.


It should be remembered that Mr. Biden challenged Mr. Trump to this verbal duel. He set the rules, and he insisted on a date months earlier than any previous general election debate. He understood that he needed to address longstanding public concerns about his mental acuity and that he needed to do so as soon as possible.

The truth Mr. Biden needs to confront now is that he failed his own test.

In polls and interviews, voters say they are seeking fresh voices to take on Mr. Trump. And the consolation for Mr. Biden and his supporters is that there is still time to rally behind a different candidate. While Americans are conditioned to the long slog of multiyear presidential elections, in many democracies, campaigns are staged in the space of a few months.

It is a tragedy that Republicans themselves are not engaged in deeper soul-searching after Thursday’s debate. Mr. Trump’s own performance ought to be regarded as disqualifying. He lied brazenly and repeatedly about his own actions, his record as president and his opponent. He described plans that would harm the American economy, undermine civil liberties and fray America’s relationships with other nations. He refused to promise that he would accept defeat, returning instead to the kind of rhetoric that incited the Jan. 6 attack on Congress.

The Republican Party, however, has been co-opted by Mr. Trump’s ambitions. The burden rests on the Democratic Party to put the interests of the nation above the ambitions of a single man.

Democrats who have deferred to Mr. Biden must now find the courage to speak plain truths to the party’s leader. The confidants and aides who have encouraged the president’s candidacy and who sheltered him from unscripted appearances in public should recognize the damage to Mr. Biden’s standing and the unlikelihood that he can repair it.


Mr. Biden answered an urgent question on Thursday night. It was not the answer that he and his supporters were hoping for. But if the risk of a second Trump term is as great as he says it is — and we agree with him that the danger is enormous — then his dedication to this country leaves him and his party only one choice.

The clearest path for Democrats to defeat a candidate defined by his lies is to deal truthfully with the American public: acknowledge that Mr. Biden can’t continue his race, and create a process to select someone more capable to stand in his place to defeat Mr. Trump in November.

It is the best chance to protect the soul of the nation — the cause that drew Mr. Biden to run for the presidency in 2019 — from the malign warping of Mr. Trump. And it is the best service that Mr. Biden can provide to a country that he has nobly served for so long.​

 

odd that you didn’t read past the headline when I posted the entire text.

 

his only appeal was sentience and Not Trump. the former is gone, and voters don't care about the latter the way they did in 2020.

 

Bad news in Georgia
The time is nigh
It's time to go
And sadly walking
For ice cream is Joe.

https://www.ajc.com/opinion/its-time-for-biden-to-pass-the-torch/6PO45RNWDFH4FAUYGR56TPRMHM/

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It’s time for Biden to pass the torch

In an impassioned campaign rally on Friday, President Joe Biden tried to convince American voters that his alarming performance on a debate stage here in Atlanta the night before was an aberration.​

“I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to. But I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong.” The 81-year-old president has shown a greater capacity to tell the truth than his opponent, former President Donald Trump.

But the unfortunate truth is that Biden should withdraw from the race, for the good of the nation he has served so admirably for half a century.

There is precedent for a president, duly elected by the American people, to step aside gracefully in the national interest. Weary from constant attacks from his opponents, and eager to avoid the perception of American dictatorship, George Washington, with assistance from Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, drafted what stands as one of the most important documents in our nation’s history. Washington, who decided not to seek a third term, never actually delivered what has come to be known as his farewell address; it was drafted in September 1796 and first published in newspapers around the country two months later.

Never one to tell a lie, our first president, then 64 years old, acknowledged the time had come to step aside. “Every day the increasing weight of years admonishes me more and more that the shade of retirement is as necessary to me as it will be welcome,” Washington wrote.

The shade of retirement is now necessary for President Biden.

Throughout the excruciating 90-minute forum Thursday night, the president failed to convey a competent and coherent vision for the future of America. He failed to outline the most fundamental aspects of his platform. He failed to take credit for the significant accomplishments of his 3½ years in office. And he failed to counter the prevarications of an opponent, who, according to CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale, lied 30 times during the course of the debate, approximately once every 90 seconds of his allotted time.

President Biden’s surrogates attempted to brush off the debate performance. Aides claimed he had a cold. Vice President Kamala Harris argued the leader of the free world should be evaluated on the totality of his presidency, not one night. Former President Barack Obama took to social media and said, “Bad debate nights happen.”

These responses are insulting to the American people.

This wasn’t a bad night; it was confirmation of the worst fears of some of Biden’s most ardent supporters — that after 36 years in the U.S. Senate, eight more as vice president and a term in the White House, age has finally caught up to him.

This moment was contemplated by Democrats and by Biden advisers when he was seeking the party’s nomination for president in 2020. There was serious and public discussion of Biden, then 77, pledging to serve only one term. That discussion acknowledged the obvious. If reelected, Biden would be 86 years old at the end of his presidency in January 2029. There is no historical precedent for this. And now there are signs of decline, which were clear Thursday.

President Biden’s ability to withstand the mental and physical rigors of another four-year term would be of concern regardless of his opponent. The fact that he is all that stands in the way of Trump returning to the Oval Office significantly raises the stakes.

Trump has already hinted at what his second term might look like. He has spoken of a desire to seek “revenge” against his political opponents, and he told Fox News’ Sean Hannity in a town hall last year that he would be a dictator on day one of his presidency (but only on day one).

Trump’s campaign staff has tried to dismiss those comments as hyperbole. That might be easier to accept had Trump not attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 elections here in Georgia and had he not repeatedly and falsely claimed that the election was stolen from him.

That stance alone should have disqualified Trump in the eyes of voters. The former president’s personal and professional conduct has been egregious enough that his former vice president, chief of staff and numerous Cabinet members have repudiated him. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, himself a potential presidential candidate in 2028, says he cast a blank ballot in the state’s Republican primary, refusing to vote for the man who attempted to subvert the electoral process in our state.

That Trump remains at the top of the Republican ticket is a testament to the deep divisions and tribalism that has come to define American politics in the 21st century.

When George Washington informed the nation of his decision not to seek a third term, he offered a warning about the insidious nature of political parties, then in their infancy. “They are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government.”

Trump’s performance Thursday night should have prompted leaders in his party to repudiate his falsehoods.

But it didn’t.

Biden has pledged to do all he can to prevent Trump from returning to the White House. The election is still four months away. If he truly hopes to defeat Trump, he must pass the torch to the next generation of Democratic leaders and urge the party to nominate another candidate at its convention in Chicago in August.

Doing this will require a massive and unprecedented string of legal and regulatory actions to get a Biden successor named and placed on each state’s ballot. This is difficult and necessary work that must start immediately.

The Democrats have a number of talented and principled leaders who might take the president’s agenda forward and provide the nation with a viable alternative to Trump. The right candidate would make it a priority to appeal to Republican and Democratic voters.

Biden’s candidacy was grounded in his incumbency and the belief of Democratic leaders and pollsters that he stood the best chance of defeating Trump in November. That is no longer the case.

That reality may be difficult to accept for a man whose personal and political lives have been defined by resiliency, but it is the truth.

Biden deserves a better exit from public life than the one he endured when he shuffled off the stage Thursday night.

If he displays the courage and dignity that have defined his political career, he might follow in the footsteps of the nation’s first president and welcome his retirement, secure in the knowledge that he again served his country with honor.

— The Editorial Board