Patricia Murphy: Biden does the right thing and leaves the stage

It was the right thing to do, even if it may have been too late to do it. On Sunday afternoon, President Joe Biden announced that he won’t be the Democratic nominee for president after all, even though he won all 50 Democratic primaries earlier this year.

“I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term,” he wrote in a statement released by the White House.

In quitting the race, Biden did what most Washington Democrats hoped he would have done 12 months ago — leave the presidency after one hugely consequential term and open the door to the next generation of Democrats to take it from here.

Biden didn’t really have much choice in the matter by the time he did it Sunday. Famously stubborn, he had been proven right time and time again that sticking it out in politics is usually rewarded. It was clear that the president wanted to run one last time. But the debate in Atlanta last month revealed what Washington Democrats had been whispering for months — that today’s Biden isn’t the same man he was when he was elected four years ago, not even close.

As soon as he walked onto the stage in Atlanta, Americans could see immediately how much his gate had stiffened and that his skin had the pallor that comes not just with age, but often with illness. His face, which had been animated and grimacing in his prior debates against Trump, had gone disturbingly still. Not only was Biden not the man he used to be, he wasn’t the man he needed to be in that moment.

But worst of all for Biden, as he worked to paint former President Donald Trump as a liar and a fraud, we as Americans had to ask ourselves what Biden and his advisers had been hiding from us in recent months or years — was this a bad day or a new normal?

Biden’s subsequent interviews and appearances were better, but not always by much. One especially bad moment came during a BET interview last week, when he struggled to remember the name of his Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. He first called Austin “the Black man,” and then “Ketanji Brown,” the Black female Supreme Court Justice he had also appointed.

We got a glimpse of the old Biden this week when the country needed him most, in the hours after the attempted assassination of Trump, when he called on all leaders to lower the temperature of the boiling rhetoric in American politics.

“We cannot, we must not, go down this road in America,” he said. “There is no place in America for this kind of violence, for any violence, ever. Period. No exceptions.”

That man, with his message of unity, is who voters elected four years ago when he promised to be a transition to a better future — for his party and his country.

His term didn’t always deliver that. And by the time Trump was welcomed onto his own convention stage like a conquering hero last week, Biden’s fellow Democrats were in a full blown panic. They were hearing from voters at home who had wanted to vote for Biden, but now couldn’t. Other Democrats began to worry they could go down with Biden in a Trump landslide, too. Several began to actively prepare for the possibility that a newly inaugurated Trump could prosecute them the way local DA’s and the Justice Department have been prosecuting him for his own crimes.

As Democratic leaders began meeting with Biden behind the scenes to share their concerns, his complete rejection of the suggestion that he step back left others puzzled. Biden had known in 2016, just after his son Beau died, that he had the ability to run for president, but not the heart. Now he had the heart, but not the ability, and he was staying in. The Biden they had always trusted to do the right thing for them suddenly was not doing the right thing.

The biggest reason Biden stuck it out for so long was the same reason Republicans became paralyzed picking a replacement for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy after a small band of rebels ejected him. Both parties are at a crossroads in deciding what comes next and who they are. Republicans declared last week who they are — the party of the populist, nationalist, often in-your-face Trump. Who will Democrats be after Biden, nearly the last of his kind, is gone?

Biden helped Democrats start to answer that immediately after his announcement when he gave his Vice President, Kamala Harris, his full endorsement to succeed him as the Democratic nominee. As the first Black, female, and South Asian vice president, Biden could not have chosen anyone else. And for all of Harris’ shortcomings, her loyalty to Biden has never been in question.

But she may not have the full backing of donors and Democrats who worry she could be the only person less electable than Biden in 2024. We’ll find out.

If Democrats can find a way to make the election about Trump instead of their own crumbling fortunes, they could actually still have a shot at winning this thing. It’s hard to see how Trump could have lost in 2020, tried to overturn the votes of millions of Americans after that, stood by as the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol unfolded, and still win over new voters.

The only thing we do know is that Joe Biden finally did what Democrats have hoped — the right thing for his party and his country. What happens next is up to us.

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