You Did It, Joe

It's really hard to cede power. This president put country before self.

I woke up this morning to the news that Joe Biden had dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Kamala Harris to take his place. There will be much to say and read in the coming days and weeks about Harris’s candidacy, whether she’ll face any challengers, and how the Democratic nominee might beat Donald Trump. But today, it’s worth recognizing the decency of Joe Biden — and how his decision to step down from the race only amplifies the dangers of Donald Trump.

Biden did not drop out easily. It’s clear that this was an agonizing decision, and one made under significant duress. We kept hearing Democratic electeds say that the decision was Biden’s alone, but of course we all know that was not exactly true — while his family and closest advisors may have supported his continued run, many others in his party were aggressively pressuring him to step down. Biden simply would not have made the decision to drop out of the race had he not been pushed.

How and why that happened is interesting, as is the question of whether it was a good idea — I think it was, but we’ll have a clearer-in-hindsight answer in a few months. I think Democrats’ path to victory looks a lot more promising today than it did yesterday; you may quite validly disagree. More important today, though, is the acknowledgement that giving up something you’ve long desperately wanted is really, really difficult, especially when that thing is arguably the most important and powerful job in the world. Power is intoxicating and addicting. Part of what makes American democracy such a beacon is that our leaders do regularly give it up, but generally only after losing, or after their legally-limited time in office is up. Biden was being asked to do something unique: Resign not just after four successful years, but after being his party’s nominee for the presidency.

Biden first sought the Oval Office almost 40 years ago — for close to half of his life he has coveted the position he now, finally, holds. His entire purpose, since he was in his 30s, has been to legislate and to shape America’s future. I have never known an America without Joe Biden in office. Joe Biden, I suspect, barely knows who Joe Biden is if he’s not in office.

Winning the White House was the culmination of all of this. And he used it well, ushering through the kind of legislation that makes significant, tangible differences for the lives of Americans, and especially for American workers and the middle class. He still has a long To Do list. Politics isn’t just something Joe Biden does; it’s who Joe Biden is. He has made clear that he is not actually ready to go, and certainly not ready to shed an identity he has held for a half-century.

And yet he’s going. Not because he’s ready or because he wants to or because it’s best for him, but because he’s been persuaded that stepping back from the race is in the best interests of the American public — who need to avoid a second Trump term more than they need Joe Biden.

One of the reasons I particularly fear a Trump win is his clearly-laid plan for a greater consolidation of executive power. He’s a power-hungry maniac, and the far-right minds who are crafting his agenda want to see as much authority as possible concentrated in his hands. That means stripping power away from the rest of the federal government, including the courts, Congress, and the agencies that keep our water clean and our economy functional. They want an executive who is more akin to a king than a lowercase-d democrat. And of course they aren’t thinking all that far ahead — an uber-powerful president works in their favor when that president is Trump, but that’s far less true if the president is a liberal Democrat — but part of the strategy, I think, is for the hyper-empowered executive to make it exponentially more difficult for Democrats to attain power in the first place. But the warning should hold nonetheless: Regardless of who wears the crown, an unencumbered executive is a dangerous executive. And we know that once power is accrued in a single person or a single office, it is rarely handed back freely.

That’s part of what makes Biden’s decision so extraordinary: He holds the power of the presidency in his hands, and he alone holds the potential to maintain that power. And he decided to hand it over. That this was not his decision alone doesn’t make it any less laudable.

Joe Biden is not a perfect man (just ask Anita Hill). He was toward the bottom of my 2020 primary picks. He has made many significant mistakes over the decades he has spent in political office, and most of them are squarely in the universes of issues I personally care about the most (women’s rights, abortion rights, refugees).

I write all of that not to trash the president, but to say that Joe Biden doesn’t need hagiography to affirm what is clear. His presidency did tremendous good for millions of Americans. We are a better country today than we were four years ago, and a much better one than we would have been had Biden not won in 2020. And by relinquishing potential power for the good of the nation, and in defiance of his own interests, Biden carved out his own legacy in stark contrast to Trump’s. Politics is a cynical game, but Biden demonstrated that is possible for a politician to not be a power-hungry narcissist willing to burn it all down to stroke his own ego. He chose what he eventually came to believe is best for the rest of us, if not for Joe Biden. It’s impossible to imagine Trump doing the same. That alone should make voters think twice about Trump in November.

Given the character and behavior of so many politicians, I think we’d all be forgiven if we sometimes forget that politics is supposed to be about public service, not self-enrichment, ego, or personal power. Today is one of those rare days when writing about politics feels really good. That’s in part because of the history-making potential of a Kamala Harris presidency(!). But it’s also because Biden’s announcement is a reminder that politicians can indeed still choose to be public servants — including when their greatest act of service to the public is to put power in someone else’s hands.

xx Jill