Joe Biden withdraws | There will be a campaign

This week, in just one walk through the streets of Milwaukee’s black neighborhood, what I heard from “regular people” was enough to make Democrats panic, if the polls weren’t clear enough.

In the square kilometer that I walked, everyone talked to me about the price of food, of housing.

They also all spoke to me, without exception, about the weakness of Joe Biden. A man they had voted for. But who was “falling apart before our very eyes,” as one of them told me.

There are some who would vote Democrat even for an unconscious candidate. There are many who do not feel like voting for Donald Trump, but are incapable of voting for a half-inept candidate. They do not know what to do anymore. And those, who add up, who want to go to Trump “for the economy”.

In Wisconsin, it doesn’t take much to swing the state.

Sadly, the last one to read what was written on the walls, in the sky and in the numbers was Joe Biden. Or rather, he learned so much to outwit fate that he didn’t want to hear it.

It’s hard, it’s relentless, like politics is when you don’t know how to get out of it. But it’s the undeniable reality: the party was heading into a red wall with him.

Six months ago, Americans were already depressed by the choice before them. Joe Biden could have changed that long before.

In 2021, Joe Biden brought dignity back to the office of president after Trump’s chaotic term. He is credited with several accomplishments, including important bipartisan legislation. He has a good record to boast about.

But we wouldn’t be here if he had agreed to be what he announced in 2020: a transitional president towards the next generation. This succession exists. It is not true that the United States lacks political talent. From Kamala Harris to the governors of at least six states, not to mention senators, current ministers, etc.

Except Biden forced this generation to stay on the sidelines for another term. You don’t contest the candidacy of an incumbent president. Especially since he was going to run against Trump again.

This was already a manifestation of an excess of ego. It surely takes some to do this job. But the fact is that Joe Biden’s stubbornness began well before the debate.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of the great justices of the American Supreme Court, decided to cling to her post at age 87 after multiple cancers. She died during the Trump presidency, who was able to appoint an ultraconservative justice to replace her. That does not take away from her legal legacy. But this decision to cling to a post as if it were eternal will undo some of her work.

Biden, if he had not been under so much pressure, would have continued as if nothing had happened too.

Yet I have not heard a single person tell me that Biden was the right man for the job, except by default. Even before the “calamitous debate.” Since then, it has been hard to even believe that he could have usefully served a second term.

Millions of voters would have voted for him anyway, to block Trump’s path. But hundreds of thousands in the middle, the ones who make or break presidencies, are going to Trump. And millions might have stayed home, for lack of enthusiasm.

Let’s just try to digest what has happened in the last 52 days in the United States.

Six months ago, Americans were already saying they were very dissatisfied with the choice before them for the presidency.

Yet they had seen nothing yet.

– May 30: Republican Party candidate is found guilty of 34 criminal counts. He now faces up to several years in prison.

– June 11: The president’s son, Hunter, is convicted of federal charges for lying about his drug use while purchasing a gun.

– June 27: The Democratic candidate, having himself called the earliest debate in history, delivers the worst performance in the history of televised debates. He appeared so weak, if not senile, that his party organized his ejection just four months before the election.

– 1^er July: The Supreme Court, in the case Trump v. United Statesdecrees the criminal immunity of the president for official acts performed, which will affect the three (yes, three) other criminal trials to come, but potentially the nature of future presidencies as well.

– July 13: The convicted Republican candidate is the victim of an assassination attempt. Having moved his head at the last second, he miraculously avoids the projectile by a few millimeters.

– July 21: The Democratic candidate, under enormous pressure from donors, members of his party and the public, renounces his candidacy.

That’s a lot, a lot, a lot in a very short time.

Just one of these events would have been enough to make this campaign unprecedented. Obviously, there has never been a presidential candidate who arrives on the campaign trail with a criminal record and the label of “criminal.”

Nor has any party ever run a candidate in such a sorry state of mind and body as Joe Biden this summer. Franklin D. Roosevelt was crippled and weakened but did not give the same impression of decline. He was reelected easily.

There have been assassination attempts (Teddy Roosevelt) and a candidate assassination (Robert F. Kennedy) in the middle of a campaign in the past. But the violent event of July 13th is nonetheless gigantic, politically traumatic.

As for a candidate dropping out of the race 107 days before the presidential election, that’s unprecedented. Lyndon B. Johnson withdrew in March 1968, giving his party time to hold a convention.

So everything has just changed, and this campaign is taking (another) 180 degree turn, one month before the Democratic convention.

There will be a campaign. There will be a real match.