In 2020, campaigning alongside Kamala Harris, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, patriarch Joe Biden presented his candidacy as a “bridge” to new generations of Democratic leaders. He finally resigned himself on Sunday, at the age of 81 and against his will, to sticking to this wise conception of his role in history. If he did it with a heavy heart, angry at himself for no longer being the man he was and full of resentment against all those in his clan who pushed him out, all that remains is to pass the torch, he is in line with a party that, renewing itself, made the bet of JFK in 1960 and Barack Obama in 2008.
Mr. Biden has accomplished much, starting with blocking Donald Trump’s path in 2020—an invaluable political contribution. But who could have imagined that he would then spend four surreal years dealing with an increasingly “Trumped” Republican Party, sold on the blatant lie that the election was stolen?
His decision completely reshuffles the cards of the presidential race. For the Democrats, it is shock therapy, as it is for their electorate who, watching a cognitively declining Joe Biden cling on, allowed a terrifying dynamic to take hold whereby Donald Trump, a potential dictator and proven corrupter of the rule of law, was heading by default towards a second presidential term.
As early as Sunday, we saw large sections of the Democratic Party, its leaders and activists, in a sort of big phew!, line up in battle formation behind the candidacy of the vice president, Kamala Harris. This is strategically crucial. Meaning: to prevent the Democrats from tearing each other apart at their convention next month in Chicago, in a context where the race is suddenly turning into a sprint. This is how donors — the nerve center of the war — who were in the process of abandoning Mr. Biden are remobilizing. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a major face of the party’s left, has given her support to Ms.me Harris, along with the Congressional Black Caucus and governors like Gretchen Whitmer and California’s Gavin Newsom, who were apparently tempted to run for the Democratic nomination. The consensus is not complete, but it has emerged at an astonishing pace, in a matter of urgently rebuilding a united front of the center and the left to thwart the populist delirium that has taken hold of the Republican electorate.
In 2020, Mr. Biden had the guts to choose this senator from California as his running mate for vice president. It would have been inconsistent if he had not supported her candidacy for his succession today and not put his electoral machine at her disposal. Locked into the thankless role of vice president, Ms.me Harris, sidelined by the White House for a good half of her term, will have lived through difficult years. She was finally able to come out of her shell and surround herself with a substantial staff — almost as if she had a premonition of the upheavals… A solid speaker, she has since proven herself very effective in defending abortion rights, a key issue of the campaign. A black woman with a more left-wing disposition than the president, she would have the necessary stature to reinvigorate the support that has tended to fray under Mr. Biden among women, young people and the black and Latino communities.
Undeniable asset: her 59 years, from which she throws her age argument back in Trump’s face, in a context where, poll after poll, public opinion deplored the gerontocratic nature of its political class and was sorry to have to make the same choice as in 2020 in the presidential election on November 5.
An extraordinary situation in which Mr. Biden is settling into the role of interim president until January 20, while at the same time it falls to Mr.me Harris faces the double challenge of assuming the boss’s legacy, which is far from being negative on social and economic levels, and of embodying a certain rupture.
The next hundred days will be captivating. And extremely consequential. Mr. Trump, leading in the polls, will no longer be able to exploit Mr. Biden’s weakness. For him, it is also the beginning of a new campaign. We risk seeing him, faced with a woman who stands up to him, more aggressive and intolerant than ever, continue to hammer home the point about migrants who “poison the blood of the country.” Between her and him, the state of polarization of politics in the United States could become even more explicit. Poor American democracy—permanently at war with itself. It is all the more crucial that Mr.me Harris succeeds where Hillary Clinton failed in 2016.