The announcement of Biden’s withdrawal from the electoral race was received with sadness and philosophy in his party.
” My heart is broken ! “
On Sunday afternoon, in the heart of Madison, Judy Hawkins, a Massachusetts Democrat visiting the Wisconsin capital, had her nose glued to her phone screen, following news that she was trying to take in piece by piece.
“Joe Biden is the best president we’ve ever had in this country,” she said, after expressing her sadness at the news that the Democrat was withdrawing from the current election campaign. “He’s done an incredible job during his presidency, even if it’s not what people have talked about the most. If Democrats think they have someone better than him, that’s great. Because we can’t afford to re-elect Trump. The whole world shouldn’t deserve that.”
On Sunday afternoon, the American president and Democratic candidate for the November presidential election finally put an end to several weeks of speculation about his political future by announcing his withdrawal from the race for the White House. Since the end of June and his disastrous performance in the first televised debate of the campaign with Donald Trump, Joe Biden had been the subject of intense pressure within his political camp. In recent days, a growing number of senior party figures, including Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, have publicly questioned the viability of his candidacy and called behind the scenes for him to hand over the reins.
“I believe it is in the best interests of my party and the country that I step down and focus solely on serving as president for the remainder of my term,” he said in a statement, adding that he would address the nation “later this week.”
In the process, the 81-year-old politician, whose doubts about his physical and mental abilities to lead a new charge against Donald Trump have plunged his party into turmoil and uncertainty, has supported the candidacy of his vice president, Kamala Harris, in view of the Democratic National Convention which will open in a few weeks in Chicago. The event must confirm the choice of the Democratic candidate for the November election, and this, in a formula which could now be open to competition, an unusual and rare configuration in modern political history.
“We’re in the most bizarre election campaign in the history of the country,” said Carl, a Republican tax expert sitting outside the Capitol in Madison. “Joe Biden’s withdrawal was inevitable. He couldn’t hold out any longer. He’s not healthy enough to be president, let alone a candidate.” Biden has been self-isolating at his Delaware summer home for the past week after contracting COVID-19.
“Voters didn’t seem to be very happy with the choice they were being given in this campaign,” said Greg Zorko, a University of Wisconsin employee who was out for a breath of fresh air Sunday afternoon at a park in Madison, a Democratic stronghold in a state with a volatile political mood. “We don’t want a Trump victory. The problem is that Joe Biden’s age was becoming a distraction from looking at his record and his party’s platform. By stepping down, he’s allowing the Democratic campaign to get a little better.”
He added: “Kamala Harris is the one who should replace him. An open convention would be catastrophic and would risk dividing the party, a little over three months before the vote. She is already in the White House and on the campaign trail, she is the easiest and quickest choice.”
Fragile legitimacy
Several Democratic Party leaders are, however, campaigning for an open convention to avoid a coronation of the current vice president and thus guarantee the legitimacy of the choice of delegates in August. This is what Nancy Pelosi reportedly argued for last week, during a meeting with close friends in California, reported the Politico website. This process would thus more easily unite activists and mobilize them quickly in order to block the road to Donald Trump and his ultra-conservative political program next November.
The divisions and tensions that preceded Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race, however, are likely to linger afterward, over who will run next. “If you think there’s a consensus among people who want Joe Biden to leave” over Kamala Harris, “you’re wrong,” New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, an icon of the party’s left-wing fringe, wrote on Instagram last week. “There are no guaranteed options.”
On Sunday, on his social network, the Republican candidate greeted Joe Biden’s announcement with contempt and arrogance, writing that “Joe Biden ‘the thug’ was not fit to run for president, and is certainly not fit to serve as president. He never was!” “We are suffering greatly from his presidency, and we will repair the damage he has caused very quickly,” he promised.
“Joe Biden has been the worst president of my lifetime, and Kamala Harris has been by his side every step of the way,” his running mate, junior Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, sneered on the X Network, continuing the Republicans’ months-long smear campaign against the potential Democratic nominee. “For the last four years, she has co-authored Biden’s open-border policies and supported Biden’s ‘green fraud,’ which have driven up the cost of housing and groceries. She is responsible for all of these failures, and she lied for nearly four years about Biden’s mental capacity.”
“It’s very hard to be interested in politics right now, and Joe Biden’s withdrawal isn’t going to change that,” said Jackie Kavanaugh, a health care worker in Madison seeking “peace and quiet” on Lake Mendota. “No new candidate is going to change the fact that there’s too much anger and name-calling in this campaign right now.”
“We’re going to have to expect a flood of misogynistic and racist comments in the coming months if Kamala Harris is chosen,” said Ashley Armitage, a strict Democrat in a town that voted 75 percent for Joe Biden in 2020. “I would like someone a little more left-wing, like Elizabeth Warren. But in November, I’m going to vote for whoever the Democratic delegates choose, because we can’t have Donald Trump back in the White House. He doesn’t care about human rights.”
This report was funded with support from the Transa International Journalism Fundt-The Duty.
