Joe Biden’s duel with the idea of to give up his re-election bid It was like any other grieving process in a relationship that abruptly sees its end. The first stage was denial. At least a week before the infamous debate on June 27, the US president dedicated his work schedule to preparing for the televised face-to-face with Donald Trump that his own campaign had proposed to bring forward.
It was hours at his vacation home in Delaware the ones Biden spent training his memory to remember numbers, names of laws and fine-tune “talking points” that would hurt his Republican rival. Fake debates were held, anticipating each person’s answers.
What no one anticipated was that an event that has so far been so little decisive for the outcome of the US election as a debate would be the beginning of the collapse of a re-election bid for a president who, in theory, should have been able to secure a second term in a more straightforward manner. In the hours following the debate, criticism from Democratic analysts, campaign officials and, of course, the Republican opposition followed. A growing group of voices called for him to step aside. Biden didn’t listen. The pressure came from media outlets that devoted days of coverage to understanding what was behind Biden’s hesitant and, frankly, often nonsensical responses in the debate. The White House gave an unconvincing explanation for the president’s cold at the time of the event. Later, Joe Biden himself gave his first televised interview, expanding on the cold theory and blaming himself for his poor performance.
Former House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, who would later be instrumental in getting Biden to retiresaid the day after the debate that the president was prepared to admit that his performance “wasn’t great.” The admission wasn’t enough to quiet criticism. Nearly a week after the debate, Rep. Lloyd Doggett became the first House Democrat to call on Biden to drop out of the race. And what Democrats had feared for months became a reality on July 3. Trump jumped to a 6-point lead nationally after the debate. And at home, allies like Pelosi and Sen. Chris Coons were calling on the president to do more unrestricted interviews with «serious journalists» to show he could operate quickly without guided direction in the form of scripted speeches and teleprompters. Democratic governors from several states also attended a White House meeting on July 3, with many reaffirming that they were firmly behind Biden.
The meeting also revealed that Biden had been examined by doctors in the days after the debate for a cold, for which the White House came under some criticism. And it was here that reports began to circulate that major Democratic donors were building a political fund for a potential Biden replacement. The days passed between leaks and complaints. Information about a White House visitor log showing a Parkinson’s disease specialist had been there 10 times since 2022 didn’t help and put his office on the defensive. Then came the NATO summit in Washington, D.C., which many saw as Biden’s last chance to show donors and lawmakers that he had the strength and ability to run a successful campaign. But at that event, Biden accidentally called the Ukrainian president “President Putin.” He also had Democrats shaking their heads when he called Harris “Vice President Trump.”
Meanwhile, desperate House Democrats debated whether keeping Biden as their nominee was the best path forward. Many came away feeling that the caucus was united behind the president.while others emerged divided.
Finally, in the last week, there were almost 40 congressmen who asked Biden to withdraw. And that was when the covid diagnosis forced the president to self-isolate and have calmer conversations with his inner circle, in addition to calls with Pelosi, Obama and other influential Democrats who, under pressure or out of compassion, ended up convincing him that supporting Kamala Harris was the best way forward, thus marking the end of the political career of one of the most relevant names in the history of the United States.