Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
Chicago (CNN) — Awash in his party’s love, President Joe Biden finally did become that bridge to a new generation of leaders.
He movingly performed the most profound act a politician in a democracy can undertake — willingly handing over power — as he ceded the leadership of the party to Kamala Harris Monday at the Democratic National Convention.
He capped a half-century long career, as a senator, a vice president and finally president, by citing a verse of a song called “American Anthem” that he said was important to his family. “What shall our legacy be, what will our children say, let me know in my heart when my days are through, America, America, I gave my best to you,” he said.
In a valedictory speech in Chicago that stretched passed midnight on the east coast, Biden, 81, also placed that legacy — and what he sees as the fate of American democracy — in the hands of the woman he referred to as “vice president soon-to-be-president Kamala Harris.”
“She’s tough, she’s experienced and she has enormous integrity,” he said.
“Her story represents the best American story,” Biden said. “She’ll be a president our children can look up to. She’ll be a president respected by world leaders. … She will be a president we can all be proud of. She will be a historic president who puts her stamp on America’s future.”
Biden’s gesture was especially poignant as he became the first sitting president to shelve a reelection race in more than five-and-a-half decades.
He wanted deeply to win the second term that all presidents crave, but ultimately, under fierce pressure from colleagues he once considered loyalists, decided that his party and the country would be better off with someone younger.
His self-sacrifice highlighted the exact opposite choice made by his predecessor, Donald Trump, who did everything he could to cling to power in defiance of voters’ will in 2020 and is now running again for a term he’s promised to dedicate to “retribution.”
Hours earlier, Trump had echoed the language that drove America into its worst constitutional crisis of the modern era four years ago. He implied he’d only accept this year’s result if he thinks it’s free and fair. There was no evidence that was not the case last time, and there is no sign it will be different this year.
Thunderous ovation
Biden entered a colosseum of emotion when he slow-jogged on stage after his daughter’s Ashley’s introduction, then pulled out a handkerchief to dab his eyes. A thunderous ovation gave way to chants of “We love Joe!” and “Thank you Joe” from the crowd. Biden grabbed the podium, his arms wide, and absorbed the love. He turned and raised his hands to the those in the highest seats in the house.
The president began by reprising his decision to run against Trump in 2020 — to ensure, he said, that “hate has no safe harbor,” then went on to cast a presidency that opened amid the horror of the Covid-19 pandemic as a stirring success that saved democracy and rebuilt “the backbone of America,” the middle class.
Biden recalled the literal and metaphorical chill of his inauguration and the deep national crisis that prevailed at the time. “Now it’s summer, the winter has passed, and with a grateful heart, I stand before you now on this August night to report that democracy has prevailed, democracy has delivered and now democracy must be preserved.”
He summoned passion and conviction, proudly voicing words that would have been penned for a nominee’s address if he still led the ticket. His voice was strong — in fact, he spent much of the speech shouting. It was a booming contrast to the reedy tone that helped doom his career in his disastrous performance at the CNN debate against Trump in Atlanta two months ago. He rocked with anger when he spoke about the Republican nominee’s lies, what he sees as the ex-president’s besmirching of America’s image abroad and the toll wreaked by gun violence.
Yet there were also reminders of why he will not claim a second term. Biden’s age was evident in the sometimes open-mouthed stare of an old man. His words often slurred together, or he tripped on a phrase. It’s been Biden’s fate to age in front of the eyes of the world. He’s no longer “Joey,” the beaming, barnstorming up-and-comer with the “dazzling Biden smile” as depicted in Richard Ben Cramer’s classic book “What it Takes.” He’s not even the dynamic wisecracking senator of the 2008 presidential primary run.
The president is likely to deliver a farewell address before he leaves office in January. But Monday night was likely his last chance before such a captive live audience. There will be no more State of the Union addresses. This was not a final goodbye, but a president in the twilight of his days was writing the first history of his own administration.
Biden shares the credit with Harris
Biden was also generous to his chosen successor. All of his triumphs were hers too, he argued, including actions to protect “the freedom to vote, your freedom to love who you love and your freedom to choose.”
When the crowd chanted “Thank you Joe,” Biden interrupted, “Thank Kamala too.” That probably pleased Trump, who has been trying to paint Biden’s presidency as an inflation-riddled global disaster – in which Harris is fully complicit.
But by leaving now, and ending a contest between an 81-year-old and a 78-year-old, Biden has allowed his vice president and the new Democratic nominee to run with the aura of the change candidate. Trump is struggling to cope with it. In fact, he’s having a harder time letting Biden go than the Democratic Party is.
Still, Harris faces a fearsome task. While she’s had a strong start and has reversed Biden’s polling deficits, she’s locked in a neck-and-neck race with Trump in swing states and the ex-president remains a feral campaigner.
Biden’s disappointment
Perhaps the welcome in which Biden basked Monday will slake some of the reportedly still raw disappointment that he feels at how his storied career will end. It’s unlikely, however, to ease his inner circle’s sense of betrayal over party elected officials who acted to push him aside after his debate performance validated voter anxiety about his age. (The key figure in the effort to move him on, Nancy Pelosi, told CNN Monday she hoped Biden would “feel the love in this room, it’s overwhelming.” Biden later told reporters he hasn’t spoken to the former House speaker since his decision to bow out of the race.)
For all the adulation that rained down from the rafters of the United Center from party members who now consider Biden a selfless hero and an indisputably great president, the effective ending of his reelection campaign by a party that believed he would lose represents an undeniable act of ruthlessness.
There was just a sense in the short speech by first lady Jill Biden – when she said that her husband had to “dig deep into his soul” to decide not to run again – of the pain of the last month. And when Ashley Biden called her father one of “the most consequential leaders in history,” she seemed to be warning the country what it was about to lose.
But the president insisted he was not angry at those who nudged him aside. In the closest he came to explaining his decision, he said, “It’s been the honor of my lifetime to serve as your president. I love the job, but I love my country more.”
Biden had gone from being the final speaker on the last night of the convention, a spot reserved for the nominee, to its warm-up act on the first night. And Air Force One was poised for an overnight flight west to his California vacation. The main business of the convention will now go on without the sitting president.
The last few months have been cruel to Biden. Yet he has as deep an understanding of the treachery of fate as any political leader alive. His whole life has veered between great heights and tragedy, epitomized by the death of his wife and infant daughter just after he’d won election to the Senate, and then the death of his beloved son Beau from brain cancer while he was vice president.
There’s long been a sense inside Biden’s hugely loyal corps of friends and family that he’s not gotten the credit he deserves in a Washington career that started when Richard Nixon was president. Even when he claimed the Democratic nomination in 2020, at a convention without the traditional balloon drop, and then won the presidency after a lifetime of pursuing it, he didn’t get the full fanfare amid Covid-19 precautions.
But the love Biden received on Monday will change the way history remembers his career. Whenever there’s a Democratic convention, his speech will be recalled, alongside the fabled moments of the party’s past.
And when the achievements he proudly proclaimed Monday have faded, Biden will be remembered for generations — just like the first president, George Washington — as much for the way he left office as for what he did when he held it.
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