It was a historic moment on Sunday when Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race. Behind in the polls, Biden appeared to be headed for certain defeat, prompting Democrats to wage an unprecedented pressure campaign to force him to drop out of the race. Biden has since endorsed Kamala Harris as his successor. But don’t be fooled by this. I suspect that Joe Biden is counting on her to lose.
Let’s look at the evidence. Biden’s memo announcing that he was dropping out was very telling because it did not include an endorsement of Harris.
"It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President. And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term,” he wrote in a memo shared to social media Sunday afternoon. "I will speak to the Nation later this week in more detail about my decision."
About a half hour after Biden’s memo was shared to social media, there was a follow-up post in which he finally threw his support behind her.
My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term. My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best decision I’ve made. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.
It is not immediately clear what process will play out going forward. It was always likely that Democrats would be compelled to nominate Kamala Harris because they were unlikely to pass over the “first black woman vice president” given their obsession with identity politics. This, of course, is incredibly problematic because Kamala Harris is the most unpopular vice president in the history of polling. Depending on the process that Democrats employ, an open convention may still be likely.
But, let’s step back a moment. Joe Biden was defiant and resistant to dropping out for weeks, even as powerful Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Adam Schiff, and even Barack Obama, were pushing him to do so publicly or behind the scenes.
Joe Biden reportedly still feels the sting of being bypassed in favor of Hillary Clinton in 2016, believing he could have defeated Donald Trump that year. Biden has long insisted that he is the only Democrat who can beat Donald Trump, which is why he ran in 2020 and sought reelection when most people expected him not to.
But, does Biden really believe that Kamala can win? Does he even want her to? It was obvious for a long time that Joe Biden didn’t really want Kamala Harris on the ticket. Her most significant moment of her short-lived 2020 primary campaign was when she essentially accused him of being racist. Heck, even before Biden announced his candidacy, Kamala also said she believed the women who accused him of sexual misconduct. “I believe them and I respect them being able to tell their story and having the courage to do it,” she said.
Soon after taking office, there were leaks that Harris was not happy with the role she was playing as vice president. True to that point, the few moments she had to prove herself turned into utter disasters, and her allies even believe that Joe Biden set her up to fail with “trash” assignments like the border crisis. If Harris is the eventual nominee, she not only owns the entire Biden-Harris record, but as the border czar, she is the new face of the border crisis. Whether Biden’s endorsement will help secure the nomination for her or not, who can tell?
But, what is clear is that Biden was clearly never grooming her to be his successor, and his abrupt departure from the race while not also resigning the presidency puts her at a major disadvantage. I think, like everything else he’s done, he’s setting her up for failure. If he resigned, he’d have given her a chance to prove herself as commander-in-chief.
