Can Biden make a graceful exit from the US presidential race?

WASHINGTON – During a life filled with more than his fair share of personal tragedy, trauma and crisis, Mr Joe Biden has fought almost impossible odds to become US president. 

So much so that in 51 years of public life, he has come to be associated with grief and grit.

But now, at 81 and on the eve of his last political battle, is it time for him to let go, to give up the fight and to go gently into the night?

So far, he has been unyielding in his resolve to fight. 

In an interview a day after his disastrous performance in a presidential debate with Republican rival Donald Trump, Mr Biden tried to tamp down calls for him to exit the 2024 presidential race.

“If the Lord Almighty came down and said, ‘Joe, get out of the race’, I’d get out,” he told ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos on June 28.

Even after a bout of Covid-19 – his third – laid him low, Mr Biden gave no indication that he had changed his mind. 

“I look forward to getting back on the campaign trail next week,” he said on July 20, even as opinion polls show him trailing Trump. He is expected to return to the capital in the coming week, after convalescing for five days in his Delaware home, while a rising chorus of Democrats asks him to pass the torch. 

If he accedes to the wishes of his party men, he will become a one-term president, alongside Mr George H.W. Bush (1989 to 1993) and Mr Jimmy Carter (1977 to 1981). Americans regard two-term presidents as more consequential.

Mr Biden has tried all his life to be consequential. The road to the White House for the boy who grew up poor and was bullied for his stutter has been long. 

His political career began at 29, in a Delaware hospital ward where his two sons were fighting for their lives after a car crash that killed their mother and 13-month-old sister. He took the oath as a senator by their bedside in 1973.

His first presidential foray in 1987 ended badly – he had to stand down after being accused of plagiarising British Labour leader Neil Kinnock’s speech.

The second attempt in 2007 too ended in failure. He lost the party nomination to Mr Barack Obama, then a young first-time senator who excited the nation with his powerful oratory and history-making potential to become the first black president of America.

In 2016, after Mr Biden had served two terms as Mr Obama’s vice-president, it would have been logical to assume that he would have been the Democratic Party’s next nominee. But personal tragedy tracked him again when his 46-year-old son Beau died of brain cancer. 

Then, Mr Obama bypassed him to virtually hand the nomination to Mrs Hillary Clinton, who went on to lose to Trump. 

Mr Biden finally clinched the nomination in the 2020 election cycle, 32 years after he had made his first attempt at a presidential run.

His performance in the early primary contests was far from encouraging – he came in fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire. But he persevered with a big win in South Carolina and ultimately prevailed.

And this is a point he makes frequently: That he is the best man to defeat Trump.

As Washington’s political establishment and its mostly liberal media keep up a loud countdown to his exit, Mr Biden’s judgment is about to be tested again.

The New York Times reported that he sees former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as the “main instigator” of the call to replace him, and Mr Obama as the “puppet master behind the scenes”.

Relations between Mr Obama and Mr Biden are often the subject of intense and sometimes speculative reporting in the American press. Reportedly, Mr Biden has nursed a grudge ever since Mr Obama picked Mrs Clinton over him as the Democratic candidate in the 2016 election.

The Washington Post, quoting anonymous sources, said Mr Biden’s anger is driven in part by a conviction that he could have moved past the debate debacle if so many Democrats had not piled on him.

“The tone some in the party are taking in their effort to push him out has only stiffened Biden’s resolve to stay in,” the Post quoted people close to him as saying in a July 20 report.

He has often spoken of his Irish Catholic upbringing and the family values that taught him to get back up whenever he has been kicked down. But this time, his tenacity has few admirers.

“As someone nearly his age, I find it easy to empathise with his refusal to come to terms with his situation,” Dr Charles Morrison, a former congressional staff member, told The Straits Times, noting the incumbent President’s tendency to boast of his past achievements and to express frustration with ageism. 

But the writing is on the wall, said Dr Morrison, who served as a congressional aide to two US senators, including one from Mr Biden’s home state of Delaware.

The question is if it is a graceful exit or one where party delegates end up voting him out.

“He has put this off and resisted so long, it is hard to do (that) in some way, respectfully,” Dr Morrison said.

“But it probably doesn’t matter to anyone but him. For almost everyone else, we’ll respect him more for not running than otherwise. And even for him, he should be mighty relieved and find that he can bask in the praise – and relief – of the party,” he added.

As a young senator, Mr Biden had himself applauded the legendary Montana Senator Mike Mansfield, who after serving a record-setting 16 years as majority leader and helping the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, decided not to run again at 72, said Dr Morrison.

Mr Biden, then in his 30s, was quoted in The New York Times as praising Mr Mansfield’s “integrity”. 

In another illustrative case, Mr Biden in 2000 discouraged Republican Senator William V. Roth, who had served for 28 years, from running for re-election at 78. Mr Roth, famous for his work on the Roth IRA account, a popular tax-sheltered retirement account, did not heed the advice and lost the race badly.

Now it’s Mr Biden’s turn.

He has made tough calls before. As he took the oath of office in 1973 while tending to his children in hospital, he spoke from his heart, saying: “If there is a conflict between my being a good father and a good senator, I will contact the governor and tell him that we can always get another senator. But my boys can’t get another father.”

As cries for him to renounce his candidacy among Democratic circles reach a fever pitch, Mr Biden faces another difficult choice: Hang on or cement his legacy as the man who stopped Trump twice. 

Once by fighting him. And another time by stepping away.

Correction note: In an earlier version of the story, we said that Mr Obama picked Mrs Clinton over him as the Democratic candidate in the 2020 election. This is incorrect. It should be 2016.