The night before the Donald Trump accepted the Republican nomination, an iron-willed President Biden signaled that he may be reading the tea leaves about his own candidacy.
In an interview on BET, the president stated that if a physician said that he “had some medical condition that emerged,” he would pass the torch to the next generation.
Hours earlier, the New York Times had reported that Biden is “more receptive” to listening to those advocating that he drop out. No one as savvy and experienced as Biden would say such things unless he was opening a door.
Also on Wednesday came news that Biden has COVID. Given the virus’s capacity to attack many parts of the body and go long, it would seem prudent to invite a neurologist to monitor the occupant of the most important office in the world. From that exam, a new diagnosis meeting the president’s own standard might well emerge.
Biden has achieved a historic record that skeptics once considered impossible. He lifted the country out of the pandemic. He has inflation trending down to where it was before unprecedented supply chain disruptions. He fulfilled his promise to sign bipartisan legislation to rebuild American infrastructure, massively fund climate remediation, reduce Medicare prescription costs and create historic numbers of new middle-class jobs. He has defied expectations of a recession amidst the outbreak of two wars involving American allies.
No one knows better than Joe Biden that Donald Trump’s election would reverse those achievements, given Trump’s pledges to raise tariffs through the roof and lower taxes for corporations and the wealthy. And that’s not to mention the threat to individual freedoms, reproductive and otherwise, from a second-term President Trump who has vowed retaliation against his critics and foes.
Biden has watched Trump name the ambitious Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) as his running mate. Vance favors a national abortion ban. His extremist statements fit like a glove onto Project 2025’s sinister vision to upend American life. Vance stated that had he been vice president in 2020, he would not have certified the election.
Analysts believe that Trump picked the out-of-the-mainstream Vance because the former president thinks he’s already won the election. Biden must now be honest with himself about what it will take to upset that applecart.
Biden is also reading polling data. He has said before that if convinced he could not win, he would step aside for a campaign replacement.
Even the poll of polls showing that Biden’s loss of popular support since the debate has been a seemingly small 2 percent raises alarm. A Democratic presidential candidate must win the national popular vote by 2 to 3 percent to win the Electoral College. Before the debate, Biden was at best tied. That leaves him 4 to 5 points behind where he needs to be, with under four months to go.
On Wednesday, Politico posted a draft presentation from BlueLabs Analytics, which wrote that “alternative Democratic candidates run ahead of President Biden by an average of three points across the battleground states. … Voters are looking for a fresh face.” Among the substitute candidates were three Democratic governors and a senator who performed better than Biden by five percentage points.
In battleground states, three points, much less five, win the election. The BlueLabs presentation found that the Democratic gains would come primarily from independents, young people and those who haven’t voted since 2020.
A powerful majority of the country wants to preserve the constitutional system we have had for 235 years, which Biden has protected for the past four. The American majority is yearning to vote against Trumpism and its threat to individual and collective security, both in the U.S. and for our allies around the world.
Global freedom cannot survive a Trump-Vance alliance with Russia against Ukraine and its fighting people. For any Trump voter who thinks that Ukraine would be the end of Putin’s aggression, the lessons of World War II affirm the opposite.
Biden may be coming to understand the risks that staying the course pose for the American future to which he has contributed so much. Party leaders like former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others can help, and may already have done so.
Our fate is in Biden’s hands. He has been more than worthy of holding it. This is the moment to entrust it to someone capable of preserving his legacy.
Dennis Aftergut is a former federal prosecutor, currently of counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy. Frederick D. Baron is a former associate deputy attorney general who served on two presidential transition teams.