Biden Bids Goodbye
Opinion by Team Thomas
And history has been made again …
Modern history has only witnessed a president voluntarily bowing out of a campaign for a second term in the White House a few times. Lyndon Baines Johnson was the last to do so in March 1968 when he realized how unpopular he was to Democrats and before we learned how compromised he was health-wise. Harry Truman decided in 1956 not to run for a second full term, having served the remainder of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s term and then being elected in his own right in 1952.
Joe Biden made it a three-fer for those who called it a day in the past sixty years. His announcement was, by many accounts, a selfless nod to a party and a nation immensely worried about what a second Donald Trump presidential term might do to American democracy. The 46th president came to terms with the fact that he was not up to the task of campaigning as actively as needed to defeat former president Trump, let alone be able to serve another four-year term at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Biden’s Vice President, Kamala Harris, was anointed his successor and rapidly consolidated convention delegate pledges, making the first woman vice president in history the presumptive Democratic party nominee and possible first woman commander-in-chief. The vice president also wasted little time hitting the campaign trail in Delaware and Wisconsin taking to task the 45th president of the United States, who stands in stark political and electoral contrast to Harris.
