President Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 election caps a distinguished career in public service sadly marred by the circumstances of its end. Conspiracy theories have swirled around the events of the last month since his disastrous debate with former President Trump. However, Biden’s speech to the nation last week on his decision may hold the key to understanding it and the impact on future American politics.
In his speech, the President claimed that he was physically and mentally capable of campaigning in the upcoming election and serving a full four-year term. He justified his withdrawal on the basis that it was “time to pass the torch to a new generation”. However, he could (and should) have reached the same conclusion last year before the primary season. What changed between then and now?
The Israel-Hamas war is what changed. It laid bare the fissures in the Democratic Party between the traditional liberal leadership and the growing democratic socialist or “progressive” base. Biden had desperately tried to paper over this divide with federal largesse (see this previous post) but belatedly realized that the debate was about much more than relative budgetary priorities. It was part of a slow realignment of American politics. The post-war Democratic Party went from the progressive nationalism of FDR, to Bill Clinton and Biden’s corporate globalism and now may be in the process of moving into an identity politics form of socialist globalism (more on the history and basis of these ideologies later). It remains to be seen whether presumptive nominee Kamala Harris will complete this transformation. Her ideals and ambitions may cause her to adopt an identity politics form of the party’s previous corporate globalism. Meanwhile, the Republican Party is in the process of rediscovering its nationalist roots, though in the form of a sometimes ugly form of ethnic nationalism.
In the end, Biden concluded that he was too old not so much physically, but ideologically. His combination of domestic progressivism and a globalist foreign policy was dying and could not be resurrected in today’s world. He passed the torch out of frustration and sadness, undoubtedly laced with bewilderment and anger. It was an unfortunate end to a long career in American politics. As Joe Biden rides off into the sunset, the rest of us will have to chart the nation’s course through the shoals of these new ideologies.