President Biden Withdraws from 2024 Presidential Race

On July 21, 2024, and concluding one of the most eventful political months in recent memory, President Joseph R. Biden officially withdrew from the 2024 presidential election and his rematch with Donald J. Trump. In a statement on X (formerly known as Twitter), Biden stated, “I believe it is in the best interests 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.”

Based upon Biden’s official statement, written on his own letterhead and not presidential letterhead, a couple of observations can be drawn. First, Biden is not leaving the presidential race as the result of any alleged cognitive issues. Biden does not so state, and in addition, he is remaining in the office of President thereby confirming his opinion that he retains sufficient cognitive ability to be our President. Second, Biden believes that his withdrawal from the presidential race is in the best interests of Democrats. One can infer from this statement that Biden does not think that he can beat Trump which will negatively impact the entire Democrat party down ballot risking a loss of the Senate and Republican gains in the House. In addition, one can also infer that Biden believes that Democrats’ best interests are the best interests of our entire democracy. That is a bold statement for a guy who had one of the worst months in modern presidential political history. 

This Month Has Been Historical

In any event, the last month will likely go down in history considering the Biden debate debacle, the subsequent Democrat pressure campaign to oust Biden, the attempted assassination of Trump, the unified Republican party convention, and finally Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race. While these events are fresh in our mind, we should look for some deeper perspective and context. How did we get here to the president of the United States withdrawing from the presidential race a little over three months beforehand?

Republican Party Ideological Battle with Tea Party

The roots of this epic battle allegedly between good and evil started in earnest in 2009. The battle isn’t really a battle between good and evil but rather between populists and those who are pro-government. The battle between populists and pro-government forces is as long as human history, so the events of the past few decades are merely our little chapter. 

In 2009, the Republican party fractured between neo-conservatives, like McConnell and Cheney, and populists in the form of the Tea Party. In the words of Abraham Lincoln, a divided house cannot stand and must become all one thing or all the other. Over the next several election cycles, Republicans debated and battled each other in primaries over these ideological differences. Over the next decade and as a result of this internal argument, this ideological fracture became a giant canyon eventually shattering the Republican party. After these bruising ideological debates, the Republican party led by Trump’s populism emerged from this ideological debate last week united as the populist party in America. In reality, this evolutionary process of the Republican party was the result of real democracy and the democratic process.

Democrat Party Ideological Battle with RFK Democrats

On the other side, Democrats assert that they are the party of democracy and the defenders of democracy throughout the world. Around 2009, the Democrat party began to fracture ever so slightly between the populism and socialist ideas of Bernie Sanders and the more globalist ideas of President Obama and Hillary Clinton. Instead of having bruising primary battles in presidential cycles and in 2016, the Democratic National Committee rigged the 2016 Democratic primary in favor of Clinton and at the expense of Sanders. After Clinton lost to Trump in 2016, the endless political investigations and impeachments of Trump began in order to blame Russia or anyone for Clinton’s failure. Because of the populist bent of Trump supporters, Democrats even called Trump the next Hitler. 

With these investigations of political opponents and impeachments, the Democrat party started to lose support from within its own party. Democrat party stalwarts from renowned Jewish constitutional law attorney, Alan Dershowitz, to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. began to question the path taken by their Democrat party. The Democratic National Committee even changed its rules in order to make sure that RFK did not win the New Hampshire primary. 

Today, Democrats are still attempting to thwart Kennedy from getting on the ballot in many states including North Carolina and Nevada. In reality, the Democratic National Committee chose the Democratic nominee for president and not the Democrat voters who were not given a chance to vote for RFK in the primaries. Fourteen million people voted in the Democratic primaries, and many are saying now that Biden has withdrawn, the Democrat party is throwing out 14 million people’s votes in favor of the party leaders picking the nominee because, as Biden says, he can’t beat Trump. This decade-long process is the opposite of democracy. Democrat party leaders picked the candidates in 2024 – not voters. Democratic primary voters were basically given primary ballots containing only the candidates who are acceptable to the party leadership. 

The Democrat party does not really care about democracy – they only care about political control

Unlike the Republican party who resolved their inner-party ideological battles with debate and via elections, Democrat party leaders forbade the Democrat party from having an ideological debate about the direction of the party by selecting only “acceptable” candidates.

Now the American voter is forced to deal with the withdrawal of an incumbent Democrat candidate for president three months before an election nobody thinks he can win. The Democrat party will now throw out 14 million people’s votes in the primaries and allow the same party leaders to undemocratically pick a new candidate. Had Democrats allowed free and open debate in its primaries this year, the people of the Democrat party may have chosen a more democratic path. We will never know, but one thing we do know is that populism is unifying the nation, while Democrats sit at the abyss in need of soul searching the same as Republicans in 2009.