Back in February, I wrote a piece titled “Democrats Do Not, In Fact, Have a Better Option Than Biden,” a fairly direct response to arguments made by Nate Silver and Ezra Klein that President Joe Biden should abandon his reelection bid as the presidential primary was already underway. My argument, in a nutshell, was that, despite his poor polling numbers, Biden bowing out represented a greater risk to the party’s goal of defeating Donald Trump than his continued presence at the top of the ticket. A truncated primary and open convention of the sort proposed by Klein would shred the party unity that Biden had built up in 2020, igniting tensions between the centrist and leftist factions of the party over issues such as Medicare for All and the ongoing War in Gaza, youth opposition to which had yet to reach its fever pitch in the United States. Contrary to Silver’s claims that the party’s continued support of Biden was a sign that they weren’t taking the threat of Trump to democracy seriously, I argued that they were in fact taking the threat so seriously that they didn’t want to rock the boat by pitching their leader overboard – a decision laden with risk, but much less risk than the alternative. 

Defending Biden’s decision to run for reelection became something of a cottage industry for The Postrider – Lars wrote at least two pieces arguing not only that Biden should run again, but that he was well positioned to defeat Donald Trump, and two other pieces about how he would and should commit to keeping Vice President Kamala Harris on the ticket with him in his 2024 campaign. Even after the president’s disastrous debate performance against Trump on June 27, Lars described what a successful path for Biden could still look like, by addressing age head on.

And yet, by Sunday, I was ready to change my tune, and had even prepared to write a piece arguing that Democrats may, in fact, now have better options than Biden. Evidently, the president was of a similar mind – on Sunday afternoon, Joe Biden announced via X (the social media site formerly known as Twitter) that he would be dropping out from the presidential race, becoming the first eligible incumbent president to drop out of a reelection campaign since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968, and the first one-term president to decline to seek reelection since Chester A. Arthur in 1884.1Arthur ascended to the presidency after the assassination of his predecessor, James A. Garfield. The last president to be elected to a single full term and not seek reelection like Biden was Rutherford B. Hayes, who chose not to run in 1880. Shortly afterwards, he endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to take his place at the top of the ticket, with many prominent Democrats following his lead. 

Despite my appreciation for the president and his administration and the past positions I’ve taken on this issue, I believe that this was clearly the right move to make. Back in February, I opposed Silver and Klein’s calls for Biden to drop out because they felt panicked and short-sighted. Voters were telling pollsters that they thought Biden was too old to be president, yes, but his age had not yet become the driving issue of the campaign. I was under no illusions that Biden would suddenly de-age and become an Obama-level orator, but after a strong State of the Union Address and the looming possibility of Trump being convicted on multiple felony counts, I was confident that the Biden campaign would be able to shift the focus back to the former president’s many shortcomings and issues that most voters seem to align with Democrats on, such as abortion and healthcare. But after Biden’s halting, muddled debate performance against Trump, the subject of his age not only became the driving story of the campaign, but of the entire 24-hour news cycle. Rather than turning the election into a referendum on Trump as they had in 2020, by agitating for an early debate, the Biden campaign had made their candidate the center of attention, and negative attention at that. 

But perhaps even more damaging was that the Biden campaign seemed to be completely unprepared to respond to a poor performance from the president. Yes, Biden seemed more lucid in remarks he made a day later at a North Carolina rally, but it would be eight days until he had an unscripted, unteleprompted conversation on television, when he sat down for an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanohlous, and it only put further emphasis on other gaffes he would make in the weeks to come, such as referring to Harris as “Vice President Trump” and Ukranian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “President Putin.” The larger Democratic Party apparatus took notice, with a number of members of Congress calling on Biden to step aside and large donors, including George Clooney, publicly and privately signaling that they would stop contributing to what seemed to be a losing campaign. 

Whether you think Biden was being treated fairly or not by his colleagues, it became clear that his status as the party’s standard bearer was becoming more and more tenuous by the day, and that it was going to be impossible for Democrats to unite and turn their attention to defeating Trump and the Republican Party any time soon. It would have been one thing if Biden was merely polling poorly because Americans disapproved of the job he had done as president – instead, he was polling poorly at least in part because Americans were questioning whether or not he could even do the job itself, and both he and his campaign seemed either unwilling or unable to demonstrate that this was not the case. As such, the choice for Democrats became clear – either stick with Biden and risk not only losing both the presidency and a number of crucial down ballot races, or nominate a fresh face and hopefully reinvigorate both the party’s base and their donors. They wisely chose the latter. 

One of my chief concerns with replacing Biden was that it appeared as though it would invite chaos. Klein called for an open convention where presidential hopefuls would be able to make their case to both the party and the American people in what envisioned as a showcase for the “murder’s row of political talent” the Democrats have cultivated in the post-Trump era. I believed, and still believe, that this would be a disaster, not only inviting contentious debates about divisive topics such as the war in Gaza but essentially inviting the collapse of the center-left coalition Biden worked so hard to build in 2020. Similar calls by Democratic insiders for a “flash primary” moderated by celebrity hosts also seemed impractical, and the biggest argument for Biden staying in the race became the lack of a clear plan to find a replacement. But Biden’s speedy endorsement of Harris, and succeeding endorsements from other potential replacement candidates such as Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, suggest that she may be on a glide path to the nomination, even as the convention still technically remains “open,” while further endorsements from the likes of New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Missouri Congresswoman Cori Bush also seem to imply that Harris won’t face much opposition from the left wing of the party, either. In fact, before I could even finish writing this piece – and only 36 hours after  Biden’s withdrawal – Harris had already garnered the support of enough delegates to become the Democrats’ presumptive nominee. For as disunified as the party seemed in the weeks after the debate, they seem to have fallen back into a point of solidarity in which their energies are now re-focused on defeating Donald Trump, a state of affairs impossible to imagine if Biden had stayed in the race. 

Speaking of Trump, the other reason I’ve come to embrace a change at the top of the ticket is that, for the first time in weeks, if not months, he feels beatable again. Despite claims from Republican insiders that the former president would look to strike a more restrained and conciliatory tone after he had survived an assassination attempt that left one of his supporters dead and two others injured, Trump’s closing address at the Republican National Convention in MIlwaukee was rambling and unfocused, complete with bizarre references to Hannibal Lecter and diatribes against “crazy Nancy Pelosi.” It was a reminder that, even though Trump still has a devoted following, he still has all of the old liabilities he had when he lost in 2020. Combine that with the fact that, as of this writing, Trump’s FiveThirtyEight polling average shows him pulling in a smaller percentage of the vote in swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania than he did in 2020, and his underwhelming running mate selection of Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, there are signs that Trump may yet fall short of his goal of expanding the MAGA coalition and romping to a second nonconsecutive term. Having to constantly answer questions about Biden’s age would prevent the Democratic Party from exploiting these weaknesses; nominating a candidate nearly 20 years Trump’s junior helps them take advantage of them. 

That’s not to say this campaign will be a layup for Harris. Most polling has yet to catch up to Biden’s departure, but those that have been released suggest she’s also currently trailing Trump. But she does appear, for the time being, to have a surge of Democratic enthusiasm on her side – in the 24 hours after Biden dropped out and endorsed Harris, the vice president raised $81 million, while ActBlue saw more than $90 million donated through their platform. Harris may be in the seemingly unenviable position of having just over three months to pitch herself to the American public, but the fact that she can pitch herself and define her image at all already gives herself an advantage over both Trump and Biden. For over a year, voters have been telling pollsters that they want someone new at the top of the ticket. That the Democrats are finally offering them that change doesn’t guarantee they’ll win in November – but it gives them a much greater chance than they would’ve had they stuck with Biden.