While most Democrats celebrate their recent polling surge in Chicago this week, Joe Biden is in self-imposed exile. After delivering his speech at the Democratic National Convention on Monday night, the US President flew to Santa Barbara for a “vacation” with his family. In reality, he is still smarting from being forced to sacrifice a potential second term by Democratic grandees who for months claimed to be his loyal backers. A more charitable interpretation of Biden’s early convention departure would be that he wanted to make way for his vice president and successor Kamala Harris, who now only has two weeks before mail voting begins on 6 September.
Whatever the reason for his early departure, Biden’s task at the convention was unenviable: to deliver a speech with dignity after being turfed out by his own party. While he may hold a farewell address in January as Barack Obama did in 2017, this was his final chance to speak while people were still listening. The choice before him seemed simple: be magnanimous or damage his presidential legacy. If he hit the right notes, puffed Harris up, and didn’t mention how she became the nominee, then commentators would pretend to forget that he went begrudgingly. His legislative achievements in office would not be tarnished by an embittered end. He would be remembered as a man who put his party and country before his own career. In the liberal mind, he would become the archetypal antithesis of Donald Trump.
Which makes it sound like an easy decision. But such magnanimity is tough when Biden has been briefed against, mocked and betrayed. Even the tributes gushing from his fellow Democrats are riddled with condescension. Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker and preeminent party grandee, has said Biden should be on Mount Rushmore weeks after playing a crucial part in his defenestration. He had to endure the fact that all 20,000 delegates, journalists and legislators cheering in the United Centre stadium during his speech knew he was being dishonest, that in reality he wanted to stay on. This was an operation to save face of North Korean proportions.
Yet, Biden is the visual inverse of Kim Jong Un. He looked skeletal and frail behind the lectern. But his stumbled phrases are poignant now they don’t echo with the sound of Trump opening the door of the White House. Each scrambled sentence no longer hands the Republicans another percentage point in the polls. This was about Biden’s fumbles, not the campaign’s.
The president was introduced by his 43-year-old daughter Ashley and wife Jill. The more morbid in the crowd would have thought their speeches sounded like eulogies. “I see one of the most consequential leaders EVER in history,” Ashley exclaimed. When the president came on stage, the crowd descended into saccharine adoration. “Thank! You! Joe!” the crowd chanted. “We love Joe,” rang out for so long that it became overwrought and exaggerated. It seemed to come from guilt, not affection. “It’s so emotional,” Harris appeared to say from her place in the audience. Her husband Doug Emhoff wiped literal tears from his eyes.
Biden began his speech by recalling his inauguration two weeks after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on 6 January 2021. He reeled off familiar lines about protecting democracy and governing for all Americans. His message was that he had ensured – by bringing manufacturing jobs back to America, building infrastructure and strengthening Nato – that the US remained the best country in the world. It was a nationalistic speech replete with American exceptionalism and lines such as: “who can lead the world other than the United States of America?” He spoke with a fervour suggestive of his desire to define his legacy before others do. He slammed the lectern, raised his finger and called Trump a “loser” in that combative, borderline aggressive tone which Harris has expunged from the campaign.
This was a valedictory speech with a campaigning zeal which betrayed Joe Biden’s desire to stay. When he finished, the applause was prolonged and ecstatic. But it rang hollow. In 2024, his party could only love him once they knew he would soon be gone.
[See also: The lessons Kamala Harris learned from Hillary Clinton]
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