Don’t call it a farewell: Joe Biden to give keynote address to Democrats

When President Joe Biden delivers the keynote address Monday night at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, emotions among the delegates are likely to run high – a mix of gratitude for his decades of public service, a sense of poignancy, and a tinge of relief.  

One month ago, President Biden was still his party’s presumptive nominee for the November election, despite poll numbers heading south. He still had his base: ride-or-die supporters who believed he had the best shot at beating former President Donald Trump. 

But it wasn’t to be. Mr. Biden, under intense intraparty pressure, stepped aside on July 21. Illinois State Comptroller Susana Mendoza, a loyal Biden delegate, is floored by how much better things now look for the party.

“I’m a big fan of Joe Biden’s, and I was sad to see what happened, happen,” Ms. Mendoza says in an interview. “But I’d be lying to you if I told you that the momentum shift was anything other than monumental.”

The president “passing the torch,” she adds, “is going to be one of those defining moments of his legacy.” 

A missed opportunity for competitive primaries?

Other Democrats are less glowing. They wish that the octogenarian president had come to accept much sooner that he had slowed down and would better serve his party by not running for reelection. That could have allowed for a proper primary contest among the party’s next-generation talent, these party members say.

But the emergency transition to Vice President Kamala Harris, now the Democratic nominee, has been remarkably smooth. And in his prime-time address Monday night, Mr. Biden is expected to make a strong pitch for her candidacy. Electing her, based on their joint record, and blocking Mr. Trump, whom Mr. Biden views as a threat to democracy, would in effect solidify the president’s legacy. 

After Mr. Biden’s speech, he and his wife, Jill – also speaking Monday night – will board Air Force One and fly to California for a vacation. The idea of Mr. Biden, who lives and breathes politics, leaving a Democratic convention early would have been unheard of, under different circumstances. 

The president has been to all but one Democratic convention since his first in 1972, when he was an upstart Senate candidate and council member from New Castle County, Delaware, who had yet to turn 30. That’s 13 conventions spread over more than a half-century. (The only one he missed was in 1988, as he recovered from brain surgery not long after his failed first presidential campaign.)

But this year, Mr. Biden’s intent clearly is to cede the stage, literally and figuratively, to his hoped-for successor. 

Still an election for Biden to focus on

One close friend who will be watching Monday night from the United Center is Ted Kaufman, who served as Mr. Biden’s decades-long chief of staff in the U.S. Senate. He also served as a senator from Delaware himself when Mr. Biden became vice president. 

In an interview, Mr. Kaufman ascribes the current unity among Democrats to the “existential threat” posed by former President Trump. He emphasizes that Monday night will not be Mr. Biden’s goodbye to the nation.  

“This is not going to be his farewell speech,” Mr. Kaufman says. “His farewell speech will be in January.”

On Monday, the speech will center on “how important it is that we leave this convention and go out and elect Kamala Harris president of the United States,” he says. “That’s enough.”

Mr. Kaufman says he wasn’t surprised that Mr. Biden decided to drop his reelection bid – or that it seemed to happen so suddenly, with the president insisting that he wouldn’t quit the race until the day he abruptly announced he was out. 

That’s how Mr. Biden operates, his friend and former aide says. “He’s been doing this for 50 years, and one of the things that’s made him so successful is that he’s really good at analyzing his situations and making decisions and making them quickly.”

“More betrayals than a Shakespearean drama”

Chris Whipple, author of the book “The Fight of His Life,” which covers the first two years of the Biden presidency, sees the moment as “bittersweet.” 

Dropping out of the 2024 race “was obviously the most difficult decision he or any other president has made in a long, long time,” Mr. Whipple says. “I mean, just think back to Lyndon Johnson in 1968” – the last sitting U.S. president to quit his reelection race. 

“But it’s also tragic in a way. This had more betrayals than a Shakespearean drama,” he adds, rattling off the names of high-profile Democrats who turned on Mr. Biden one by one – former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, former President Barack Obama, and even celebrities such as actor George Clooney. 

Even more brutal, Ms. Pelosi has been offering some glimpses of the behind-the-scenes machinations to get Mr. Biden to drop out, as she promotes her new book, “The Art of Power.” “I never called one person, but people were calling me saying that there was a challenge there,” she told The New Yorker.

Another close observer of Mr. Biden, former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska – a friend of the president dating back to their days in the Senate – also says he’s not surprised that the president ultimately decided to drop out. The Nebraskan says he spent a couple of hours with Mr. Biden in the White House back in December, and has spoken with him a few times since.  

“I always had the feeling that he would eventually make this decision,” Mr. Hagel says. 

Why? 

“Put yourself in his position,” he says. “For 50 years, he’s been doing this, and he’s been knocked down, as he likes to say, a number of times, but he gets back up and he eventually succeeds.” 

“That’s who Joe Biden is. But you get to a point in your life and your career where things have really shifted and changed dramatically – not only your age and your capacity,” he adds. “When it’s time for new leadership, it’s time for new leadership.”

Biden’s own legacy at stake as Harris seeks election win

Ms. Mendoza, the Illinois state comptroller, says she’s expecting the mood at the convention around the president’s speech to feel “somewhat nostalgic, somewhat bittersweet.” She says she still feels some sadness around how things played out.

“He’s been through so much pain and heartache and loss in his life that having to walk away from this position had to just be another major blow,” she says, alluding to the deaths of the president’s first wife and baby daughter in 1972, then his eldest son, Beau Biden, in 2015. 

“But I think at the end of the day, he’s gonna have a huge smile on his face when he sees Kamala Harris be sworn in as president of the United States.”