WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden plans to frame the decision to end his re-election campaign as a “defense of democracy” in an Oval Office address Wednesday night, according to advance excerpts released by the White House.
“The defense of democracy is more important than any title,” Biden plans to say. “I draw strength, and find joy, in working FOR the American people. But this sacred task of perfecting our union is not about me. It’s about you. Your families. Your futures. It’s about ‘We the People.’”
Biden and other Democrats consistently argue that former President Donald Trump, who refused to concede after he lost the 2020 election to Biden, is a threat to democracy.
The speech, which comes three days after he dropped his bid, is the beginning of Biden’s efforts to shape his legacy following a disastrous debate performance in late June that left members of his own party calling for him to step off the campaign trail and allow another candidate to run against Trump. Many Democrats believed Biden’s bumbling debate performance and halting push to clean it up made his path to re-election impossible.
“I have decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation. That is the best way to unite our nation,” Biden plans to say in remarks scheduled to begin shortly after 8 p.m. ET. Though he will not seek a second term, he will remain in office.
At a campaign rally in North Carolina on Wednesday night, Trump went after his former opponent. “Three days ago, we officially defeated the worst president in the history of our country, crooked Joe Biden,” he said.
Biden abandoned his re-election campaign early Sunday afternoon, announcing the decision in a post on X that he followed about half an hour later with an endorsement of his vice president, Kamala Harris, for the Democratic presidential nomination.
She quickly consolidated support from within their party and is expected to win a virtual roll call of Democratic delegates — perhaps without opposition — as early as Aug. 1 and no later than Aug. 7.
In leaving the nomination to Harris, Biden became the first eligible incumbent to cede his party’s presidential nod since Lyndon Johnson in 1968. That was two years before Biden first ran for office in Delaware, a New Castle County Council seat that he won.Two years later, at age 29, he defeated Republican Sen. Caleb Boggs in a tightly contested campaign. Biden would win six more terms in the Senate — where he was chairman of the Judiciary and Foreign Relations committees at different times — with the last victory coming the same year, 2008, he was elected vice president. Along with President Barack Obama, Biden won re-election as vice president in 2012. He came out of retirement to defeat a crowded field of rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 and ultimately beat Trump that November.
His decision to retire rather than remain on the 2024 ballot means he will finish his career undefeated in general elections — though he ran and lost in presidential primaries in 1988 and 2008. It also brings to an end a career focused on the presidency. Biden first contemplated running for the Oval Office in the first election in which he was old enough — 1980 — and at least considered bids in most of the years when no Democratic incumbent was on the ballot.
Once regarded as a centrist within his party, Biden won support from progressives in Congress early on in his administration. He and his Democratic allies credit him with enacting the most sweeping domestic agenda since the Johnson administration — a claim that is hard to measure and with which critics take issue.
No matter the metric, Biden signed into law major measures with profound effects on the country, including a nearly $2 trillion Covid-relief measure, a trillion-dollar infrastructure package and a bill known as the Inflation Reduction Act that included significant provisions aimed at controlling climate change.
In addition to putting Harris — the first woman, first Black woman and first Asian American person to be vice president — on his ticket, he appointed Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman confirmed to the Supreme Court.
Biden plans to say Wednesday night that he will pursue a similar path until a new president is sworn in Jan. 20.
“Over the next six months I will be focused on doing my job as President,” he plans to say. “That means I will continue to lower costs for hard-working families and grow our economy. I will keep defending our personal freedoms and our civil rights — from the right to vote to the right to choose.”
He is also expected to nod to what he sees as the danger of a second Trump presidency in an implicit call for Americans to reject his longtime rival.
“The great thing about America is here, kings and dictators do not rule,” he plans to say. “The people do. History is in your hands. The power is in your hands. The idea of America lies in your hands.”
