Joe Biden: «Defending Democracy Is More Important Than Any Position»

Joe Biden: «Defending Democracy Is More Important Than Any Position»

Updated

The last time a president of United States of America announced on television to the nation that he would not run for re-election on March 31, 1968. Lyndon B. Johnson He did it so unexpectedly that not even his advisers knew he was stepping down from the presidency. In fact, he himself added, on his own initiative, the phrase «I will neither seek nor accept the nomination for the presidency by my party.»

Last night, early this Wednesday EuropeJoe Biden did the same. The big difference is that this time the president had already announced, via social media, his decision 54 hours earlier. Furthermore, unlike Johnson, Biden has appointed a successor: the vice president, Kamala Harris, which is practically certain of being appointed by the Democratic party. There is another difference between Johnson and Biden. The former resigned from the re-election because of the extreme unpopularity of the Vietnam War. Biden is being forced to do so by his own party, which fears that his 81 years old he has lost the physical and mental faculties to face the illiberalism of Donald Trump.

So Biden he spoke for 12 minutes, with the same fragile voice he displayed in the debate with Donald Trump in which he sealed his political death sentence. Despite speaking from Oval Office, With all the elements in his favor, the president conveyed the same sense of physical decline that has accompanied him in many of his public interventions in recent months.

Unlike Johnson, Biden sought to define his legacy while appealing to Harris. He noted that «I am the first president in this century to leave office without the country being involved in a war,» in a direct jab at Donald Trump it’s at Republican Party, who accuse Democrats of being warmongers and Biden of “putting the world on the brink of disaster.” Third World war», and as the Republican candidate himself said last Thursday at the party’s convention.

Biden didn’t address the health controversy. Instead, he justified his exit from the race with altruistic reasons, as if his own party hadn’t forced him to do so. “I’ve decided that the best path forward is to pass the torch to a new generation,” he said, referring to Harris, who is 59, 22 years his junior. And, with clear electoral intentions, he insisted that the November election is a cross between a democracy and an autocracy. “Defending democracy is more important than any position,” he stressed, implying that he wasn’t the best person to do that, which for Biden means preventing Donald Trump from returning to office. White House.

Biden cited a part of the pantheon of Democratic figures, the leader of the fight against racism Martin Luther King, and the black woman who refused to accept her second-class citizen status, Rosa Parks –, to which the Hispanic trade unionist added, significantly, California, Cesar Chvez, to remind the country that «the choice is now yours, the American people.»