Brittany Bernstein writes for National Review Online about President Biden’s comments regarding his decision to drop his re-election bid.
President Biden says he decided to drop out of the presidential race to because he was concerned that the intraparty battle over his candidacy and mental fitness would distract from Democrats’ efforts to win the presidency and down-ballot races in November.
“The polls we had showed that it was a neck-and-neck race, it would’ve been down to the wire. But what happened was a number of my Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate thought that I was gonna hurt them in the races. And I was concerned if I stayed in the race, that would be the topic,” he said in an interview with CBS Sunday Morning that aired Sunday morning.
“I thought it’d be a real distraction, number one,” he said. “Number two, when I ran the first time, I thought of myself as being a transition President. I can’t even say how old I am. It’s hard for me to get it outta my mouth. But things got moving so quickly, it — didn’t happen. And the combination was that I thought it — is the critical issue for me still, it’s not a joke, maintaining this democracy.”
Biden posted a statement on X announcing his decision to exit the race last month following a pressure campaign by Democratic lawmakers and pundits to get him to drop out in the wake of his disastrous presidential-debate performance. He said at the time he believed ending his campaign was “in the best interest of my party and the country.”
During his interview with CBS, Biden went on to say that the “most important thing” is defeating Trump. In clips of the interview that were released last week, Biden said it was not confident there would be a peaceful transfer of power if Trump wins.
