President Joe Biden abandoned his bid for a second term as president, in part it seems, because he was pressured to do so by other Democrats who feared he would hurt the party if he stayed in the race.
He also thought his departure would better the chance for Democrats to stay in the White House.
Biden spoke of his historic decision in an interview that aired Sunday on “CBS News Sunday Morning”:
A main priority is defeating Republican foe Donald Trump, Biden told Robert Costa, CBS News chief election and campaign correspondent.
“We must, we must, we must defeat Trump,” Biden said.
“Although it’s a great honor to be a president, I think I have an obligation to the country to do what I– most important thing you can do. And that is — we must, we must, we must defeat Trump,” he said.
The need to defeat Trump was only part of the decision as many Democrats thought that by staying in the race, Biden would hurt their chances in their respective races.
“A number of my Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate thought that I was going to hurt them in the races. And I was concerned if I stayed in the race, that would be the topic, you’d be interviewing me about why did (former House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi say – why did – and I thought it’d be a real distraction,” Biden said.
On July 21, Biden announced he was dropping out of the presidential race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president, per CBS.
This came after Biden’s disastrous performance at a debate with Trump, which prompted many Democrats to call for him to leave the race.
The 81-year-old claimed his age did not play a part in his poor performance in the debate.
“Look, I had a really, really bad day in that debate because I was sick,” he said. “But I have no serious problem.”
The polls at the time were too close for comfort, the president expressed, per Fox News.
“The polls we had showed that it was a neck-and-neck race, it would have been down to the wire,” Biden said.
A CBS News poll released on Aug. 4 revealed a resurgence for Democrats with Harris having a 1-point lead nationally and a tie among the battleground states.
This is a stark departure from Biden as the Democratic candidate.
Biden was down by 5 points at the time he dropped out of the race.
“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 out of my mouth,” Biden said during the CBS interview. “But things got moving so quickly, it didn’t happen. And the combination was that I thought it was a critical issue for me still, it’s not a joke, maintaining this democracy.”
