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Leonard Greene is a columnist for the New York Daily News.
Now that the dust has settled, and the Democratic Party is quickly and forcefully rallying around Vice President Kamala Harris, there remains one nagging question: What took them so long?
The party breathed a huge sigh of relief after President Joe Biden announced that he would abandon his reelection campaign and urge the party to unite behind Harris.
“I’ve decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation,” Biden said last week, sounding like John F. Kennedy in his Oval Office address. “That’s the best way to unite our nation.”
That was, and should have been the plan all along, only somewhere along the way, Biden convinced himself that he and only he could finish the job he started.
But he wasn’t up to the job. We can say that now. Months ago, we could only whisper it, lest we risk offending the Biden faithful, and cast aspersions on the nation’s elderly population.
Then came The Debate, the one where we skipped past all the Donald Trump lies — the lies about abortion, the lies about inflation, the lies about immigration — and zoomed in on all the Biden miscues, the unfinished sentences, the weak, raspy voice.
There would be no coming back from that. The Biden era was over.
“I believe my record as president, my leadership in the world, my vision for America’s future all merited a second term,” Biden said. “But nothing — nothing — can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition.”
There should be no shame in Biden’s decline. The job has worn down much younger men. Nothing tells that story better than the before and after pictures showing how presidents age under the pressures of the White House.
Former President Barack Obama, who was only 55 when he left the White House, tried to blame genetics for the gray that took over his mane.
“It just happened to coincide with the presidency,” Obama said while he was still in office.
Even Obama was good for a lie now and then.
Even one-term presidents like George H. W. Bush and Jimmy Carter aged before our eyes.
Biden is 81 now. How much aging do you think he has done in the last four years?
To his credit, Biden did what we asked of him — he sent Trump packing.
Anything beyond that, like lowering prescription drug prices, student debt relief and putting a Black woman on the U.S. Supreme Court, was just icing on the cake.
Biden was just supposed to be a bridge. But critics said it was beginning to look like a bridge to nowhere.
And by waiting so long to step aside, Biden left his successor only weeks to mount a campaign. But wait. That may not be such a bad thing. Maybe Biden’s really a genius.
If Biden had bowed out sooner, there would have been ugly, bitter primary battles, and lots of money spent on divisive campaigns. Democrats would have been tearing each other apart instead of tearing into Trump.
This way, the party can present a strong candidate, one unburdened by the bruises of a campaign battle. There isn’t enough time for all that.
“Today, I signed the forms officially declaring my candidacy for President of the United States,” Harris posted on X on Friday. “I will work hard to earn every vote. And in November, our people-powered campaign will win.”
Harris has earned the nomination. Even without winning a single primary vote as a presidential candidate, Harris has united her party ahead of next month’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Or maybe Biden has. Not bad for an old man.
