Joe Biden is once again giving his party — and the country — its best chance to defeat Donald Trump.

Biden announced in a letter posted to social media Sunday that he will no longer seek reelection as president, abandoning his campaign for a second term because “it is in the best interest of my party and my country for me to stand down,” he wrote.

He’s right.

Biden’s decision comes after weeks of political pressure following an abysmal debate performance and media reports that deepened voters’ preexisting concerns about his age and mental acuity. Reporting from The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and others revealed that Biden had shown signs of aging and cognitive decline, including slurred speech, disorientation and lapses in memory, that those around him downplayed or denied for months.

The fallout was significant. Prominent Democrats began to privately and publicly express a desire for Biden to step down, and even voters in his own party thought he should be replaced as the Democratic nominee. Polls showed Trump’s lead over Biden widening, particularly in battleground states, and prominent donors announced they would pause giving unless Biden stepped down as the nominee.

Of course, the choice between Biden and Trump was always clear. One of them has steadfastly led the country out of a pandemic and into a time of relative stability, and passed landmark legislation that undoubtedly has improved the lives of everyday Americans. The other is a convicted felon who excels at sowing division and who helped foment an actual insurrection by blatantly lying to the American people about the 2020 election.

But that does not mean that Biden was the best or right person for the job, and it was obvious weeks ago that any path to preventing another Trump presidency would be significantly steeper with him as the nominee. Until now, though, that wasn’t a truth that Biden seemed willing to accept — as if his own political aspirations were more important than staving off an existential threat to our democracy. We applaud him for having the humility and self-awareness to put the country’s best interests ahead of his own.

It’s not yet clear what direction Democrats will go in now. The most likely scenario seems to be Vice President Kamala Harris taking his place at the top of the ticket, which would be historic and potentially galvanizing to voters who may not have felt motivated by Biden’s candidacy. Biden announced in a subsequent post that Harris has his “full support and endorsement” to be the nominee, though some Democrats have said they’d prefer an open nominating process.

Regardless of who replaces him, Biden’s decision means that many swing states in which Biden trailed in recent polls may now once again be in play for Democrats. That includes North Carolina, a state that Trump won with less than 50% of the vote in 2020. Currently, polls show Trump leading Biden by about 7 points in North Carolina, but that gap could grow narrower with a new nominee.

This is certainly not the way Biden would have chosen to end his decades-long political career. No sitting president has dropped out of a race so late in the election cycle. But the stakes of this election are higher than ever, and the country can’t afford to take any chances, particularly when it’s clear that so many voters have lost faith in Biden.

When Biden chose to run for president in 2020, it was because he believed he was the right person at the right time to defeat Donald Trump. It was, he said, “a battle for the soul of the nation.” That battle is still happening, but Biden is no longer the right person to fight it. His willingness to step up was critically important in 2020. But his willingness to step down now might prove to be his most important decision of all.

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