We know that America’s two main political parties have very different approaches to public policy. But this historic moment highlights a staggering difference in how the parties pick and treat their leaders.

To call Joe Biden’s withdrawal unprecedented is to really sell it short. Yes, there have been cases (including Harry Truman in 1952 and Lyndon Johnson in 1968) where presidents have been encouraged by aides and party officials to withdraw due in part to their unpopularity. But those decisions were made long before the candidates’ respective conventions, and with plenty of time for interested party actors to decide on whom the next nominee would be.

By contrast, the Democrats have already done the real work of the 2024 nomination. In 2019-2020, the Democratic Party, defined broadly, vetted Biden along with dozens of other candidates through a lengthy series of primaries and caucuses, debates and speeches, meetings, negotiations, and more. Ultimately party insiders determined that they had the most faith in Biden’s ability to both defeat Trump and work toward party priorities on the economy, the environment, labor, student loans, and more. The party’s voters and convention delegates concurred.

The lack of a real Democratic Party nomination contest in early 2024 was a sign of another decision; the party remained comfortable with Biden’s progress on the goals it cared about and thought he could continue to work toward those goals in a second term. And again, the party’s voters concurred, and presumably the convention delegates were prepared to re-nominate him.

Certainly, prominent people within the party who once thought Biden could win now aren’t so sure. Some voters, too, seem to have changed their minds. But the idea that there can be some sort of final veto stage of this process, after the formal primaries and caucuses are over, is novel — and a little stunning.

Contrast this with the Republican Party. Party leaders did not want Donald Trump to be their nominee in 2016, but they ultimately pledged loyalty to him once he won the nomination. They have now functionally nominated him in three consecutive cycles. And any time new damaging information comes out — poor election performances in 2018, 2020, and 2022; helping organize a coup rather than leaving office peacefully; two impeachments; indictments in four separate criminal trials; conviction on 34 felony counts; a multi-million dollar fraud ruling; a court determination that he is liable for sexual abuse; a vow to “terminate” the Constitution, etc. — it only causes the party to support him more.

Democrats abandoned their octogenarian leader for seeming cognitively enfeebled and unpopular; Republicans doubled down on their septuagenarian leader for a track record that has gotten increasingly worse with each passing month.

Now, the Democrats have work to do. In order for this decision to be proven clever, and not catastrophic, what comes next in the process has to be far better thought out then what came before. If Vice President Kamala Harris is able to swiftly consolidate party support, reassure the constituent groups that were comfortable with Biden that she’d be at least as good on the issues they care about and impress voters and political observers that she has the ability to “prosecute” (her words) Trump in an effective way that brings in votes, this may turn out to be a good use of media pressure and party power.

It’s also entirely plausible that Democrats will descend into a massive factional squabble at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, leaving all sides demoralized. In this scenario, Republicans will likely enjoy an even easier election than they would have had otherwise. (We’ve seen that before!)

In other words, whether Biden’s withdrawal was a historically good or a historically bad move depends heavily on what comes next. But no matter what happen, it was certainly historic.

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There is no historical precedent for Biden dropping out now

It is not unprecedented for an incumbent president to abandon his reelection campaign. But it is rare, and no president until President Joe Biden has been pressured out of a reelection campaign out of concerns about his mental fitness.

One warning bell for Democrats who assume that a nominee younger than Biden – he has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris – would do better against former President Donald Trump: Republicans won the two most recent elections in which presidents eligible for reelection bowed out of their campaigns.

Democrats Harry S. Truman and Lyndon B. Johnson were succeeded by Republicans. A more immediate problem for Democrats is that Biden’s departure is the latest such decision in history.

Johnson and Truman left under pressure, handed the White House over to the other party

Comparisons between Biden and any of these presidents are not perfect. Neither Truman nor Johnson faced serious questions about their ability to do the job. Biden does.

Both Johnson and Truman, like Biden, were former lawmakers and former vice presidents. Unlike Biden, both had assumed the presidency after a death or assassination. Both Johnson and Truman then won the White House in their own right.

But both Johnson and Truman faced competition for their party’s nomination in 1952 and 1968 respectively. Both were embarrassed by a subpar showing in the New Hampshire primary, and both announced in the spring that they would not seek reelection.

Truman made the announcement that he would not be running during a speech in Washington that was broadcast nationwide, while Johnson made his announcement in a televised address from the White House.

Biden was never under any real pressure from Democrats to stand down earlier this year, and he faced only token opposition for the Democratic nomination. Nearly all of the delegates to the Democratic National Convention are pledged to him. In other words, Truman and Johnson both avoided a bruising primary by ending their reelection campaigns. Biden had the Democratic nomination sewn up, and he chose to give it up.

Republicans, with help from their war hero nominee Dwight Eisenhower, won the White House, the Senate and the House in 1952, when Truman decided not to run again. Johnson’s decision not to run created a scramble for the Democratic nomination. Ultimately, Vice President Hubert Humphrey won the honor at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Humphrey would go on to lose the White House to Richard Nixon, but Democrats kept control of the House and the Senate.

Roosevelt and Coolidge left on high notes, and their party kept the White House

Theodore Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge were Republicans who assumed the presidency after an assassination or death, and both chose to leave the presidency after serving one full term and most of another.

Roosevelt later regretted his pledge not to run again in 1908. He left office extremely popular and well respected and handed the White House off to his hand-picked successor, fellow Republican William Howard Taft. But Roosevelt was so aggravated by Taft’s performance and the direction of the GOP that he challenged Taft for the Republican nomination in the next presidential election. When Roosevelt could not get the nomination at the GOP convention, he ran as a third-party Progressive, or Bull Moose, candidate and beat Taft at the ballot box, although both lost to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.

Coolidge assumed the presidency when Warren G. Harding died of a heart attack in San Francisco. Coolidge then won the White House on his own. Never happy as president, he suffered loss during his time in office when his son died tragically after playing tennis at the White House. Coolidge also handed the presidency off to a fellow Republican, Herbert Hoover.

Coolidge disclosed his decision not to run on handwritten strips of paper given to reporters during his summer vacation the year before the election. The curt statement – “I do not choose to run for President in 1928” – caught everyone by surprise.

Three 19th-century presidents pledged to serve one term

Despite an active and successful presidency, James K. Polk’s Democrats lost the White House after he stepped aside from the 1848 election. The Whig Party ran a war hero, Zachary Taylor, and former President Martin Van Buren ran as a third-party candidate. Taylor won, taking the White House from the Democrats.

James Buchanan promised in his inaugural address in 1857 that he would not run again. He said:

Buchanan, who was in office when Southern states protested Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 election victory by seceding, does not live in grateful memory of many historians. He’s viewed as one of the worst American presidents.

Democrats lost control of the White House and the Senate in 1860, and Lincoln became the first Republican president.

Rutherford B. Hayes, a Republican, promised to serve one term and did so after the disputed 1876 presidential election, by which a compromise handed Hayes the White House but also essentially ended Reconstruction.

Reforming the civil service was a major issue of the day, and it played into Hayes’ decision, according to his letter accepting the Republican nomination in 1876.

Republicans picked James Garfield at their 1880 convention to succeed Hayes, and Garfield not only won the White House but his party gained control of both the House and the Senate.

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Until 1968, presidential candidates were picked by party conventions – a process revived by Biden’s withdrawal from race

Now that Joe Biden has dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to be the nominee, it will ultimately be up to Democratic National Convention delegates to formally select a new nominee for their party. This will mark the first time in over 50 years that a major party nominee was selected outside of the democratic process of primaries and caucuses.

Many Democrats had already begun discussing how to replace Biden. They worried that having the convention delegates, the majority of whom were pledged at first to Biden, select the nominee would appear undemocratic and illegitimate.

The Republican Speaker of the House has claimed that having the convention replace Biden would be “wrong” and “unlawful.” Others have conjured up the image of the return of the “smoke-filled room.” This term was coined in 1920 when Republican party leaders gathered in secret in Chicago’s Blackstone Hotel and agreed to nominate Warren G. Harding, a previously obscure and undistinguished U.S. senator from Ohio, for the presidency. He won that year, becoming a terrible president.

 

The tradition of picking a nominee through primaries and caucuses – and not through what is called the “convention system” – is relatively recent. In 1968, after President Lyndon B. Johnson announced he would not run for reelection, his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, was able to secure the Democratic nomination despite not entering any primaries or caucuses. Humphrey won because he had the backing of party leaders like Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, and these party leaders controlled the vast majority of the delegates.

Many Democrats saw this process as fundamentally undemocratic, so the party instituted a series of reforms that opened up the process by requiring delegates to be selected in primaries or caucuses that gave ordinary party members the opportunity to make that choice. The Republican Party quickly followed suit, and since 1972 both parties have nominated candidates in this way.

Some Democrats are worried that a new nominee, selected by the convention, will, like Humphrey, lack legitimacy since she or he will have secured the nomination without direct input from Democratic voters around the country.

In response, they’ve suggested what’s being called a “blitz primary” in which Democratic voters will decide on a nominee after a series of televised candidate town halls hosted by politicians and celebrities like Barack and Michelle Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Oprah Winfrey and Taylor Swift.

From the perspective of a scholar who studies political parties and elections, this proposal seems like wishful thinking since there’s no mechanism for setting up a workable election process in such a short period of time. The usual process of primaries and caucuses takes months, if not years, of preparation.

Some good picks in the past

While many associate the convention system with less than impressive nominees, like Harding, the record isn’t that bad.

At the very first convention, held by the National Republicans – ancestors of today’s Republican Party – party leaders and insiders nominated Henry Clay for president. Although Clay lost to Andrew Jackson the following year, he is considered one of the greatest politicians of the 19th century.

The convention system in both parties went on to nominate Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, all of whom were elected president. Of course, conventions also nominated lesser figures like Horatio Seymour, Alton Parker and John W. Davis.

But who’s to say that the current system has done any better to produce electable candidates?

Yes, there’s Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama, but there have also been less successful candidates like George McGovern, and weaker presidents like Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush.

Furthermore, had the old system been in place this year, there’s a chance that the Democrats might have avoided their current predicament.

A way to avert trouble

To the extent that Democratic Party leaders were aware of Biden’s decline, they might have been able to ease him out in favor of a better candidate – if they had been in control of the nominating process. In fact, party leaders in previous decades often knew more about the candidates than the public at large and could exercise veto power over anyone they thought had serious vulnerabilities.

For example, in 1952, U.S. Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee came into the Democratic National Convention the clear favorite in party-member polls. He also won the most primaries and had the most delegates.

Party leaders, however, had serious reservations about Kefauver since they considered him too much of a maverick who might alienate key Democratic constituencies. The party bosses also knew that Kefauver had problems with alcohol and extramarital affairs.

As a result, party leaders coalesced around Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson, who was not even a candidate before the convention started. Stevenson ran a losing but respectable race against the immensely popular and probably unbeatable Dwight D. Eisenhower. In addition, Stevenson’s eloquence and intelligence inspired a generation of Democratic Party activists. Not bad for a last-minute convention choice.

With Biden’s withdrawal, it remains to be seen if the new Democratic nominee will be a strong candidate or, if elected, a good president. But there’s no reason to think that this year’s unusual path to the nomination will have any effect on those outcomes.

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Biden’s arrogance in withdrawing so late has plunged Democrats into crisis

By giving up the nomination just 107 days before the presidential election, Joe Biden has plunged his party into the biggest political crisis in its history.

Only two one-term presidents have decided not to run again, and only Lyndon B Johnson gave up the nomination ahead of a party convention. No Democrat has ever stood down from an election this close to polling day.

It is not Mr Biden’s fault that he is suffering from an age-related slowdown that has caused so much concern from his colleagues. Even his toughest critics have sympathy for the position that he has found himself in for some months.

But the decision to hold out for this long was Mr Biden’s alone. For the chaos that will now ensue, the 81-year-old president only has himself to blame.

Mr Biden is well aware that his duty to his country and party extend far beyond the consideration of his own career. He knows, intellectually, that he should have assessed the merits of his campaign objectively before deciding to run again this year.

That responsibility is one that he has shirked in the last three weeks.

The presidential debate on June 27 – in which he gave a stuttering, geriatric performance – changed everything.

Those who waved away criticism of Mr Biden’s age, dismissing clips of his gaffes as partisan edits by Republicans and attacking media outlets that reported them, realised that it was not a Beltway issue. It was serious.

After the debate, there was probably some way to recover the Biden-Harris campaign, with extensive outreach to concerned Congressmen and an attempt to stem the exodus of donors and high-profile backers.

Instead, Mr Biden buried his head in the sand. He refused to speak to his critics for a fortnight, and delayed his conversations with kingmakers in Congress for some days.

As recently as July 7, he said that only the “Lord Almighty” could convince him to stand down – a line that was hastily revised in more recent interviews to say that a major health crisis or poll slump would also force him to go.

He also continued to make public gaffes. There was shock on all sides in Washington at the annual Nato summit on July 11 when he confused Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky, and Donald Trump with Kamala Harris.

There was no recognition from the Biden camp that these issues mattered. In speeches, he made jokes about his age and insisted that although he was old, he was still able to “tell the truth”.

For the first time, those close to him began to doubt that. On a recent call with Mr Biden, Nancy Pelosi was forced to ask that his campaign chief, Jen O’Malley Dillon, be added to the conversation to give a realistic view on his electoral chances. Barack Obama, long a support of his former vice president, became frustrated that he would not listen.

Mr Biden’s refusal to listen to his allies was uncharacteristic. He was successful in the 2020 primaries partly because of his ability to unite the Democratic Party, and build a broad coalition behind some of his landmark legislation.

But his arrogant approach to this situation has undone that work, dividing the Democratic Party and creating fury on both sides. Those critical of Mr Biden are angry with his supporters for deluding themselves into thinking he could win. Those loyal to him could not understand why so many of the party faithful had turned against their man.

People around Mr Biden have been left with the impression he has a messiah complex.

Although he only intended to serve one term, he became convinced he was the only nominee who could beat Trump, and cites the Charlottesville riots as the event that persuaded him to stand for a second time.

The truth is that Mr Biden has not been in a position to beat Trump for some time. Some of the contenders to replace him have better ratings in the swing states that will have the most impact in November.

The collapse in support for the president has not been entirely his fault. He has been a victim of political circumstance and the inevitability of ageing, and the assassination attempt against Trump last weekend only made his campaign more difficult.

But the main issue is that Mr Biden’s own management of this crisis has been poor. If Ms Harris replaces him and is unable to catch up on Trump’s commanding lead – as looks likely ─ he will rightly be blamed.

A younger, more vigorous candidate will be at least be able to attack Trump in ways Mr Biden simply was not able to over recent months.

In many ways, the 81-year-old has been an impactful and successful president. His colleagues, while furious now, will probably admit in time that his presidency was a success. But after five decades in politics, Mr Biden’s problem was that he simply could not let go.

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