The New York Times Editorial Board: Biden Made a Courageous Choice. Democrats Must Seize the Opportunity.

President Biden’s decision to exit the 2024 presidential election is a fitting coda for a man whose life has been devoted to public service. Mr. Biden has served the nation well as its president. By agreeing to step down when his term ends in January, he is greatly increasing the chance that his party is able to protect the nation from the dangers of returning Donald Trump to the presidency.

I wasn’t calling for Biden to drop out, and I’m not going to say “I told you so” or anything, but I was of course a bit nervous about his prospects against what should be the least electable felon in American history. I’m cautiously optimistic about what this means for the election this November.

One, with no incumbent in the race, each candidate can run against how things are going (even though they’re going pretty well overall). Assuming it does end up being Kamala Harris, she will have a slightly harder time since she’s of course in the administration, but she can also distance herself from mistakes that were made in a way Biden could not. This could help appeal to voters on the fence.

Two, the Trump campaign’s mainstream argument against Biden (you know, besides their more anti-immigrant, anti-LGBT, etc. messages meant for their base) seemed to be that Biden was too old and couldn’t do the job. All of their marketing had gone behind this message, and now that’s all worthless. Trump at 78 will be the oldest person to ever to be a major party’s nominee, and he’ll be two decades (two hard decades, by the looks of it) older than his likely opponent. They’ll surely find something to latch onto, but they’ve been honing this “Biden is too old” message for years, and now they need to start fresh.

As always, we’ll have to wait and see to find out how this all shakes out over the next 100-something days, but the last thing I’ll say is that I’m glad we don’t have a slavish cult of personality around one political leader on this side of the aisle. For months there has been an open debate around whether Biden should be in the race from people on the political left in the United States. Not everyone liked the idea, but it was a debate happening in public and without people being called traitors or being ostracized from the party. Contrast that with what we see on the right where any questioning of Trump is met with derision not only from the party, but from Trump himself. I stand by everything I’ve said about Trump, even after the assassination attempt (which of course was horrible): he’s a cruel, immoral person who is the most dangerous political leader we’ve had in a generation, and I want him to get beaten at the ballot box so badly even his tiny, little, selfish heart feels ashamed.