Biden drops out: How will history and our future change?
The 2024 presidential cycle has already made history, and it has barely just begun. We have already had the first 2024 presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden — the earliest ever in a presidential cycle.
We have already had a failed assassination attempt on Donald Trump’s life, which has reshaped this entire presidential race. We’ve already had the meeting of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, and we are less than one month from the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
And now President Joe Biden is out of the race.
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In a rather abrupt yet long overdue move, the inevitable finally happened. President Joe Biden’s official campaign account on X posted a personal letter — not on the official White House letterhead — indicating that he would “stand down” from the presidential race and focus on his presidential duties through the remainder of his term.
Moments later, Joe Biden’s campaign account also posted his full support and endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris as the party nominee in the 2024 presidential race. And just like that Joe Biden is out.
You will recall that it was just recently that the first presidential debate took place where Joe Biden’s campaign insisted that this debate, under strict rules, would give Biden the necessary boost he needed to demonstrate that he was fully capable and in command of his political future.
But it was just after that televised CNN debate that mainstream media and Democratic operatives finally broke rank and began to pressure Joe Biden and his inner circle to exit the race. This included pressure from Nancy Pelosi, former President Barack Obama, and several mega-donors to the Democratic Party who began to freeze funding.
First, with regards to history, this is the third time in modern politics that a sitting president has withdrawn from the presidential race. Harry Truman and Lyndon Baines Johnson both did in March of the presidential election years of 1952 and 1968, respectively.
So this has happened before. What is unprecedented is this electoral crisis now facing the Democratic Party whose delegates have already been pledged to Joe Biden just 100 days away from the election.
Remember the Democratic Party already went through a primary in which it was very apparent to Joe Biden’s inner circle and to those within party leadership that the president’s cognitive health has been deteriorating. The scandal in the making is that, while apparent to the American public for some time and apparent to political leaders, the mainstream media brushed past this and ignored it to prop up Biden’s candidacy. And in many ways, this is an electoral crisis of their own making.
The 2024 election is all but certain now, whether or not all delegates will go to Kamala Harris. Even as many Democratic leaders at the state level have already pledged their support to the Vice President ahead of the party’s convention in August.
Kamala’s 2020 presidential race has already made her significantly unpopular within her own party, and she quickly exited the 2020 presidential race before the Iowa caucus, having won no Democratic delegates. That’s important to remember.
As a senator, she represented the extreme left-wing position in her own party on abortion, voting against the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Act and against the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. She also voted against the codification of the Hyde Amendment, which prevents federal funding for abortion.
As attorney general for California, she refused to defend her state’s constitution that defined marriage between a man and a woman when it was challenged in court. She also officiated the first same-sex marriage in San Francisco when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Proposition 8 in California.
As senator, Kamala Harris also challenged Brian Buescher’s nomination to the federal bench on account of his Catholic faith and his personal views on abortion and of the understanding of traditional marriage as a political liability and a disqualification from serving on a district court.
While Biden has certainly served as the elderly statesman and figurehead who served as a leader in the Democratic Party for nearly 50 years, seeing its overhaul and transition to the positions we see today on abortion, sexual orientation, gender identity, embracing the economic policies that include aspect of socialism and now open borders on immigration, Kamala Harris certainly embodies a giant leap forward to an extreme position in all of these categories.
Now, it remains to be seen exactly what will happen at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month, but we will all be watching with interest and concern. And there will no doubt be legal challenges mounted by Republicans as this open convention will test every rule and law on the books. Both sides right now are, no doubt, lawyering up.
So what will all of this mean for America’s political future?
When you consider what has transpired these past few years, it is anything but normal. A new normal is now taking shape. And when public institutions run by political factions built on public trust are willing to jeopardize the faith and the credit of average citizens for political power, that is a recipe for total disaster.
Real freedom is dependent upon the unbreakable bonds of faith, even public faith.
Faith is a critical fundamental component that is indispensable to freedom, and that is why Christians are needed now more than ever to be involved in our civic process. No constitutional republic can sustain itself without a moral and religious people, as John Adams once warned. No constitutional republic can sustain a political process when public trust has been so abused and broken. It is obvious that the personal ambitions of some have left us in that hole for the time being.
Pray for our nation and for our representative leaders. Pray that God’s perfect peace, grace, and mercy would be shown even as it is completely undeserved. We were born for these times, and God has a purpose for this American moment. We should never miss it, even if we don’t always understand it.
Originally published at the Standing for Freedom Center.
Ryan Helfenbein is the Executive Director of the Standing for Freedom Center and the Vice President of Communications and Public Engagement at Liberty University. Ryan hosts “The Give Me Liberty” weekly podcast and is also a weekly contributor on “In Focus with Alison Steinberg.”If you’re interested in having Ryan as a guest on your show or speak at your next event, contact us at [email protected] Ryan on Twitter at @RHelfenbein.
