By Peter Baker
When the crowd members in the United Center first chanted, “Thank you, Joe! Thank you, Joe!” on Monday night, President Joe Biden looked down, fought back tears and soaked in the admiration.
But he knew. He might not have wanted to admit it. But he knew. They were thanking him, yes, for what he accomplished during a lifetime in public service. But they were also thanking him, let’s be honest, for not running again.
It is hard to think of a more bittersweet moment for a president who spent more than a half-century on the stage only now to be involuntarily shown the exit. The warm bath of affection in Chicago, real as it may have been, could go just so far to salve the wounds of the past few weeks.
As much as they cheered Biden and waved their preprinted “We Y Joe” signs, the thousands of Democrats gathered for their quadrennial national convention were sending him off to the presidential retirement home four years before he was ready. Biden found himself demoted from speaking as the presidential nominee on Thursday night, when as recently as a month ago he had expected to address the convention, to Monday night, an evening usually reserved for the party’s past stars.
Biden, 81, gave little indication that he was eager to go. While he made a couple of self-deprecating jokes about his age, he barely alluded to his decision to step aside under pressure from fellow Democrats worried that the struggles of the oldest president in the nation’s history would sink the party. When he did, he simply framed it as an act of sacrifice to save American democracy from former President Donald Trump.
“It’s been the honor of my lifetime to serve as your president,” he said in a 52-minute speech capping the first night of a convention celebrating the nomination of Vice President Kamala Harris to be his successor. “I love the job, but I love my country more. I love my country more. And all this talk about how I’m angry at all the people who said I should step down — it’s not true.”
At that point, the crowd chanted, “We love Joe! We love Joe!”
“I love my country more,” Biden repeated, “and we need to preserve our democracy.”
Citing song lyrics, he offered a valedictory. “America, America, I gave my best to you,” he said. “I made a lot of mistakes in my career. Well, I gave my best to you for 50 years. Like many of you, I’ve given my heart and soul to our nation, and I’ve been blessed a million times in return with the support of the American people.”
He might not acknowledge being angry, but he was not going out of his way to offer forgiveness either. After leaving the hall, he spoke briefly to reporters at the airport before leaving on Air Force One for a vacation in California and was asked about his relationship with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was seen as a critical force in pressing him out of the race. “No, I haven’t spoken to her,” he said, then added, “No one made my decision but me.”
This was the 13th convention that Biden attended going back to 1972 and at least the eighth where he spoke, but the last he would address as a current office holder or candidate — and the one speech he never wanted to deliver. He has been such a part of the American political firmament for so long that it seemed hard to imagine him ceding the spotlight.
And in fact, he made little accommodation to that unhappy reality, largely giving what seemed like the speech that could have been written before his withdrawal from the race on July 21, extolling his record and excoriating Trump’s. Practically all he had to do was tweak the section talking about goals of the next term to substitute the phrase “Kamala and Tim will” where he would have said “I will” and excise the words, “I accept your nomination.”
Indeed, while he declared that picking Harris was the “best decision I made my whole career” and praised her as “tough” and “experienced” with “enormous integrity,” he did not offer an extended testimonial to her, leaving that to future speakers on future nights.
After he wrapped up his speech, though, Harris appeared onstage to honor him. “I love you so much,” she could be seen telling him as she hugged him. Looking up at him as if he were her father, she repeated, “I love you.”
But the Democrats jumbled their homage plan with a slate of speeches that went so long that Biden was pushed out of prime time on the East Coast. He did not begin his own address until about 11:30 p.m. in Washington, a cardinal sin in modern convention planning. Democrats were so far behind schedule that they had to scrap a video tribute to the outgoing president.
If Biden minded, though, he did not say. Nor did he cut short his own address. He had a lot to say and wanted to say it. Much of it was Joe Biden Classic, all the familiar themes, hokey stories, family sayings, unabashed patriotism and sometimes debatable claims. Some of it adopted the language of his 2020 address almost word for word, down to the “veins bulging” description of white supremacists marching in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.
All his favorite phrases were there, too — the “inflection point” that the country faces and “middle out, bottom up” to describe his economic philosophy and the punctuating “not a joke” and “I’m serious.”
He finished with the lines he uses to end almost every speech. “Folks, we just have to remember who we are,” he said, raising his voice to a shout. “We’re the United States of America, and there’s nothing we cannot do when we do it together. God bless you all. And may God protect our troops.”
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