Biden steps off stage as Harris takes the spotlight

WILMINGTON, Delaware — Since President Joe Biden bowed out of the 2024 presidential race, he’s faded into the background as his hand-picked successor takes on more official duties. 

In the two weeks since he announced on social media he wouldn’t seek a second term, Biden has held few public events. The commander in chief watched from the sidelines as the Democratic Party united behind Vice President Kamala Harris as the new presumptive nominee. 

The remarkable changing of the guard is unfolding because Democrats deemed it necessary to have a shot at stopping former President Donald Trump from returning to the White House. Biden, who said he chose saving democracy over “personal ambition,” not only became a lame-duck president but took on a supporting role to his vice president. 

“He’s fading into the sunset,” one Democratic strategist told the Washington Examiner. 

Biden’s retreat comes as Harris must create some distance from her boss as she reenergizes the party’s voters and donors with the chance to make history as the first woman president. She’s leaning into her pre-Washington resume as a California prosecutor who can stand up to Trump, a convicted felon. 

It’s a delicate tightrope of respecting Biden’s legacy while keeping him out of the spotlight during the final months of the election due to his unpopularity and the public’s concerns about his age and mental fitness. 

Multiple veteran Democratic operatives told the Washington Examiner that the best way for the president to help his 2020 running mate is to simply stay out of the way.

“President Biden has accomplished more in four years than most presidents do in eight,” one strategist claimed. “He saved the country from COVID-19 and Donald Trump, but, respectfully, he needs to officially pass the torch. Voters must be able to equate Vice President Harris with all of the wins this administration has notched, and I feel like having him out on the stump for her could undermine those efforts.”

Republicans, in an attempt to slow Harris’s surge in popularity, have levied new attacks of late claiming the vice president was looped in on an effort to obscure the seriousness of Biden’s aging from voters. A second Democratic operative said that they believed that narrative would “only pick up steam” if the president remained in the public eye.

A third Democratic operative suggested that any appearances Biden makes on the campaign trail might gloss over some of the self-inflicted wounds Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), have committed over the past two weeks.

Vance’s debut on the campaign trail earned him the particularly damning label from Democratic critics as “weird.” The tone and content of Trump’s Wednesday appearance at a panel during the National Association of Black Journalists conference in Chicago drew sharp criticism.

“I love Joe Biden, but when he was the nominee, it was much easier for Trump to seem on the ball,” a Democratic strategist told the Washington Examiner. “But what we saw onstage Wednesday has Republicans regretting all those calls for cognitive tests for elected officials.”  

The Harris campaign did not answer questions about whether Biden’s time away from the public eye marked a conscious campaign strategy. The president does appear to be giving Harris plenty of room to spread her wings. 

He departed the White House on Friday for his private home in Wilmington, Delaware, where he will remain through Monday, and is expected to travel to Rehoboth Beach again in August, though White House officials have not yet announced that second trip to Delaware this month.

The president has held only a smattering of noteworthy public events after deciding to bow out of seeking a second term. The first came during his official Oval Office address explaining his decision back on July 25. The second occurred last week, when he outlined three major proposed reforms to the Supreme Court.

His third, and arguably most important, public appearance was a two-for-one. Thursday afternoon, Biden announced the safe returns of three Americans, Evan Gershkovich, Paul Whelan, and Alsu Kermasheva, from Russian captivity before greeting the three of them when they touched down on U.S. soil late Thursday night. Harris joined him on the tarmac to share in the celebration. 

His questions from the press now are about Harris, such as who should be her running mate.  

“I’ll let her work that out,” Biden said Friday.

In addition to her campaigning across the country, Harris has stepped up her official duties over the past two weeks. Most notably, the vice president served as the de facto head of state during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the United States, his first since the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack.

Harris met separately with Netanyahu at the White House. She told the Israeli leader flat out that “it is time” to end the war in Gaza, a distinctly sharper message than Biden’s past statements on the conflict, before delivering a national address on the issue.

The Gershkovich prisoner swap Thursday underscored just how delicately Democrats and the Biden-Harris team are handling the president’s situation.

According to the White House, the exchange, which brought the total number of unjustly detained Americans abroad that Biden has freed as president to 70, was the product of months of closed-door personal diplomacy on the part of the president and represents a highlight of his term in office.

“Today’s exchange is a feat of diplomacy that honestly could only be achieved by a leader like Joe Biden,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters during Thursday’s press briefing. “The president was himself personally engaged in the diplomacy that brought this about.”

Sullivan’s comments, however, caused reporters in the room to ask about Harris’s role in the exchange.

“Both President Biden and Vice President Harris have made the return of unjustly detained Americans hostage — American hostages an absolute priority,” he responded. “I’ve sat in the Oval Office more times than I can count over the course of the past years, providing briefings and updates on this and getting peppered with questions by both the president and the vice president; thinking through the strategy; iterating the approach, which she was a participant in very much — a core member of the team that helped make this happen.”

The ultimate sign that Biden is stepping off stage, won’t come until later this month at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. 

Even before Harris received enough delegate votes on Friday to earn the party’s nomination, party officials switched up the convention’s speaking schedule. 

Biden, while he was still running, had been slated to deliver the keynote address on Thursday, the closing night of the convention. 

He’ll now speak on Monday in a curtain-raiser address before the convention shifts toward Harris and the future of the party.