Here’s how Joe Biden’s re-election campaign imploded
Lesson summary
Hey there, welcome to episode number 707 of Plain English. I’m Jeff. JR is the producer. And you are listening to the podcast that helps you upgrade your English skills with stories about current events and trending topics.
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All the resources for today’s episode are at PlainEnglish.com/707.
Today’s story is about Joe Biden’s historically bad summer. It all started on a debate stage with Donald Trump, and it ended with an announcement on X that he’s withdrawing from the presidential race. This is something that will be studied for decades, for centuries even.
That’s what you’ll hear about on today’s story. In the second half of the episode, you’ll learn what it means for something to come “down to the wire.”
Biden’s awful debate and the rise of Kamala Harris
When Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 election, he promised to be a “transitional” president. He didn’t say it out loud, but most people interpreted his words to mean that he would serve just one term. Biden was 78 when he began his four-year term. He was first elected to the United States Senate in 1972.
But in late 2023, things began to change. Joe Biden filed his paperwork for re-election, despite the fact that he would be 82 at the beginning—and 86 at the end—of a second term. As a sitting president, he won his party’s nomination easily.
Behind the scenes, though, people began to whisper about the president’s age. He wasn’t in command of meetings like he used to be, they said. He sometimes forgot key facts, they worried. He left a lot of the hard work to his staff, they complained.
And then there were the polls. Biden was trailing former president Donald Trump in opinion polls. Many voters were demoralized : they wanted fresh faces, not the 81-year-old current president and not the 78-year-old former president.
So in a bid to regain the momentum, the Biden campaign proposed an early debate with Trump. It would be at the end of June, months before the candidates typically debate ahead of a November election.
The gamble backfired. Biden was awful: it was the worst debate performance of any candidate in a televised presidential debate, ever. On several occasions, Biden lost his train of thought. His sentences trailed off. He confused trillion with billion, then billion with million.
His voice was hoarse. He kept clearing his throat. But worst of all was his facial expression. When Trump was speaking, Biden appeared to stare blankly, often with his jaw hanging open . He was overmatched and he looked confused.
But his gaffes, confusion, and demeanor were just the beginning. He was simply unable to engage with Trump, to push back effectively against his opponent. Trump won the night. Democrats watched with worry and then horror. They saw their chances of holding the White House slipping away. Donald Trump was sure to win the election now, Democrats thought. Something had to change—and fast.
They say that the worst thing for a politician is for voters to have their existing suspicions confirmed. And that is what happened to Biden. Large majorities of the population already thought Biden was too old to run for a second term. And what happened on the debate stage only confirmed their suspicions.
Early polls after the debate showed Trump’s lead expanding. Biden and his campaign tried to control the damage. Biden immediately went out and gave a decent campaign speech the next day. He did a few television interviews . He avoided any catastrophic mistakes in those appearances, but he didn’t change many people’s minds about his fitness for a second term.
And then he hosted a large international summit of NATO countries. He got through most of the weekend summit without any damage. But he introduced the president of Ukraine as “President Putin” and he referred to his vice president, Kamala Harris, as “Vice President Trump.”
That seemed to be the end. Several elected Democrats had publicly urged him to withdraw after the debate: more added their names to the list after the NATO summit. Many of the party’s heavyweights were working behind the scenes to encourage the president to step aside . And then on Sunday afternoon, July 21, he posted a letter to the social media network X, saying he would withdraw from the race.
No major-party candidate has withdrawn so close to an election in modern history. And Biden’s withdrawal left a hole at the top of the Democratic Party. Any Democrat could have run for the party’s nomination.
Immediately after Biden’s announcement, the vice president, Kamala Harris, announced she would run for the nomination. No other Democrat challenged her for the nomination, which she officially received in August.
Kamala Harris is 59 years old, a generation younger than Biden or Trump. She’s the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father. She was a prosecutor in San Francisco, then the top law-enforcement officer in California, and then a U.S. Senator before becoming vice president in 2020.
Since she became a candidate for 2024, Harris has raised piles of campaign cash, tied or surpassed Trump in opinion polls, and re-energized the party. The election will probably be close—as they all are these days—but Trump’s momentum and strong lead are gone. This looks like it will come down to the wire .
Jeff’s take
When Biden was a candidate, there were two debates scheduled: one in June, which they had, and then one in September. Now it looks like there might be two head-to-head debates between Harris and Trump and one between their vice-presidential candidates. That’s not final yet, but that’s what it looks like.
What a crazy summer. It’s not an exaggeration to say I was refreshing my phone multiple times a day, sometimes multiple times an hour, reading the news, wondering what would happen. And the news was nonstop—almost a full month of drama passed between the debate and when Biden withdrew.
Like I said last week, books will be written about this. Historians will argue about whether Biden could have won if he had stayed in the race. I think Biden was flirting with disaster up until the very last minute.
If Harris wins, then all will be forgiven: Biden will look like an elder statesman who passed the torch. If Trump wins, Biden’s legacy will be severely tarnished. He’ll look like he selfishly stayed in the race too long and allowed Trump to return.
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