Anatomy of a fall: Biden passes the torch

US President Joe Biden speaks about gun safety at Everytown’s Gun Sense University at the Washington Hilton in Washington, DC, on June 11, 2024. [AFP]

Four years ago, as he ran for the White House, Joe Biden saw himself as a one-term president, a savvy conduit from the chaotic years of Donald Trump to a new generation of Democratic leaders.

"Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else," Biden said at a campaign event in March 2020, with a group of much younger politicians vying to be his running mate -- including Kamala Harris, who ultimately got the nod.

"There's an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me. They are the future of this country," said Biden, who went on to beat Trump, though the Republican never accepted his defeat.

It was widely seen as his main mission -- dislodge Trump from the White House, then bow out, with elegance, after one term.

Biden, now 81, will indeed be a one-term president, but under tumultuous, agonizing circumstances: long-simmering worries about his age and mental sharpness have exploded to doom him when he decided to go for a second term after all.

On Sunday Biden said he was dropping his bid to run against Trump again in November, yielding to intense and growing pressure as polls showed most people even in his own Democratic Party felt he was too old to run for another term, much less serve four more years.

Defiance to dropping out

Presidents tend to see their party take a beating in congressional elections held halfway through their term, but Biden and his Democrats did surprisingly well in 2022. A feared hemorrhaging of Democratic seats failed to materialize.

This was due in part to Americans' anger over the Supreme Court's ending of the 50-year-old federal right to abortion -- the decision of a court with three new conservative judges appointed by Trump.

Energized by that strong showing, months later Biden announced that he would seek a second term after all.

"When I ran for president four years ago, I said we are in a battle for the soul of America. And we still are," Biden said in April 2023.

"The question we are facing is whether in the years ahead we have more freedom or less freedom. More rights or fewer," Biden said in a video announcing his 2024 run.

Biden and his party went through the motions of the Democratic primary elections with no serious opposition, although some in the party grumbled that Biden was too old to seek a second term.

"No, I've been very clear. I'd like to see a generational change," said Tim Ryan, a Democratic senator from Ohio.

Polls had long shown that many people considered Biden's age an issue, and for him the beginning of the end came on a debate stage with Trump in Atlanta on June 27.

As 50 million people watched on TV, the president performed dismally, struggling to complete sentences, speaking incoherently at times and looking dazed, his mouth agape.

A drum roll of calls for him to bow out began immediately, and grew steadily louder, amid warnings to Biden that he could not beat Trump, might destroy his own legacy if he insisted on running and lost, and could might well drag the Democratic Party down with him in defeat.

To the very end Biden insisted, day after day, he was all in -- the only candidate who could beat Trump as he had once before.

As he isolated at his beach house this weekend to recover from a Covid infection, Biden announced he would go back on the campaign trail next week.

Until Sunday's bomb dropped in a message on X. He said it was in the interest of the country and his party for him to step aside.