Biden Gave the Speech He Needed to Give | Opinion

Last night President Biden delivered an energetic, 52-minute speech very late on the first night of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. It was a perfectly fine speech that served as a capable kickoff to the week’s festivities and allowed the president to bask in the relieved adoration of the audience. It also should put to rest any lingering doubts about whether Democrats made the right call by pushing him aside for Vice President Kamala Harris. While the president didn’t seem worryingly lost and confused like he did at the June 28 debate with former President Donald Trump, he also displayed all of the limitations that led to calls for his ouster in the first place.
You can sympathize on a certain level with the president’s predicament. He was there to recommend Harris for the job that he currently has and believed to the bitter end that he deserved to keep, which is a little bit like getting fired and asked to find your replacement before you leave. If reporting is to be believed, Biden never came around to the idea that he couldn’t win, but was persuaded instead by the looming danger of Democratic Party disunity that his continued presence on the ticket would invite.
But most national political leaders understand that the stakes are higher than themselves, and after an agonizing period of reflection and uncertainty, Biden rose to the occasion. In his televised speech announcing his departure from the race in late July, though, Biden gave no substantive reason for his decision and his endorsement of Harris was perfunctory at best. Given a month to process his ouster, Biden emerged with a somewhat more convincing and enthusiastic case for his vice president that nevertheless lacked the forcefulness and detail that many were hoping for.
Although advance reports said that the address would be forward-looking, Biden spent considerable time defending and outlining his legacy, something more like a farewell speech. He claimed that “we’ve had one of the most extraordinary four years of progress ever. Period.” And he did occasionally situate Harris as part of his achievements. “When I say we,” he noted, “I mean Kamala and me.” He talked about Harris’s tie-breaking votes in the Senate on key legislation. He gave her credit for pushing to re-open schools as the Covid crisis was winding down. But for most of the speech he ran through a long and familiar list of policy achievements that he made little effort either to connect to Harris or to tie to broader themes that might appeal to the electorate.
Look, no one is ever going to believe these two were super tight. There have been no chummy memes about their friendship like the ones about Biden and Obama that liberals used to pass around in the Before Times. Whether it was age or indifference, the president seemed throughout his presidency largely uninterested in boosting the profile or fortunes of his hand-picked successor, and she was clearly not in his inner circle of advisors. It is hard not to think that her selection as vice president was mostly transactional.
But none of that matters anymore. Harris has done what Biden couldn’t—erase Trump’s modest lead and replace it with one of her own. And this week of free media is an unparalleled opportunity to help reintroduce her to the public on her terms rather than his.
And while Biden briefly emphasized the key themes of Harris’s streamlined, lean campaign messaging—personal freedom, populist economic issues like affordable housing and the extremism of Trump and his MAGA movement—there needed to be more. In keeping with longstanding practice, he barely mentioned abortion and reproductive rights, critical issues for the Harris-Walz campaign.
He said a few nice things about Harris toward the end of the speech but again seemed to leave a lot of potential hyping on the table. “She’s tough. She’s experienced,” he said of Harris. “And she has enormous integrity. Her story represents the best American story.” Overall, Democrats had to be sighing with relief as they listened to this speech and realized that their fortunes are no longer dependent on the president. Biden really does look quite frail, and his speech was occasionally hard to understand, as has been the case for at least a year. Age is a relentless beast that comes for us all, but real talk: his cadence is not confidence-inspiring. Beyond that he had an opportunity to speak more specifically about what Harris did inside the administration—how she worked with countries in Central and South America to reduce migration flows, for example—and either passed on it or forgot. The speech was quite frustrating in that sense.
He also returned to phrases and themes that he wore out over the past two years, including the idea that “we’re facing an inflection point, one of those rare moments in history when the decisions we make now will determine the fate of our nation and the world for decades to come.” It’s a tired line that long ago stopped motivating voters, who have now been told for three straight elections that the stakes are existential. He talked, again and for the umpteenth time, about Jan. 6.
Was it a bad speech? No. But watching it, I kept thinking: I am so glad this is no longer the guy standing between us and a second Trump term. And judging from the palpable excitement inside the United Center as we move toward the main event, I’m not alone.
David Faris is an associate professor of political science at Roosevelt University and the author of It’s Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. His writing has appeared in The Week, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Washington Monthly and more. You can find him on Twitter @davidmfaris.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.