On July 21, local time, US President Biden announced that he had decided to withdraw from the presidential election and would focus on fulfilling his presidential duties during his term of office.
CNN reported that this is the first time since 1968 that a current president in the United States has withdrawn from the re-election campaign.
The result of this "making history" is not surprising — — After the first candidate’s TV debate in the 2024 presidential election in the United States nearly a month ago, the discussion about whether Biden’s physical condition can support him to continue to participate in the election has never stopped.
In fact, the American people do not want to see the picture of current President Biden and former President Trump "competing on the same stage" again.
A recent poll data showed that 56% of the respondents did not support Trump’s election, 70% of the respondents did not want Biden to seek re-election, and many even questioned whether the current American political system served ordinary Americans.
Biden VS Trump, Americans feel that they are losers. Now, will this situation change?
From the first round of TV debates, the disappointment of Americans began to intensify.
In the American media’s own words, the debate was more about personal attacks than policy statements, and mutual abuse ran through the whole night.
Then, there was a constant voice from within the Democratic Party asking Biden to withdraw from the election, and the Republican Party also took the opportunity to spoil the situation.
This farce lasted for nearly a month.
Liu Weidong, a researcher at the American Institute of China Academy of Social Sciences, told Tan Zhu that on the surface, the biggest resistance to the Democratic Party’s substitution came from Biden himself and his team, but the serious opposition within the Democratic Party on this issue was the real reason for the delay in the substitution.
In the past, Biden himself insisted on not withdrawing from the election because "he is the only person who has defeated Trump at present".
But as long as we look back on the 2020 general election, we can find that Biden is actually just an option after compromise for the Democratic Party.
There are different factions within the Democratic Party. Diao Daming, deputy director of the Center for American Studies at Renmin University of China, described Biden’s characteristics as a long-term elite and relatively moderate stance, which made him more acceptable to different factions.
In the eyes of the top leaders of the Democratic Party at that time, Biden was the person who could best integrate the resources within the party and had the best chance to defeat Trump in the general election that year, so they would support Biden.
Now, the top of the Democratic Party thinks that Biden can’t beat Trump, so it is imperative to change people.
But how significant is Biden’s withdrawal to the Democratic Party?
At present, the National Congress of the Democratic Party has not yet been held. According to the relevant agenda, Democrats who are interested in competing for the new presidential candidate can take the initiative to express their willingness to stand for election in the next period of time, and then vote at the open party congress. The person with the most votes can be among the presidential candidates.
However, Ocasio Cortes, a well-known representative of the Democratic Party, revealed that there is still no decision on the candidate to replace Biden within the Democratic Party.
In the past few years since Biden’s administration came to power, there have been contradictions in legislation and policy making within the Democratic Party. There are more and more contradictions, Biden’s "bonding" role is getting weaker and weaker, and other candidates who can unify the differences within the Democratic Party have not stood out.
When differences between political parties become the norm in American politics, the interests of political parties will override the interests of the American people.
What the American people really care about will be selectively ignored.
In the statement of withdrawing from the election, Biden made it clear that he would fully support the current Vice President Harris to win the presidential nomination.
He also called on Democrats to unite and defeat Trump. In this regard, Trump responded for the first time that Harris is more easily defeated than Biden.
It can be seen that the two parties are fighting over how to belittle each other.
For the American people, what they want to see is the ability of the two parties to compete and solve problems.
At the beginning of this year, The Hill released a poll. The data shows that in this election year, Americans are most concerned about the border and immigration issues, followed by the economy and inflation.
When considering and solving problems, it is not enough to just observe a political figure or party, but to go deep into the texture of American political operation.
Take immigration as an example, the two parties should introduce a bill in Congress to solve this problem.
However, after three months of wrangling back and forth, the Democratic and Republican parties came up with a "package" bill that simultaneously strengthened border security and spent $60 billion to support Ukraine.
The reason why "packaging" occurs is that under the background of infighting, the best choice is to "package" the bill that one wants to pass into the other’s bill, so that both can be passed at the same time. If it cannot be "packaged", even if Congress is paralyzed, the two parties will not seek compromise.
On December 30 last year, an article entitled "The Root Cause of Congressional Dysfunction" was published on the website of "Politicians" who were biased towards the Democratic Party, which pointed out that the US Congress had fallen into a state of dysfunction.
From this perspective, the interests of the American people, whether Democrats or Republicans, are completely unimportant in their eyes.
For the American people, what they consider is not which one will be better, but which one will be worse and which one will do something with no bottom line. The so-called vote is "the lesser of the two evils."
When a country’s political parties can only compete on the bottom line, then who will be the ultimate loser?
