Before today, I was inclined to agree with Noah that Joe Biden was toast — unelectable even against Donald Trump, with a campaign irreparably damaged from all the major Democratic figures admitting what we could all see: that Biden would be incapable of winning or serving another term. But, I did not really believe until today that Biden would drop out of the race. After all, while Biden has always been a hollow man and a transactional politician who would never stand up to the demands of his party’s various constituent groups, the one thing he’d never before been asked to surrender was his own position. (Even his 1987 withdrawal was done in good part to retreat to his perch as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee during the pivotal Robert Bork hearings.) But the pressure from donors and Democratic power brokers was too much in the end. Biden, or someone in his corner, finally threw in the towel.
