In March 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced he would not seek reelection. It was an admission by Johnson that his administration failed in its conduct of the Vietnam War. His vice president, Hubert Humphrey, received the Democratic nomination and was trounced in an electoral landslide.
The Biden-Harris administration is weighed down with its own major failures. That’s why the administration’s job approval ratings are well underwater on every major question: inflation, the economy, the border, crime, and foreign policy. Biden’s decision to withdraw from the race is — no less than LBJ’s — an implicit admission that his administration has failed on the major issues of the day. But at least Biden and Harris have pretended to defend their record on these issues from time to time.
That’s not true for the signature promise of the 2020 Biden-Harris campaign — uniting the country. Just days before announcing that he was withdrawing from the presidential race, Biden expressly admitted that he and Vice President Harris failed Americans on this score as well. In fact, in his interview with BET last week, Biden didn’t just acknowledge that the country is divided. Instead, he conceded that things are even worse than that. In Biden’s words, the nation is “so, so, so divided.”
Unity Was a Centerpiece of the 2020 Campaign
“Unity” was a central theme and core promise of the 2020 Biden-Harris campaign. We all remember that, even if Biden doesn’t anymore.
In his victory speech — which he gave days after
