That’s just how you do it. It would have been far, far more damaging for him to spend a few weeks going “ah, well, maybe I won’t run”. It always looks a bit silly in retrospect, but total confidence right up until you change direction is just how you have to do politics, in general.
It seems to me the pressure built up and he could no longer fight it, which means he had no choice. The party did not allow it, just like they didn't allow Bernie in 2016.
Except in this case "the party" is actually "people that vote for Democrats". It's insane and infuriating to try to blame this on "the elites" when a significant majority of Democratic voters wanted Biden to step aside. If anything, it was "the elites" who tried to hide Biden's true condition and then tried to gaslight us all by pretending his debate performance was just some kind of bad one-off.
> If anything, it was "the elites" who tried to hide Biden's true condition and then tried to gaslight us all by pretending his debate performance was just some kind of bad one-off.
Yes, and it worked, and it's working again. I'm just saying it's not what people would have voted for if there was truly a choice. The presidential election is just a show for the managerial class to select their new spoke person.
I mean, you could read it that way, and without inside knowledge it would be impossible to prove or disprove, but realistically, even if this was fully amicable, even if this had been _instigated by Biden_, it would still have played out in public exactly the same way. There’s no world in which an incumbent national leader will say “hey, thinking of resigning, more info in a few weeks”; it’s just not how it works.
There is no message his campaign could give other than "Biden is running" and have Biden still run - any other message would damage him.
Saying you are considering dropping out would be immediately pounced on, and effectively mean you'd have to drop out. So I don't think there is any signal in the messaging there except that he was probably still seriously considering running.
