CHICAGO — Last week, organizers of the Democratic National Convention proudly debuted the stage at the United Center they’d been working on for “over a year,” where the party will officially kick off the general election over the next four days.
The man they originally built it for will see it for a few hours, stand on it maybe a couple of times and then is expected to hastily get out of town, leaving it behind for someone else to build the next chapter of their career on.
Such is the melancholic undertone for day one of the massive party confab. President Joe Biden is scheduled to speak Monday and then depart for a vacation as Democrats toast his decision to step down and hand the presidential nomination over to Vice President Kamala Harris. It is the end-of-summer journey where Biden — depending on who you talk to — went from party standard-bearer to victim of party leaders to proud mascot of what it truly means to be a Democrat to convention footnote.
All of those vibes and more will be apparent on Biden’s night, Democrats told NOTUS. Many delegates are glad to no longer be nominating him but also deeply grateful that he stepped aside. But also: eager to move on, quickly.
“People want to hear a forward-facing type of speech from [Biden],” John Verdejo, a DNC member from North Carolina, told NOTUS. “A sort of, ‘Thank you for considering me and for your support, and here is the person that I’m passing the torch to.’”
Like other delegates reached in the days leading up to the speech, Verdejo was quick to put Biden into the pantheon of popular past nominees attending the convention: Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Biden and Rodham Clinton are the keynote speakers on Monday night. First Lady Jill Biden will also speak, and Biden family members will appear. The night will literally begin with Biden’s decision to step aside; delegates entering the United Center will be greeted by a quote from Biden’s July 24 Oval Office address when he formally stepped away from the campaign. “History is in your hands” will be printed on the stairs delegates climb to get to their seats for the night’s programming.
White House aides said to expect a presidential speech long on Biden’s record and pro-democracy message, all capped with a call for unity.
“The President’s desire is to make a strong case for Harris-Walz and hand off the convention to them, which all week will continue to highlight the Biden-Harris record,” a Biden aide said. “The President is pleased at the momentum behind the campaign, and looks forward to making his case.”
The drama in Chicago is rawer in some circles. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has spoken publicly recently about losing sleep over the impact her role in Biden’s stepping aside might have on her decades-old relationship with the president. Obama was reportedly among those urging his former VP and those around him to reconsider the race.
So is Biden’s vacation plan advantageous, well-timed or spite scheduling?
“My sense is, it’s less about him and more about his circle. They feel that they were pushed out. Why would they want to sit around and be a part of this?” a plugged-in Democratic lawmaker told NOTUS.
But Biden departing Chicago after his speech is not “a demonstration of his sentiment towards [Harris] or what he will do to help her win,” the lawmaker added — whatever animosity is there, it’s not directed at her.
“It’s more like, ‘Why do I need to sit around these people who showed no loyalty to me?’ the lawmaker said.
There are political reasons that make this a particularly well-timed planned vacation, though. The RealClearPolitics polling average shows Biden with a disapproval rating hovering around 60% as the convention gets underway. Democrats publicly begged him to abandon his reelection campaign in part because they were concerned voter feelings toward him were dragging down party-wide volunteer-recruitment efforts, fundraising and general enthusiasm among the base, not to mention polling. One of the biggest storylines before Biden dropped out was how to win over the “double-haters” — or make people who hated both Biden and the GOP nominee, former President Donald Trump, hate the Democrat just a little less.
That talk is, for the most part, over now, thanks to Harris. The party is very clearly trying to turn the page, and too much of Biden the president might make that harder to do. That’s even as many Democrats have rekindled a deep love and respect for Biden the man in the weeks since he (eventually) stepped aside with a great deal of (public) grace and pushed Democrats to nominate the first woman of color to top a presidential ticket.
It’s likely Biden will receive a hero’s welcome from Democrats when he takes the stage. When Biden and Harris appeared together last week for a White House event, the first time they had done so since Harris took over as nominee, the supportive crowd chanted, “Thank you, Joe.” It is a common sentiment among Democrats.
“He will be thanked for making a difficult choice for the future of the party. His decision to pass the baton to the next generation has invigorated the base and left the GOP in utter disarray,” Sabrina Lucia Rezzy, New York delegate and veteran political operative, said when asked how Biden will play in front of the DNC crowd. “His speech Monday will be as much about the future of the party as it is about what this administration has accomplished.”
“It will be a historic mic drop,” Rezzy went on.
In short, Democrats like him! But the polls show the broader public kinda doesn’t.
Republicans faced a similar conundrum in 2008. President George W. Bush was the man who had restored the Republicans to power after eight years of Clinton. But his RCP disapproval rating was hovering around 70% when the party’s early September convention rolled around. The campaign chronicle “Game Change” details a plan from top officials of Sen. John McCain’s campaign to send Bush to Africa for the duration of the convention and address it via satellite. (Two former McCain officials did not respond to a request for comment.) In the end, Bush and his even less nationally popular vice president, Dick Cheney, were slotted for the convention’s night one but didn’t appear in person at all after the first day was canceled following a natural disaster. The memory of a nominee trying to push aside an unpopular president remains.
But there’s nothing really to see here, say Biden’s allies. He is the sitting president. He is a busy person.
“He wants to go on vacation,” said an operative close to the White House, “while things are quiet.”
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Evan McMorris-Santoro and Jasmine Wright are reporters at NOTUS. Calen Razor is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.