Historians say Biden’s withdrawal shows American democracy is working

‘This is not chaos,’ but the move comes as Americans seem to be losing confidence in their representative democracy — and have differing views of what it means.

President Biden’s decision to end his reelection campaign following 25 days of agonizing pressure from his own party may seem like yet another moment of chaos in an American democracy already buckling under historic levels of polarization and torrents of misinformation.
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But to many historians, Biden’s announcement and the unprecedented scramble that began on Sunday to choose a new Democratic Party nominee stood out as something different. The momentous events of the weekend revealed that America’s beleaguered system of government still functioned.

“We should recognize that unexpected successions are a part of what all democracies have to live through,” said Daniel Rodgers, who taught American history at Princeton for much of his career.

Over nearly 250 years, American presidencies have ended prematurely a handful of times — including four by assassination and, in the case of Richard M. Nixon, by scandal. In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson, burdened by the disastrous war in Vietnam, shocked the country when he announced that he would not pursue or accept the Democratic Party’s nomination.

Biden succumbed to something far more prosaic: the ravages of age and, after a meandering debate performance on June 27, growing doubts among both the party elite and its base that he could defeat former president Donald Trump or effectively lead the country in a second term. In the three weeks that followed the debate, the party’s leaders mounted a relentless campaign that eventually persuaded Biden that his stepping aside was in the best interests of the country.

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