Biden’s Last Act: Passing the Torch to Kamala Harris

He has enjoyed a Presidency of accomplishments after a lifetime of service marred by personal tragedy. Now his VP-pick Kamala Harris can carry Biden’s legacy forward, stop Trump and break new ground.

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. will be the final silent generation President of the United States and leader of the free world. As he passes the torch to a younger generation, he closes his generation’s chapter of American leadership with achievement and hope for the future.

The Democrats already have the future thanks to Biden’s Vice Presidential pick. After an accomplishment-filled Presidency, Joe Biden’s final legacy can be delivering the first African-American female President in United States history and saving American democracy from a convicted criminal.

The boy from Scranton

Born in St. Mary's Hospital in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Joe Biden’s father had been successful, purchasing a home in the affluent Long Island suburb of Garden City in the autumn of 1946. However financial hardship and setbacks followed and were so severe that his family were compelled to live for several years with Biden's maternal grandparents in Scranton.

Biden grew up witnessing his father struggle for work amid the economic decline in Scranton, PA during the 1950s. It would become a recurring theme he would remanence and ponder over for the rest of his political career.

Another key element of his childhood was his chronic stuttering, something not alleviated until his twenties. Sadly for Joe Biden (and indeed any and all minorities) the 1950s were a brutal time to be in any way different. On more than one occasion, Biden reflected mournfully how at the time stuttering was often regarded as a sign of low intelligence. Being counted out, overlooked all manifesting from a childhood fight to simply be heard would become a major theme of his life.

In one story Biden recalled how his Catholic teacher nun would often join in on the class ridicule when he attempted to speak publicly in class. Biden’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens described for PBS how their mother was Joe Biden’s top defender.

One time when his teacher called her brother “Mr. Buh-buh-buh Biden” their mother marched Biden back to school and confronted his teacher directly: “Sister, did you make fun of my son? … if you ever, ever, ever do that again, I’m going to come back and I’m going to knock your bonnet right off your head. Do we understand each other?”

And here we find another formative moment in what would make the future President, the vital importance of family. The stuttering kid would go on to become his class president, and in time, the last President of the United States from his generation.

But along the way there were myriad tragedies, more than many actually appreciate.

You might have thought that when Biden defeated Republican incumbent J. Caleb Boggs to become the junior U.S. senator from Delaware in 1972, it’d be the happiest of memories. But a mere handful of weeks after getting elected senator, his wife Neilia and one-year-old daughter Naomi were killed in an automobile accident while Christmas shopping.

Son Beau (aged 3) and Hunter (aged 2) were also in the car were rushed to hospital. Beau had a broken leg and Hunter a minor skull fracture. Joe Biden reportedly planned on resigning to care for them before Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield persuaded him not to.

Biden took his Senatorial oath from his children’s hospital bedside.

Future family happiness came when he later married his second wife, First Lady Jill Biden. She has been noted as being staunchly protective of her husband throughout their married life, noting she knew of few other people touched by such tragedies as Joe.

Another future blow came when in eldest son Beau passed away to brain cancer. Joseph Robinette "Beau" Biden III had been 44th attorney general of Delaware and major candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor of Delaware when he died.

In his grief Joe Biden described his son Beau as having "all the best of me, but with the bugs and flaws engineered out." Biden opted due to the emotional fallout of Beau’s death to avoid challenging Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination in 2016; after advice from Obama.

Writing a memoir titled ‘Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose’ (2017), Biden reflected mournfully “The time will come when [his] memory will bring a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eyes.”

The title ‘Promise Me, Dad’ referenced a conversation he had had with his eldest son Beau after his cancer had spread aggressively and significantly. Coming to terms with his own mortality, Beau assured his father that no matter what happened, he would be okay. He then asked his father to promise the same in return.

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Presidential accomplishment

Engaged he would remain post-Beau’s passing. One of the major subtexts often leaked out from Biden-world friendly journalists over the years since has been Biden’s dissatisfaction with the Obama-Clinton elites who convinced him to step aside in 2016 for Hillary. It’s also a big factor reportedly in why he insisted on going for it in 2020. Biden felt a personal responsibility to firstly protect the Obama-Biden White House legacy that Hillary’s defeat enabled Trump to threaten. But secondly, it has been reported many times that Biden felt he was the only man who understood what sort of voters Donald Trump was enthralling with his populist lies, and that only the stuttering working class boy from Scranton, PA could stop him.

And stop him he did, in 2020 defeating Trump decisively by a popular vote margin of 7,059,526 (although due to the electoral college system, the actual margins proved much tighter in key swing states)

Foreign policy highs and mixed bags

President Biden would prove that ‘presidenting’ was something he had a knack for, earning a barrel-load of accomplishments. On foreign policy, his reenergising NATO would prove prescient. Biden’s Presidency ensured American leadership was in the room to rally the free world together in response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

His continuation with Trump-era anti-China tariffs and ‘containment’ politics proved detrimental to hopes for détente between the twin great powers. And although it proved highly controversial, it paled compared to the criticisms he received over his Israel-Hamas war stance.

Joe Biden has generally (if not as unconditionally as some of us might prefer) stood alongside Israel as it defends itself from throat-slitting, baby burning Islamist terrorists. Biden, magnificently, defied pressure - at personal political cost domestically with key demographics in critical swing states - to keep the weapons passing to Israel. This was as symbolically important as sending the carrier fleet off the Lebanese coast as warning to Iran’s other Islamist proxies Hezbollah to keep quiet as Israel cleaned out the Hamas rat-nests.

Although his decision to pressure Israel to not finish the Hamas war off by mopping out Rafah proved polarising with many Israeli advocates.

Biden defenders will insist - with some merit - that the fact he has taken flack from both sides underscores his fair bowling throughout the crisis, although others might suspect he lost his nerve.

As ‘peace protesting’ youths ran amok on University campuses and Cornell Uni Professor Russell Rickford called the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust “exhilarating” & “energizing”, Biden is accused of edging away from his previously unequivocally pro-Israel line. Critics insist this was due to Muslim-American voters in Wisconsin and Michigan’s upset with him damaging his re-elect polling. But Biden’s defenders insist it’s simply inconceivable that a full-blown Israeli assault on Rafah could be undertaken with anything approaching acceptable civilian losses (even if this means permitting the Hamas snake to make its nest in the tunnels beneath the city).

Domestic victory after legislative victory

On the home front, President Biden’s list of accomplishments in some ways outshines Barak Obama’s. Scranton Joe can boast with clear justification that he did more than most occupants of the Oval Office on the toughest and most insoluble of issues.

Harkening back to his days as a bi-partisan deal-maker in the Senate, Biden managed (with Republican and Democrat votes) to push through gun safety legislation, a major infrastructure bill (promised by both predecessors but never delivered) and also essential drug price falls.

Regarding this last accomplishment, it’s worth underscoring just how significant that actually is. A 2020 study found that from 1999 to 2018, ‘Big Pharma’ and the ‘health product industry’ spent a combined $4.7 billion lobbying the United States federal government. To put that in context, it works out as an average of $233 million per year.

Joe Biden as President managed to overcome that relentless lobbying and get a tribal and polarised Congress to pass critical legislation to reduce drug prices for everyday Americans. In four years he managed to overcome the road-blocking Pharma lobby to sign legislation permitting Medicare the power to negotiate drug prices; “President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act will save millions of seniors money on some of the costliest prescription drugs on the market”

“HHS Announces Cost Savings for 64 Prescription Drugs Thanks to the Medicare Rebate Program Established by the Biden-Harris Administration’s Lower Cost Prescription Drug Law” - U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, June 26, 2024 HHS Press Release

The most impactful Presidential debate in our lifetimes…

Despite such a successful Presidency in so many ways, age awaits for no man, not even leaders of the greatest power on earth.

The burden of the office coupled with his already-advanced years clearly slowed Joe Biden down. Never more visibly than when he undertook the CNN Presidential debate in Atlanta, Georgia on Thursday 27 June.

As a centre-left old-school (Bill Maheresque) liberal of a distinctly Blair-Clinton variety, I watched the debate through my fingers. I was mortified to see every suspicion I had had that Biden was cognitively struggling with the pressure of campaigning. At one point I even shed a tear as I worked my way through one of many beers that night. Then I felt angry, a burning furious anger with the DNC, his closest aides and those closest to him who insisted on hanging him out there like that.

That CNN Presidential debate reminded me of many passed U.S Presidential debates in history. And like all of those we could care to mention, it proved a decisive inflection point for Joe Biden. I put together two videos, the first highlights passed US debate moments we could compare Biden-Trump 2024’s debate. The second ridicules the client-journalist media clowns (MSNBC’s Morning Joe, I’m looking at you) who persisted in gaslighting us all into believing Biden was still totally capable of undertaking the crushing rigours of a 21st century $14.4bn Presidential race.

The 2024 CNN debate was a mournful end to what had been on any critically fair evaluation an extremely effective US Presidency. Biden in four short years had delivered more than the sexual-assaulting, secret stealing convicted criminal Trump ever had. Despite the debate, nobody can take any of that away from President Biden. He saved Americans from Trump, he saved them money on drug prices, stood well-enough by Israel and led the free world against renewed Russian aggression. All while somehow getting Democrats and a handful of Republicans to work together to deliver gun control legislation and critical infrastructure.

Not bad Joe, not bad at all. But his final success could yet still be to come…

Kamala Harris is the future

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr’s final victory could be to deny the sexual assaulting, secret stealing convicted criminal Trump the White House a second time. Only this time as a transitional president, passing the torch to a new generation. Biden’s final gift to a thankful world could be President Kamala Harris.

If he nominates his Vice President, whom he chose for a reason, she will carry the Democrats to unity and renewed hope with a decisive message against Trump.

Kamala Harris vs Donald Trump?

• the former prosecutor vs the convicted criminal

• a woman committed to defending your rights vs a man who wants to steal your rights away

• first female African-American President vs a boomer who boasts about sexually assaulting women

Scranton Joe can finish his action-packed Presidency off with a final tour de force. He can bequeath America it’s first African-American female President, and consign the hate-filled national populist screeds of Trumpism to the rubbish heap where it belongs.

A world is grateful, a nation thankful. Thank you Joe. You have done more than most after more than 50 years of selfless public service. It’s time to rest now, but only after we stop Trump one last time, and deliver President Harris to victory.

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Alternatively why not make a one-off donation? All support is appreciated