Biden's legacy is still being written. How he helps Harris may be key.

WASHINGTON — Now a caretaker president, Joe Biden has no realistic hope of getting a divided Congress to pass unfinished parts of his agenda.

But what he can do in his remaining months in office may be even more important in preserving America's democratic traditions: stop Donald Trump's return to power, the president suggested Wednesday night in his Oval Office address.

“Nothing,” Biden said, “nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition. So, I’ve decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation.”

Biden has left it to his vice president, Kamala Harris, to defeat Trump. He bowed to political reality in dropping his re-election bid, conceding that the younger, more energetic Harris may stand a better chance in November.

But Biden’s legacy is tethered to the outcome of the election, even if he's no longer on the ballot, historians say. Proud as he is of hard-won legislation aimed at upgrading roads and bridges, Biden needs a Harris victory to secure his own place in history, they said.

“People don’t go to presidential libraries to see the pen used to sign the infrastructure act under glass,” Douglas Brinkley, a Rice University presidential historian, said in an interview.

“If Harris loses, it will show that Biden’s biggest accomplishment in history — defeating Trumpism in 2020 — only meant that he contained it for a short moment.”

Over Three-Fifths Of Americans Believe Kamala Harris Covered Up Biden’s Health Issues, Polls Find

Daily Caller News Foundation, HAROLD HUTCHISON, July 25, 2024

More than three-fifths of Americans believe Vice President Kamala Harris was involved in covering up President Joe Biden’s declining health, two polls found.

President Joe Biden announced Sunday that he was dropping out of the presidential race, and Harris secured enough verbal support from Democratic National Convention delegates on Monday to be the presumptive nominee. The polls, conducted after Biden’s withdrawal but before his Wednesday speech to the country, showed a supermajority of Americans think Harris was involved in concealing Biden’s declining cognitive and physical condition. (RELATED: ‘What Is She Willing To Hide?’: MSNBC Swing Voter Panel Questions If Kamala Covered Up Biden Health Issues)

A poll by YouGov for The Times showed that 54% of respondents believed that Biden’s health issues were covered up, with 68% of those respondents saying they felt Harris had “a great deal” to do with concealing the truth about Biden’s health. Another poll conducted by The Democracy Institute and Daily Express US found that 62% of Americans felt Harris “lied” to the American public about the president’s health.

The YouGov poll was conducted between July 22-23, surveyed 1,170 registered voters and has a margin of error of 3.2%. The Democracy Institute/Daily Express US poll was done of July 24, surveyed 1,200 likely voters and has a 3% margin of error.

Democrats began calling for Biden to step aside following a poor performance in a June 27 CNN debate with former President Donald Trump, where he froze and lost his train of thought. Actor George Clooney noted in a July 10 New York Times op-ed that the Biden, at a June fundraiser prior to the debate, “wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020,” but “the same man we all witnessed at the debate.” (RELATED: ‘Kamala Was In On It’: Trump-Aligned PAC Drops Anti-Kamala Harris Ad Less Than Two Hours After Biden Quit)

Trump leads Harris by 1.9% in a national head-to-head matchup, according to the Real Clear Polling average of polls from July 5 to 24. Trump’s lead grows to 2.8% when Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein and independent presidential candidates Cornel West and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are included in surveys.

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