Trump is the first presidential candidate in history to beat his opponent months before the vote

President Biden acted on his own and displayed a unique selflessness, serving the nation rather than his personal interests, or at least that’s the approved narrative, but a narrative is simply a story we lay over underlying facts to make sense of disparate events.

As the “official” narrative would have it, President Joe Biden selflessly withdrew from the race last week, sacrificing his own personal power and ambition to protect democracy and cede the future of the country to the next generation.  So glowing was the coverage of his farewell (?) speech on Wednesday evening, that some compared him to none other than George Washington himself, the Father of the Country, author of the most influential and revealed actual farewell speech in world history.  Rebecca Brannon, a supposed professor of history, writing for The Hill, claimed “Joe Biden joins George Washington as America’s second Cincinattus.”  In her view, “George Washington famously became America’s Cincinnatus by voluntarily resigning his appointment as commander in chief of the United States armed forces.  Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus was a Roman patrician of the early Roman republic who seized power as consul but voluntarily gave it up when civil war ceased. He was celebrated in Roman culture for this, and the story was well known to 18th-century Americans who saw in Rome’s history a guide to the dos and don’ts of democratic practice.”  “President Biden,” meanwhile, “has invoked the example of George Washington choosing to stay for only two terms instead of staying ‘for two, three, four or five terms till he died.’ What many do not know is that Washington was twice faced with the question of whether to serve a third term.”  Thus, “George Washington was a Cincinnatus two times. President Biden, you have stepped into Washington’s shoes.  Washington and Biden have made enormous sacrifices of personal ambition for their country. They teach us that our nation is far bigger than any single person no matter how much power they amass or good they do.”  Ms. Brannon is not alone, either.  Forbes made almost the same claim, “George Washington Would Have Given Joe Biden’s Speech,” Slate.com insisted “This is Joe Biden’s George Washington Moment,” and The Telegraph had it, “Joe Biden channels George Washington.”  On CNN, political pundit Abby Phillip declared outright, “This moment puts him with a bunch of American greats, the sort of George Washingtons of the world.”  Even less glowing analysis, such as from CNN’s Stephen Collinson insisted the President’s speech “will be studied for generations.”  The President “presented his selflessness in ending a reelection campaign and bid to win a second term all president’s cherish as a direct comparison to what he sees as the self-serving corruption of Trump.”  Previously, Mr. Collinson claimed, “President Joe Biden ran for reelection to save democracy. In the end, he came to the shattering realization he could only do so by ceding power himself…In offering to hand over power in service of what he saw as the national interest, he struck a contrast with former President Donald Trump, who fought bitterly against leaving office after losing a free and fair election to Biden in 2020. It’s ironic that Republicans who whitewashed Trump’s election-stealing effort are now accusing Democrats of crushing the will of primary voters who voted for the president’s reelection bid.”

Whether you choose the glowing or (slightly) more grounded version, the implication is clear:  President Biden acted on his own and displayed a unique selflessness in the face of adversity, serving the nation rather than his personal interests, or at least that’s the official, approved narrative.  A narrative, however, is simply a story we lay over underlying facts to make sense of disparate events, something we tell ourselves to explain the complexities and contingencies of history.  In this case, there is another, likely more accurate narrative that you are just as unlikely to hear from the usual suspects:  Former President Donald Trump is the first Presidential candidate in United States history to beat his opponent months before the election, destroying him so utterly and thoroughly that he had no chance in November, and his party opted to force him to withdraw, against his will and the will of the voters, instead.  Contrary to the way President Biden’s withdrawal has been framed by Democrats and the mainstream media, a political race doesn’t exist in a vacuum, where President Biden is on island making decisions that are not influenced by his opponent.  It is a contest, if not a pitched battle, between two individuals, each reacting to the other, attempting to force the other’s hand, putting pressure on the other, at times dictating the moves of the other to ultimately win more votes. President Biden wasn’t standing on that debate stage on his own, melting down before the country and the world in isolation.  He was standing across from his opponent, the former President, who came prepared to expose him and did exactly that.  The debate itself was arranged this early in the cycle largely because President Biden was already running behind this opponent, and sought an opportunity to reset the race, believing that it would be the opponent who said something inappropriate, lost his temper, or found himself unable to respond to his various legal challenges.  As US News and World Report framed it two days before the actual event, “The stakes are high in a rematch that also marks the first debate between former and sitting presidents and features the two oldest major party presidential candidates in U.S. history. But after months of flagging approval ratings and head-to-head polling numbers in the matchup with Trump – including in key swing states that could decide the contest – the onus arguably lies more heavily on Biden to turn in a strong performance Thursday night in Atlanta.”  “It’s just a very odd time for a debate and to think it’s going to have a lasting impact,” explained David Schultz, a professor of political science and legal studies at Hamline University in Minnesota. “But I’m guessing the Biden campaign is hoping that this…starts to shift some perceptions or shift the momentum.”

Putting this another way, former President Trump pressured President Biden into an early debate by running a campaign that was performing far stronger than expected and the debate wouldn’t likely have occurred otherwise.  It was also widely believed beforehand that the network, notoriously Trump-hating CNN, the venue without an audience, and the rules in general favored President Biden. Many conservatives, in fact, felt their candidate had allowed himself to be taken advantage of simply by being willing to participate in the first place and that he only should have done so after fighting harder for supposedly more favorable rules.  As The Miami Herald reported at the time, “Several of these rules, including the empty studio and muted microphones, were proposed by the Biden campaign in May, when it announced the president would not participate in debates hosted by the Commission on Presidential Debates. The new rules will likely assist Biden more than Trump, political experts said.”  “I think on the whole the lack of a studio audience will benefit President Biden,” claimed Susan Ohmer, a professor of modern communication at the University of Notre Dame in an interview with McClatchy News. Trump has “become accustomed to drawing energy from an enthusiastic crowd,” she added. “The quiet of an empty studio won’t provide that kind of reinforcement. Also, if Mr. Trump makes his points loudly; it may come off as belligerent in that kind of space.”  “Trump’s brand is rule-breaker, and crowds are his oxygen,” echoed Martin Kaplan, a professor of communication at the University of Southern California, also to McClatchy.  Likewise, “The muted mics may benefit Biden, since Trump likes to talk over his opponent,” explained Candice Nelson, a professor of government at American University, once again to McClatchy.  Ms. Ohmer even went so far as to wonder how the moderators would respond when the former President inevitably broke the rules, and started carrying on even while his microphone was off, suggesting some breach of etiquette was inevitable.  “So the real question will be how Jake Tapper and Dana Bash (the CNN moderators) handle his ignoring the muted mike (microphone). Will they remind him? Interrupt him?”  She asked.  At the time, the conventional wisdom also held that debates don’t matter much anyway. CNN’s Ronald Brownstein provided an analysis and some historical perspective on debates in general two days before the match up.   “Almost without exception,” he wrote, “academics who have studied public opinion polls tracing back decades believe that the debates, for all the attention they receive, have had only minimal effect, if any at all, on the outcome of presidential races.”  These debates may have mattered “at the margin – a little bit here, a little bit there …maybe,” explained Christopher Wlezien, professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin.  “It’s really hard to tell if it’s had much of an effect at all. The best way to predict where we are going to be at the end of the debate season is where we are at the beginning of the debate season.”

President Trump, however, defied those odds and the naysayers who claimed the rules didn’t favor him to both take the opportunity to debate President Biden in the first place, much earlier than any other meeting like this in modern history and ultimately deliver the equivalent of a knockout blow in a boxing match, making the debate the most consequential ever, directly leading to President Biden’s withdrawal from the race less than a month later.  Nor was President Trump idle while his opponent desperately sought to save his campaign, insisting over and over again that he would remain in the race to the point where “only the Lord Almighty” could make him quit and completely giving lie to the idea there was anything voluntary about his departure.  As the BBC reported on July 19, while he was recovering from COVID, “US President Joe Biden is looking forward to ‘getting back on the campaign trail next week’, fortifying his commitment to stick in the race as more Democrats on Friday called for him to step aside as the party nominee.”  “The stakes are high, and the choice is clear. Together, we will win,” the President declared.  “Absolutely, the president’s in this race,” re-election campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon told MSNBC’s Morning Joe, describing her boss as “more committed than ever to beat Donald Trump” and saying he’s “best person” to take the former President on.  “Joe Biden has made it more than clear: He’s in this race and he’s in it to win it,” said a campaign memo that same day. “Moreover, he’s the presumptive nominee — there is no plan for an alternative nominee. In a few short weeks, Joe Biden will be the official nominee. It is high past time we stop fighting one another. The only person who wins when we fight is Donald Trump.” These comments were made less than a week after the former President narrowly survived an assassination attempt, turning what could have been a tragedy into an indelible image of strength and defiance, and hosted what is widely believed to have been one of the most successful political conventions conducted by either party in modern memory.  The Wall Street Journal, which is not generally a fan of President Trump, described it as “Trumpian Triumph.”  The Associated Press claimed the former President himself received a “hero’s welcome.”  The sense of unity and excitement was so prominent, even progressive outlets noted the obvious.  As Slate.com put it in a roundabout compliment, “Days after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, Republicans arrived to Milwaukee to renominate him for president—and, by all accounts, to toast to their odds for November. The party atmosphere pervaded the event, even as largely placid protestors gathered outside the compound and darker messages took hold in each evening’s speeches.”

This was the context, created by Donald Trump, a man who has been declared politically dead more times than I can count, in which President Biden resigned from the race after being forced to do so by powerbrokers in his own party including former President Barack Obama and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, plus members of Congress who defected and relentless pressure from the mainstream media.  If the former President didn’t re-emerge from the political wilderness, earn his party’s nomination and strengthen it, applying massive pressure to his opponent at every possible turn, Biden certainly wouldn’t have resigned.  In other words, President Trump accomplished what no one before him has ever done.  He’s beaten his opponent before the voting even began, or at least that should be the approved narrative. As he readies himself to face the newly coronated Vice President Kamala Harris, this also makes him the only candidate in history to take on two opponents in the same race.