Political Landscape Shift: President Biden Chooses Not to Seek Re-Election at Age 81 Amidst Growing Pressure

The American political landscape has again demonstrated that a day in politics can be a lifetime, as fortunes and predictions can turn very unexpectedly.

Such was the case over the weekend when President Joe Biden, under tremendous pressure from within his own political camp, decided it was time to abandon his plan to contest the presidency at the age of 81.

There was panic in the Democratic Party as Biden, despite all that he had achieved in the last four years, seemed incapable of leading the kind of vigorous campaign required over the next five months to stave off a return of Donald Trump to the White House.

No matter how it was explained or messaged since his abysmal debate performance against Trump, there was no denying that Biden was not as physically or mentally ready to challenge a wily candidate like Trump who has a long history of untruths.

Biden acknowledged what the polls and his party colleagues had been echoing; that the risk was too great to go into the presidential fight with such dismal numbers and lack of enthusiasm from the voter base.

Of course, Biden was not able to win over many young voters with his stand on the Israeli-Hamas conflict, where he leaned in hard with the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu.

Biden’s condemnation of the International Criminal Court order for the arrests of Netanyahu and the Hamas leader for war crimes, also saw him on the wrong side of some donors to his party and progressive voters.

In fact, progressive groups and Arab Americans, a traditionally Democratic voting bloc, in the state of Michigan, vowed to withhold support for Biden over his strident stand with Israel and the provision of arms for that country which were used to kill thousands of Palestinian civilians.

It was argued that Biden could not win the electoral college without Michigan.

The Detroit Free Press quoted Osama Siblani, a longtime Arab American advocate and publisher saying: “Everybody in my community is very thrilled that Biden is out of the way . . . . We don’t have to worry about someone who is a partner to the genocide on the head of the ticket for the Democratic Party.”

The excitement over the likely choice of Vice President Kamala Harris becoming the next United States president is also creating fear; not that she is incapable of doing the job or that she is not fit for the office.

The United States is a highly divided country and much of that division has been fomented by the Republican party, the candidate Donald Trump and his acolytes. Harris is the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, and she is a woman.