President Biden should resign in favour of women candidates

Where were you when an all American boy from Pennsylvania attempted to assassinate former US president and candidate for president Donald Trump on Saturday, July 13, 2024? People were famously supposed to know where they were when president John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963 and may remember their whereabouts when Trump was nearly assassinated whether or not he is elected president in November.

I was at home in London and witnessed the shooting on TV as it unfolded with running commentary from the BBC’s Gary O’Donoghue who was in situ in Pennsylvania. The next day BBC TV showed O’Donoghue reporting the assassination attempt while taking cover lying down as the shots rang out. He is a tall bulky, blind man, no less able for his disability as the BBC’s chief North America political correspondent whose reporting of the shooting and its aftermath was prize-winning journalism.

Trump was very lucky the bullet that could have killed him just scraped his ear, but he also helped his good fortune by instantly ducking and crouching after which his security agents formed a protective ring round him ready to take the proverbial bullet. Fortunately for them no other bullet struck as the shooter was taken out quickly – though it has to be said that the brave agents around Trump did not know this at the time.

An interesting outcome of Trump’s close encounter with death was that initially it seemed to have mellowed him, which he acknowledged saying that an event like that changes you in many ways.

But his nomination acceptance speech last Thursday and the Republican Convention itself were triumphalist, and there was nothing gentle and mild about his choice of the 39-year-old JD Vance as his running mate for vice president that spread panic in many European capitals. It seems that together they are set to negotiate with Russia over Ukraine come what may – not if they win but once they win. In the words of JD Vance himself, it is not in America’s interest to be involved in a war thousands of miles away. 

Will these two mavericks take over America? That is the question because there may be no going back if they win. Trump’s character is well known, Vance’s less so, although he wrote a best-selling autobiographical novel about his depressing and sad poverty-stricken background called Hillbilly Elegy which was made into a film currently showing on Netflix.

Against all the odds Vance managed to get to Yale law school and became a multimillionaire and a Republican Senator for the state of Ohio – a 21st century Richard Nixon on the make? I am referring to Nixon’s humble origins and rise to the office of vice-president in1953 on the back of persecuting unAmericans – the equivalent of current America-first fanatics. 

As it happens however there is also a feel of the last days of the Nixon presidency in the summer of 1974 about Joe Biden’s presidency, including the uncanny coincidence that in Cyprus people are reliving the 50th anniversary of the tragic events there in July 1974 that are associatedwith the breakdown of the Nixon presidency much like the Biden presidency seems to be crumbling today.

In July 1974 Nixon was pre-occupied with the Watergate scandal concerning his criminal involvement in the cover up of a break-in at the Democratic Party’s HQ at the Watergate building in Washington DC. Nixon was fighting for his political survival as he was about to be impeached and the Supreme Court was expected to order disclosure of the Oval Office tapes that would have proved the impeachment charges. He cut a deal with vice-president Ford that he would resign on the understanding that Ford would pardon him, and he resigned the presidency on August 9, 1974.

The tables turned in 2024. The twice impeached convicted felon Trump is riding high in the opinion polls unscathed by the many criminal charges against him, boosted by the senile performance by Biden in a debate with Trump and the latter’s survival of an assassination attempt that enhanced his action man image full of vim and vigour.

As if that were not bad enough, Biden tempted fate by saying he would make way for another candidate on medical advice if he were suffering from an incapacitating condition. And then lo and behold he contracted Covid and began to look pitiful and frail and obviously unfit to perform his tasks as president let alone defeat Trump. 

Worse still, senior figures in the Democratic Party broke ranks and publicly called on him to step down as candidate on the grounds he was not only likely to lose them the presidency but also the prospects of winning a majority in the Senate.

It is a fine mess the Democratic Party has got itself into and it doesn’t get any easier even if at this late stage Biden calls it a day. He has two choices. He can resign the presidency and allow Vice-President Kamala Harris to succeed him as the first American woman president in the hope that an incumbent woman of colour – preferably with another woman as a running mate – would be a winning combination against Trump. A pro-choice female duo would hurt him where he is weakest – his alleged misogyny.

Or he can step down as candidate and cause a messy election that could alienate not only American womanhood but black and Latino voters. Sometimes the right choice is obvious.

Alper Ali Riza is a king’s counsel in the UK and a retired part time judge