Mark Halperin
@MarkHalperin
WHEN JOE BIDEN WILL ANNOUNCE HIS RETIREMENT
The decisions Joe Biden faces now as he moves to end his presidential campaign and his career are personally and professionally painful for him.
Based on my reporting -- and having covered and watched Joe Biden for decades -- it is pretty clear what is happening.
Nancy Pelosi is forcing Biden’s hand. She’s gone out of her way so far to make this process as painless for him as possible. But she knows him well enough to know that he is one of the world’s worst and slowest decision makers, someone who will delay as long as possible before picking a path among unattractive options. Which means she will do whatever it takes now to get the right forcing mechanisms in place.
The rainbow coalition of new members of Congress coming out against Biden today is another series of turtles on fence posts.
The message is clear: Do what needs to be done now, Joe, or the level of pain will be ratcheted up.
Amongst the many paradoxes and ironies in play now are that these new applications of pain will produce more of the kind of embarrassments and humiliations that are amongst the most painful aspects of this experience for the president. And, another paradox, those feelings make Biden less likely to be willing to reach decision day, because they make him angry. So Pelosi will likely have to break him fully to get him to act; a little pain won’t work.
Biden faces many decisions now, not just the tentpole choice to end his fourth and final presidential campaign.
Should he endorse or not endorse Vice President Harris? The plan was for him to not endorse, in order to create the appearance of Harris earning this on her own and creating distance between her and her unpopular boss. But some Harris advocates, many women, were infuriated by my reporting of Thursday and say it would be disrespectful of Biden not to give his veep his full-throated backing.
And part of Joe Biden, who feels strongly that his record as president is amazing, is probably pissed that it is even an issue that anyone in Harris World would not think she would benefit from his backing.
Then there are the other subsidiary decisions and Biden’s determining what role he wants to play in them.
Who wlll Harris pick as her running mate?
Should pressure be applied to keep anyone else from challenging her for the nomination?
How will the convention program be structured to give appropriate homage to a president with the patriotism and spirit of sacrifice strong enough to step away from the job he loves?
On the last point, Joe, Jill, and Hunter know that whatever promises are made now, when the time comes to actually schedule and execute the four days in Chicago, once Joe is no longer the presumptive nominee, he loses the capacity to keep changes from being made that will raise the profile of the new ticket and lower his.
And, of course, despite the conversations and events of the last few weeks that have led Biden to understand what he must do, he still in his bones and heart and gut believes he is the best and only person in the party at this point who can beat Donald Trump.
When I reported Friday that Biden would make his announcement as early as this weekend, I did so because that is what my sources said. But, for all the reasons above, I was deeply skeptical it would happen that quickly.
Joe Biden, like the Congress he served in for so long, religiously follows Halperin’s Third Rule of Capitol Hill: No decision is made until it absolutely must be made – and sometimes not even then.
But in this case, the clock is ticking and Nancy Pelosi feels that intensely.
But/but Joe Biden is still grappling with the practicalities and psychology of all of this, and doing it as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory, who now also has Covid, a son who is facing both possible prison time and a second criminal trial, and a pressure campaign that is a nightmare for him.
Over the balance of July, Joe Biden can do this his way or Pelosi’s way, the hard way or the easy way, the way that limits embarrassment or the way that stokes it.
When and how the announcement will be made is contingent on all the factors above, and many more.
Veteran Biden and Pelosi watchers know this: Joe Biden will put this announcement off as long as he can, and it is Pelosi’s role to get it done in time.
How those two strong wills end up interacting is what we will all be watching.
