Joe Biden: Democrats say goodbye as emotional president takes his leave at national convention

It was as awkward as it was affectionate – the farewell to a president who didn’t want to go from a party that couldn’t bear him to stay.

“We love Joe,” they chanted, waving banners that said the same. They were all pals now. Had he still been running, Mr Biden would have left the stage to the sound of his own footsteps.

On the night, he looked and performed better than he had for months. Stepping down suits him as much as it suits his party.

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He acknowledged a necessity that he stood down when he said as much when he told the convention “I love my job, I love my country more”.

He said that he had been too young for the Senate when he entered that institution and, now, was too old to stay as president.

Mr Biden addressed the moves within the Democratic Party to oust him, saying: “All this talk about how I’m angry at all the people who said I should step down – that’s not true.”

Cue the camera cutaways, including to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the party grandee who negotiated Mr Biden’s ‘surrender’. On the night, she was seen chanting and waving the We Love Joe poster in response.

Perhaps the time for healing has begun – if not that, then maybe a mutual understanding that their party and movement is in better shape heading into November’s election because of the change.

The president delivered a CV retrospective that didn’t undersell his achievements in office. It was father of the nation stuff – nothing we hadn’t heard before – that ran through his results and styled himself as a saviour of democracy. “Thank you Kamala, too,” he told the crowd, even if this felt more like a speech for his past than her present – his legacy and her presidential fight.

It will all help his successor. When the political honeymoon period evolves into harder interrogation, Kamala Harris will be selling and defending their joint record in the White House. If Biden can ram home the successes, so much the better for her – even if he was never able to do it sufficiently for himself.

A robust late-night performance over nearly 50 minutes may have had some pondering the wisdom of ditching Joe Biden, but they would surely be in the minority. However able he showed himself last night, it still looked, sounded and felt like darker times revisited for Democrats. The contrast is accentuated by the current buzz around the replacement ticket that’s transformed the party’s potential.

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The opinion polls speak to that, as does the atmosphere in Chicago’s United Center. There was a rock star reception for Kamala Harris when she took the stage for an opening night introduction and the production line of speakers thereafter smacked of generational change.

But it was a night for Joe Biden – an occasion to honour the old as well as roll out the new. There was much emotion around the president and he, himself, looked tearful by the end – not the one he wanted but the one his party demanded.

It is the long, emotional goodbye. But it’s definitely goodbye.