When is the optimal time for Biden to drop out of the race?

Like a magician setting up a trick in one hand while distracting the audience with the other, the Biden White House and its allies are desperately trying to distract the attention of the American people from President Biden’s age, his obvious frailty and his increasing verbal and mental gaffes.

It has now gotten to the point where I have had a number of Democrats — including staunch supporters of the president — tell me it makes them “nervous,” “uncomfortable,” “sad” or gives them a feeling of “foreboding” anytime they watch President Biden speak in public, interact with guests or walk up or down the stairs to Air Force One.

Many I speak with honestly care about the president and want the best for Joe Biden, the human being. They all understand that every person on earth — rich or poor, famous or not — ages out. It is a reality and finality of life which unites us all.

As stated in this space in the past, I don’t believe Biden will be the Democratic nominee in 2024. Now, while the president, his White House and his allies may predictably denounce such speculation as ridiculous or wishful thinking, what if I and others turn out to be correct?

That possibility raises a critically important question: When would be the optimal time for President Biden to announce he’s dropping out of the race to give the Democratic Party the best chance to retain the White House?

A very strong case can be made for: immediately. If the Democratic National Committee is going to open up the primary to other candidates, the sooner the better.

Of course, a Democratic president dropping out of the race for reelection is not without precedent, or irony in this case. 

On March 31, 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson went on national television to make two shocking announcements. The first was that he was halting the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam. The second was that he would not seek his party’s nomination for president.

The coincidental part of those announcements made 55 years ago is that both may have been forced in part by the words and deeds of then–New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy — the father of the man now challenging President Biden for the nomination. 

By the time Johnson made those announcements, he was already viewed with deep suspicion by Republicans as the architect of “Big Government,” while many on the left, especially those in college, viewed him as a warmonger spot-welded to the military industrial complex.

Prior to his March 31 remarks, Johnson had shrugged off such criticism. None of that cut deeply. 

But then the shadow of Robert F. Kennedy fell across his path. First, via his withering attacks against Johnson on Vietnam. One such rhetorical attack occurred on Feb. 8, when Kennedy declared: “Our enemy, savagely striking at will across all of South Vietnam, has finally shattered the mask of official illusion with which we have concealed our true circumstances, even from ourselves, unable to defeat our enemy or break his will — at least without a huge, long and ever more costly effort.”

Kennedy, who truly despised Johnson for a number of reasons, called for the United States to enter into immediate negotiations with North Vietnam to end the war. Next, on March 16, Kennedy declared that he was running to challenge Johnson for the Democratic nomination for president. That announcement came just four days after Johnson barely beat Sen. Eugene McCarthy in the New Hampshire primary.

Fifteen days after Kennedy declared for the presidency, Johnson withdrew. He had had enough.

Johnson was quickly aging out of the job. Between riots in American cities; the quagmire of the war in Vietnam; his failing poverty programs; his stumble in the New Hampshire primary; and his cloak of inevitability shredding, Johnson was a ball of conflicting insecurities. On top of all that, his public approval rating was hovering around 36 percent. Simply brutal.

Now, over a half a century later, we have President Biden with his very low approval rating being challenged by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. 

There is one striking difference between Johnson then and Biden now. When he decided in 1968 that he could not handle the stress of the rest of the election cycle — or the uncertainty of what was to come — the 6’4”, physically imposing Lyndon Johnson was only 59 years old; 21 years younger than our current president. 

A question some Democrats had in 1968 was whether Johnson waited too long to drop out of the race. One reason for that question was a lack of confidence in then–Vice President Hubert Humphrey to retain the White House should he become the Democratic nominee. That concern was of course realized when Humphrey became the nominee and got crushed in the general election by Republican Richard Nixon.

Some now reasonably worry if history is repeating itself.

If Biden does drop out of the race, will he wait too long to do so? And, should that be the case, will Vice President Kamala Harris — whom few Democrats truly have confidence in — get crushed in the general election by the Republican nominee?

Timing is often as important as strategy. Johnson waited until the last day of March 1968 to drop out. If Biden dropped out now, he would give potential candidates like California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg or even Michelle Obama an extra nine months to prepare for November 2024. 

“It’s now or never” may prove to be a cliché that defines the upcoming election.

Douglas MacKinnon, a political and communications consultant, was a writer in the White House for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and former special assistant for policy and communications at the Pentagon during the last three years of the Bush administration.