“What was not a race yesterday is a race today”: David Axelrod on Biden dropping out

When President Joe Biden announced Sunday he was dropping out of the presidential race, a chorus of Democratic Party officials breathed a sigh of relief. 

In recent weeks, Democratic bigwigs ranging from Nancy Pelosi to Barack Obama had been ratcheting up a pressure campaign to get Biden to step aside. Back in 2022, former Obama adviser and current political pundit David Axelrod was one of the first prominent Democrats to suggest Biden should withdraw. But yesterday’s news left him with mixed emotions. 

“When I got the news yesterday, I was very, very sad,” Axelrod told Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram Monday morning. “I thought he was a tremendous asset in the White House. Always enjoyed being with him, always appreciated the points that he was making. I think history will be a lot kinder to him than voters are right now, for the things that he’s accomplished.”

Listen to Sean Rameswaram’s full conversation with Axelrod and follow Today, Explained on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever you find podcasts. Below is a transcript of their discussion, edited for length and clarity. 

Sean Rameswaram 

You were part of this mounting call for [President Biden] to step aside. Did you think that was actually in the cards? Did you think the party was capable of what it’s going through right now?

David Axelrod 

I thought it was almost inevitable after the debate. The debate kind of crystallized what had been a big and growing problem, which was doubts about his fitness to serve another four years. Those were not just magnified, but calcified by the debate. 

And then you had the bookend of Trump and the assassination attempt. And his preternatural marketing instincts to find the precise spot to take the hero pose. The two things read weakness and strength, which was the essence of the Trump message that the world was out of control. “Biden is not in command. He’s weak. Trump is strong. Vote for Trump.” That was their whole campaign. 

Now they have a complication because they don’t have Biden. So, it does change the nature of the race. 

Sean Rameswaram

A lot of the people who were calling for Biden to step aside are now jubilant, if not endorsing Vice President Harris. Your friend and former colleague, former President Barack Obama, has not yet done that. What do you think is going on there?

David Axelrod

I don’t think he wanted to prescribe for the party what the party should do, but rather be available to be a force for pulling the party together once the party made its choice. I think what’s very clear as we sit here this morning, the day after the president made his announcement, is that Kamala Harris is going to be the nominee of the Democratic Party. I don’t think there’s any real debate about that. 

She very quickly consolidated support in a way that should actually inspire some confidence, because that’s a political task and she did it. She did it very well. I think the last of the prospective opponents will endorse her and she’ll move on to the business of choosing a vice presidential candidate.

Sean Rameswaram 

So you don’t think she’s going to do what the Republicans did and wait until the DNC to announce who’s going to be on the ticket with her?

David Axelrod

I don’t think she can, because they are committed to an early vote of the delegates to nominate two candidates in order to accommodate all the states filing deadlines for the fall ballot. They’re scheduled to meet next week to codify the ticket. I don’t think that they really can put this off until the convention. I anticipate that we’ll know relatively quickly who the vice presidential nominee is going to be.

Sean Rameswaram

You host a podcast with a Republican strategist named Mike Murphy, who’s anti-Trump, but he’s one of the few voices saying that it’s happening too fast with Harris. Do you understand his perspective on that?

David Axelrod

I do, but I think that she would be the nominee if there were a process or if there were not a process, for a variety of reasons. 

One, she has more of a relationship with the delegates to the convention. Biden-Harris delegates were chosen by the Biden campaign. And so they’re naturally going to gravitate towards her. The composition of those delegates favors her. I think she might have benefited from more of a competition just to show that she could win. But I get Mike’s point of view. 

One of the reasons why I spoke out as early as I did about my concerns about the president moving forward was that had he made this decision last year, we would have had a Democratic primary. In the Democratic primary is how you pressure test these candidates. Remember, Ron DeSantis was viewed as a behemoth in the fall of 2022, and then he had to go through the nominating battle, and he ended up not faring as well. You do find out about people through that process. That said, she’s been vetted quite a bit. She ran for president. She’s been vice president for three and a half years. 

No matter what level of politics you’re at, there’s no training for it. There’s no simulator you can pop into to find out what the pressures of a presidential campaign are like. In many ways, the campaign simulates the sort of relentless pressure that presidents themselves will feel. She’s experienced that, she has been swimming in the deep end of the pool, and that, to me, is a big thing. 

The other thing is she has apprenticed. She has been in those rooms. She has been in those meetings. She knows a lot about what the presidency entails. That, too, is something that’s very hard to learn, on the fly. So I think she’s got a lot of arguments on her side for this.

Sean Rameswaram

It seems like the Republicans really want to come after Biden, and now Harris, probably, on immigration, on inflation. Does Harris have the same weaknesses as Biden there, if not even more so?

David Axelrod

Well, they will try to depict her as the immigration czar, and I’m sure they’ve got about 100 ads in the can on this. But the truth is, she’s not Joe Biden. She can chart her own course now. 

I’m old enough to remember the ’68 campaign when Lyndon Johnson quit. Ultimately, his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, became the presidential candidate, and the heavy burden of Vietnam hung over him. He ended up losing by a point, but he also was like 20 points behind when he got nominated. And if that race had gone another month, another week, I should say he would have won. So, you know, she needs to chart her own course. Talk about what she would do. I think there are also points on this immigration issue that are vulnerabilities for Trump.

Sean Rameswaram

Are you looking forward to that debate?

David Axelrod

Oh, yes. You know, what’s interesting is that the addled old man on the platform is not going to be Joe Biden this time.

Sean Rameswaram

Kamala Harris is a historic vice president. She’ll be an even more historic president, obviously. Do you think she leans into that, or do you think she leans into the issues? She leans into Donald Trump’s various criminal battles, what have you.

David Axelrod

Listen, when Barack Obama was running for president, we never talked about the historic nature of his candidacy because we thought that was obvious. Others might be talking about it, but he always said, I am proudly of the Black community, but I’m not limited to it, and I’m not running to be the first Black president or the Black president. I’m running to be president of the United States. The people who step forward and say, you can’t bypass her because she’s the first Black woman vice president? They were diminishing her. 

The case they should have been making and should be making today is why she’s the best candidate, why she has the best chance to win, what she brings to this race. I know there’s a lot of enthusiasm among some folks about the historic nature of the race. But there are a lot of voters for whom other things are more important. And they want to know, are we going to have someone who understands our lives and is fighting for us? The more she focuses on that, I think the greater her chances of success.

Sean Rameswaram 

You started saying that the news yesterday made you sad, but you obviously helped turn hope into a political strategy in 2008. Do you feel hopeful right now?

David Axelrod 

I do, because I think that what was not a race yesterday is a race today. I see the enthusiasm that the vice president has generated in the first 24 hours. She raised $46 million in a matter of hours, online and small donations. That’s a record. It’s a gauge of enthusiasm which has been absent. So I am encouraged by what I see. It’s better to have hope than despair. And this morning, a lot of Democrats have hope that they didn’t have yesterday morning.