On Sunday afternoon, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau praised Joe Biden as an American patriot.
“He is a great man,” said the prime minister wrote on social media“And all his actions are guided by love for his country.”
The statement could be broadly interpreted as praising Biden’s record of public service, or specifically his decision this weekend to give up the Democratic presidential nomination — a message echoed by Barack Obama’s own statement. It was released about an hour ago.
“I know he made this decision because he did not believe it was right for America,” the former president wrote of his former vice presidential nominee. “It is a testament to Joe Biden’s patriotism.”
Either way, the implications of Trudeau’s four-sentence statement on Sunday were so obvious that they hardly even warranted being called implications: Facing calls for his resignation, the prime minister was responding to another leader’s decision to step down. He was signaling his intention to stay on but also paying tribute to his embattled opponent.
Biden and Trudeau share a lot in common, even though it is almost a coincidence that they faced leadership crises at the exact same time this summer.
Both are progressive leaders grappling with common challenges and realities of political life in 2024 — inflation, social media, the legacy of the pandemic and a divisive war in the Middle East — and both face populist conservative challengers.
For Trudeau, doubts about his leadership intensified after the Liberal Party’s defeat in the Toronto-St. Paul by-election on June 24. Three days later, Biden struggled in a televised debate with Donald Trump.
US President Joe Biden’s performance in the first presidential debate with Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 presidential election has raised questions from supporters and critics alike about whether Biden should withdraw from the race. Andrew Chang focuses on the defining moment that may have cost Biden the debate, and perhaps his base.
Neither Trudeau nor Biden immediately took these setbacks as a sign to quit, but that may not be so surprising: You can’t be a prime minister or president without high self-confidence, the ability to suspend doubt, and the ability to withstand (or ignore) criticism. found There is a correlation between successful presidencies and presidents who have shown signs of “grandiose narcissism.”
After so much effort and sacrifice, the possibility of defeat, or even just the suggestion that someone else might do it better, can be difficult to face. And relinquishing power is hard.
All of this likely explains why Biden is the first president in nearly 60 years to voluntarily decline reelection. Even in Canada, where political leadership is arguably more flexible, about six prime ministers can be said to have left office of their own volition (the list is even shorter if you exclude those who resigned due to ill health).
Why Biden decided to step down
Ultimately, Biden’s withdrawal from the race was driven by two factors — his health and the importance of the election — that prompted donors and Democratic Party officials to intervene and ultimately force him out of the race.
The president and his supporters could argue that he was still able to serve, but that didn’t change the fact that he was 81 years old. Two-thirds of Americans Biden believed he was too old to be president, and he wasn’t going to convince voters to ignore what they saw when he appeared and spoke in public.
Yet there may have been fewer calls for Biden to step down if Democrats and commentators had not framed the presidential election in such ontological terms.
Donald Trump is a convicted felon who attempted to overturn the results of the last presidential election and incited the storming of the Capitol in 2021. His return to power could do real and lasting damage to the American political system and democracy. The possibility of Biden losing and thus setting other Democrats back on their feet cannot be discounted.
Importantly, in the final days of his campaign, Biden faced concerns not just from lawmakers, anonymous sources and columnists, but from some of his most senior party officials. With just a month until the party’s national convention and four months until the general election, Democrats also had every reason to act quickly.
Answering reporters’ questions for the first time since the Liberal party’s defeat in last week’s Toronto-St. Paul by-election, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told CBC News he is “committed” to staying on as Liberal leader amid calls for him to resign.
With all due respect, Wayne Long, Liberal MP, It is called Last month, reports emerged that Prime Minister Trudeau had resigned. Nancy PelosiPublic debate about Trudeau’s leadership has largely died down after a tumultuous few days immediately following the Toronto-St. Paul by-election, but Biden’s departure might reignite questions about whether the Liberal party should institute reforms of its own.
While progressives may have a negative view of Conservative Leader Pierre Poirierbre and what he might do as prime minister, no one sees the next election as an existential crisis. The fate of Canadian democracy does not depend on the outcome of the election.
At the same time, every election has consequences, and a Conservative majority government could do a lot to undo the policies put in place by the Trudeau government over the past nine years, such as on climate change and social policy.
The most obvious difference between Biden and Trudeau is that one is 81 and the other is 52. Trudeau does not suffer from the inherent weaknesses of Biden’s age or health. There is no reason to doubt Trudeau’s ability to campaign.
New Brunswick Liberal MP Wayne Long has circulated an email to his caucus calling for Justin Trudeau to step down as leader following the party’s shocking defeat in the recent by-election in Toronto. This comes after former cabinet minister Catherine McKenna issued a statement to CBC News calling for “new energy and new leadership.”
But the Toronto-St. Paul result raises the question, however imperfect a barometer by-elections are. Is Trudeau facing a problem where too many voters simply don’t want to support the party he leads?.
In theory, Trudeau has 15 months before the next election. Time to continue implementing policies like dental care, push back against Poirierbre, and introduce new ones. Interest rates could continue to fall. Complaints about inflation could fade. Anything can happen in a year.
However, a simple reading of both vote and history It suggests that Trudeau’s Liberals have little chance of staying in power. Is Trudeau still the best option among Liberal candidates, or would Mark Carney, Chrystia Freeland or Dominic LeBlanc (or some other hypothetical candidate) give them a better chance?
It was clear to Democrats that they had to try an alternative, something liberals don’t seem ready to go that far (at least not yet).
“The prime minister is the perfect person to take on Pierre Poilièvre, who has a very different view, I would say a fairly negative view, about what our country looks like and where it’s going,” Immigration Minister Marc Miller, a close friend of Trudeau’s since high school, said days after voting in the Toronto-St.
“I love my country and I will fight with all my might for it. I believe the prime minister will do the same.”
If patriotism drove Biden to resign, it seems it is convincing Trudeau to stay.
The Conservative by-election win in the Toronto stronghold is seen by many as a message to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberal party that it’s time for big changes in the party and its leadership.
