How Biden’s presidency is remembered could rest on the outcome of the election

History will be kinder to Biden than voters were, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama told The Associated Press, touting his progressive policies and defeat of Donald Trump in 2020. Under Biden, the White House advanced “elusive progressive priorities,” including student loan forgiveness, a “modest” gun control bill, and prescription drug price negotiation, Axios noted. Biden also appointed more than 200 federal judges, including Ketanji Brown-Jackson in the Supreme Court, marking the first Black woman to hold the role. And critically, the president took the US economy out of “the throes of COVID “ into one that is “growing faster than any of its peer economies,” Harvard University economist Jason Furman said.

If Biden hadn’t stepped out of the presidential race, he risked tarnishing his legacy forever, said analysts. He would have been judged as “self-centred, hubristic and arrogant to believe he was more important than the cause of defeating Trump,” wrote Bruce Wolpe, a non-resident senior fellow at the University of Sydney’s United States Study Centre. Now if Vice President Kamala Harris, Biden’s pick for the Democratic nomination, goes on to stand and defeat Trump in November, his decision to stand down “will be seen as both courageous and statesmanlike.”

The election’s outcome will ultimately determine how Biden is remembered, one analyst wrote. If the November presidential vote is contested or violent, Biden could find himself criticized, Leslie Vinjamuri, director of Chatham House’s US and the Americas Program, wrote. “The president could be blamed for delaying a crucial decision that left his party with too short a runway to consolidate around a candidate capable of winning,” Vinjamuri noted. If Democrats win, however, Biden will be viewed as a politician that was able to beat Trump twice, she added.