A sitting president has never dropped out of a race as close to Election Day as Joe Biden.
The last time an incumbent president announced he wouldn’t run for reelection was Texas’ Lyndon Baines Johnson. Many are now looking to his decision 56 years ago for comparison.
Two who are intimately familiar with the fateful decision in 1968 are LBJ’s daughters, Luci Baines Johnson and Lynda Johnson Robb.
“President Biden, you are a patriot without peer,” wrote the pair in a release to media on Sunday afternoon. “Once more you have given all a person can for our country. As the daughters of another president who gave his all for America, we are so proud of you again as we have always been,” the pair wrote.
Their father, who rose to prominence from the abject poverty that ensconced much of the Texas Hill Country, was driven by intense ambition. The decision to drop out came after mounting pressure of the unpopularity of the Vietnam War.
The decision from Biden to step away from the race has again rocked a presidential election but comes after a disastrous debate performance by the sitting president and an assassination attempt on his opponent Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania.
The day after the assassination attempt, Biden postponed his planned visit to the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act.
The path forward after LBJ’s decision towards a new candidate was clearer — with significant time for primary campaigning. Biden’s choice to step away and endorse his campaign running-mate Kamala Harris has many questioning whether the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month will be an open one or an anointing of Biden’s pick.
