The political afterlife of Joe Biden appears to be following a familiar – if humiliating – pattern in Democratic Party history. The former president’s recent Broadway outing with Jill Biden to see Denzel Washington’s “Othello” would normally be a routine celebrity sighting, but it comes amid growing signs that the party establishment has moved on from the man who led them to defeat in 2024.
Party insiders have made clear Biden’s services are no longer required, with new DNC Chair Ken Martin offering tepid responses to Biden’s offer to help with fundraising. The numbers tell a brutal story – a recent NBC poll found just 1% of Democrats believe Biden represents their core values, a stunning rejection of a man who served as the party’s standard-bearer for four years.
This swift fall from grace mirrors the treatment of other Democratic presidents who outlived their usefulness to the party machine. The comparison to 19th century figures like Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan – Northern Democrats elevated precisely because they posed no threat to Southern slaveholding interests – is particularly cutting. Like those forgotten presidents, Biden was ultimately a vessel for other people’s agendas rather than a leader with his own vision or constituency.
The parallels extend to Biden’s relationship with party elites. Just as 1850s Northern Democrats existed to serve Southern interests, Biden’s role was to be the acceptable face of a progressive movement that never truly embraced him. Now that he’s lost that usefulness, the machinery has moved on with barely a backward glance.
For all the talk of Biden’s long career, his legacy appears destined to be that of a placeholder – a man who rose to the highest office not through force of ideas or personality, but because he happened to be in the right place when the party needed an inoffensive figurehead. As Democrats focus on rebuilding after their 2024 defeat, Biden finds himself in the unenviable position of so many past party workhorses – pushed aside with barely a thank you for services rendered.
The Broadway lights may still shine for Biden, but in political terms, his curtain call has already happened. The question now is whether he’ll take his exit gracefully or linger awkwardly on a stage that’s moved on without him.
