Joe Biden was compelled to stand down — could Trudeau go next?

On Sunday afternoon, Justin Trudeau praised Joe Biden as an American patriot.

«He's a great man,» the prime minister wrote on social media, «and everything he does is guided by his love for his country.»

That sentence could be read broadly as expressing admiration for Biden's career of public service. It also could be read as praise specifically for the decision Biden took this weekend to relinquish the Democratic party's nomination for president — that was the message Barack Obama offered in his own statement, released about an hour earlier.

«I know he wouldn't make this decision unless he believed it was right for America,» the former president wrote of his former running mate. «It's a testament to Joe Biden's love of country.»

Either way, the subtext of Trudeau's four-sentence statement on Sunday was so obvious, it barely qualified as subtext. The prime minister, faced himself with calls to resign, was responding to another leader's decision to step aside. He was tipping his cap to a beleaguered counterpart, even while he seems committed to staying on.

Biden and Trudeau have much in common, even if it's largely a coincidence that they came to face leadership crises at the same exact moment this summer.

They're both progressive leaders. They're both contending with some of the same challenges and realities of political life in 2024 (inflation, social media, the legacy of a pandemic, a divisive war in the Middle East). They are both faced with populist conservative challengers.

For Trudeau, the doubts about his leadership became acute after the Liberals lost the byelection in Toronto-St. Paul's on June 24. Three days later, Biden struggled mightily through a televised debate with Donald Trump.

Neither Trudeau nor Biden