The Historical Echo Biden Has Tried to Suppress

More Democrats aired doubts about President Biden’s candidacy on Tuesday, the most public and direct voicing of concern since his disastrous debate performance on Thursday.

Only one lawmaker called for the president to withdraw from the race, but that person, Representative Lloyd Doggett of Texas, invoked a historical comparison that is particularly resonant.

“I represent the heart of a congressional district once represented by Lyndon Johnson,” Doggett said. “Under very different circumstances, he made the painful decision to withdraw,” he added, calling on Biden to take the same step that Johnson did in 1968.

“Recognizing that, unlike Trump, President Biden’s first commitment has always been to our country, not himself, I am hopeful that he will make the painful and difficult decision to withdraw,” Doggett said.

At happier points in his career, Biden himself has evoked Johnson, although more favorably. In 2017, at a point between his vice presidency and his presidency, he spoke at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, where he said President Johnson’s civil-rights efforts had inspired him to enter politics decades earlier.

In 2021, less than two months after taking office, Biden brought up Johnson as he talked up his American Rescue Plan and his efforts to move the nation away from trickle-down economics. “This is the first time we’ve been able to, since the Johnson administration and maybe even before that, to begin to change the paradigm,” Biden said.