One chapter ends, another begins

Biden gets his moment, but clear Democrats are ready to move on

- RICHARD WARNICA

CHICAGO On Sunday afternoon, about 24 hours before the sitting president of the United States arrived in Chicago, where he was set to speak at his own political funeral, a campaign vendor pulled the plastic off a single rack of plain grey T-shirts at the McCormick Center, one of two principal venues for the 2024 Democratic National Convention.

The T-shirts stood out amid all the purples, greens and bold Democrat blues advertising the party’s ascendant champion, Vice-President Kamala Harris, and her folksy running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

Each featured a black and white silhouette of a smiling man over two words, the first between stars, in simple black letters: *JOE* BIDEN.

Like almost no first-term president before him, at the very least not since Lyndon Johnson in 1968, Biden is the forgotten man at his own convention this week. His Tshirts sit untouched, like the unsold jerseys of a traded hockey star — discounted, unwanted but not quite forgotten, not yet.

Even the demonstrators who gathered outside the convention’s secure perimeter Monday to protest Biden’s policy on Israel and Gaza seemed unsure at times exactly what to do with the man they called “Genocide Joe.”

Tens of thousands had supposedly planned to protest a leader who had planned to be running for president. Instead, maybe 3,000 hardcore activists showed up. Hundreds left before the march even began. It was an anticlimax protest for an anticlimax president — a man leaving politics not with a bang but a whispered sigh.