White House President could still exert power during his final months

When Joe Biden finally ends his self-imposed seclusion at his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, this week he will emerge into a very different world than the one from which he isolated when diagnosed with Covid last Wednesday.

- Ed Pilkington

He will still be president of the US, and as such the most powerful person on Earth. But it may not feel like it. His hopes of carrying on in that office died at 1.46pm on Sunday when he announced he was standing down from the 2024 race.

Very little is known about Biden's plans for the next six months.

Given the speed at which the final demise of his campaign happened, he may not know much himself.

What we do know is that attempts by Donald Trump and his inner circle to force him out of the Oval Office now, on grounds that "if he can't run for office, he can't run our country", are as half-hearted as they sound. Barring suprises, Biden will remain in the White House until noon on 20 January 2025.

The president's immediate diary is empty, but over the weekend the New York Times reported a tentative arrangement for him to go to Austin, Texas tomorrow to attend a postponed civil rights celebration at the Lyndon Johnson presidential library.

Biden may enjoy comparisons with Johnson, another Democratic president who dropped out of his re-election contest in March 1968., but the parallel could be a positive one. As the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin recalls in her recent book An Unfinished Love Story, Johnson was showered with Democratic adulation after he stepped aside, and his ratings bounced from 57% disapproval to 57% approval virtually overnight.