Sunday afternoon at 146 Eastern Time.

Joe Biden released a letter on Twitter. My fellow Americans it began.

Over the past three and a half years we have made great progress as a nation.

It detailed his achievements one by one before getting to the point.

While it has been my intention to seek re-election, he wrote,

I believe it's in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down.

It struck me as like a little bit terse.

Three weeks back, right after the disastrous debate performance that landed Biden here,

I talked to slate contributor David Ferris.

So this weekend, I called him back up.

You know he announced this on on I could refuse to call it X he announced this on Twitter

in lieu of like a presidential address which he does say is coming later this week

And you know a number of his aides and staff have leaked to the press that they were they were taken completely by surprise by this

It felt a little bit like the Homer Simpson fading into the hedge meme for me.

Right.

It was this brief a way to get out, you know, to resign your candidacy as I could have imagined.

This announcement ended the weeks long speculation about what the Democrats were going to do

about a candidate who was tanking in the polls, bleeding

donations, and presenting voters with a choice that seemed increasingly perilous

come November. It was also the only move left to make.

Yeah, I think that things were getting increasingly divisive and ugly.

The calls from the party leadership could not have been any clearer by this weekend I think but still you had

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