Biden will retire very popular if he bows out (esp if someone other than Harris is the nominee) because right wing media, and those in centrist media who just reiterate RW stories, will immediately pivot away to attacking whoever the nominee is instead.
One factoid about the LBJ precedent - his approval rating surged after he bailed out of the 1968 race. Dipped again over the chaotic summer but we'll never know what the dynamic would have been if Biden was going out as a one-term elder statesman.
www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/d...
This is the exact same phenomenon whereby the second place candidate in Dem primaries becomes very popular. the RW media pumps them up because it causes problems for the actual nominee. This is how Hillary Clinton became "the most popular politician in the country" in 2009!
Yeah, that was exactly the example I was going to cite. Demonized in the most incredible ways for thirty days, absolutely transformed into a murderous oozing eldritch horror ... but not continuously that whole time. Also treated generically or even generously when it served The Narrative.
Arguably that's how she became a Senator: she combined Bill Clinton's popularity with Democrats with the lingering effects of the right wing media pausing their execration of her awhile for the impeachment and aftermath, to portray her as the innocent victim of her cheating husband's perfidy.
And again when Republicans thought they could use the "PUMA" faction to undermine Obama, so they spent the latter half of 2008 saying they liked Hillary and Obama was no Hillary, stole the nomination from her.
