Democrats may still lose the White House. But Biden stepping aside was the only way to change the race.

President Joe Biden has announced he won’t run for reelection.

Democrats have taken an unprecedented risk in pushing President Joe Biden out of the 2024 race. They didn’t really have a choice.

Biden was well on his way to becoming a one-term president. His anemic 38% approval has barely budged. His campaign massively spent Donald Trump on TV, even as the former president’s lead grew in some places. Needing a way to upend the race, Biden’s campaign gambled on scheduling the earliest major presidential debate in history. The president’s disastrous performance marked the beginning of the end of his reelection.

Democrats’ crescendoing calls for Biden to step aside on Friday, with at least nine saying Biden should step aside in just one day, underlined how untenable the situation had become.

Americans have long said they didn’t want a 2020 rematch. But worse for Biden, voters were far more skeptical of his age than Trump’s. Even when the former president became a convicted felon, polls showed that voters thought Biden’s age was more concerning than any of Trump’s criminality proven or alleged. Trump’s triumphant response to an assassination attempt crystallized the idea of two similarly aged men with two very different images.

Democrats’ best hope is that the age issue is off the table. Republicans have signaled that they will tie Vice President Kamala Harris and others to statements defending Biden’s acuity. Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, the Republican vice presidential nominee, also questioned before the announcement if Biden should remain in office. At the very least, Harris or another Biden replacement would not have the party anxiously hanging on their every word.

It was more than just Biden.

Democrats were increasingly fearful they could be wiped out down the ballot. The party started this cycle knowing it would be extremely difficult to onto the Senate. Leaders were hopeful about flipping control of the House. But if Trump were on his way to a blowout, he would have almost certainly brought a GOP trifecta with him. As Atlantic editor Ron Brownstein has pointed out, based on future Senate maps, Democrats could be facing years in the minority. A Republican president and GOP Senate could cement a conservative federal judiciary in that span.

Even after this seismic news, Trump can still win. After all, gambling is risky for a reason. There is some evidence that Democrats might benefit from a new presidential nominee, but it isn’t clear cut. No one has ever seen anything like this in the modern era. Harris or whoever else emerges will have to cram a comeback campaign into roughly 100 days.

Biden still smarts over Democrats pushing him aside in 2016. His allies are none too happy that history could repeat itself.

But if Democrats truly believe that this is an existential election, then taking an unprecedented risk was their only choice left.