Biden casts a ballot he once wanted to be on

(CNN) — When President Joe Biden entered a voting booth in Delaware on Monday to cast his early ballot for Vice President Kamala Harris, it wasn’t necessarily the moment for which he’d been planning a few months ago.

Biden, of course, once hoped to vote for himself, one last opportunity to check the box next to his own name after a half-century in the political arena.

Instead, he was voting for his chosen successor — a moment of pride, to be sure, that is still coming earlier than he wanted it to.

Instead of a big campaign event — as it would likely have been if he were still the candidate — his trip to a polling station in Delaware was a lower-key affair compared to the roiling presidential campaign that is unfolding without him.

Biden stood in line for 37 minutes with members of the greater Wilmington, Delaware, community, to which he is likely to return when a new president takes the oath of office in January.

He pushed an elderly lady in a wheelchair, talked on someone’s phone, smiled for a photo with a baby, and cracked jokes with his fellow citizens.

He stood in line near a man wearing a red “ELECT THAT MOTHER****** AGAIN” hat, and a stray protester shouted “Let’s go Brandon,” but other members of the line cheered his presence. When he reached the front of the line, he rummaged through his pocket for a photo ID.

Then the president walked behind the curtain, cast his vote and received an “I voted” sticker, which he emblazoned upon his lapel. Just over three months after he exited the top of the ticket, he had cast his ballot for the candidate he immediately endorsed.

Upon exiting the polling place, when CNN asked if the moment was bittersweet, Biden focused on the positives

“No,” he said, “just sweet.”

With eight days until Election Day, the president’s schedule this week doesn’t reflect a surrogate in high demand. After suggesting in September he would be on the road regularly for Harris in the final months, Biden has been largely absent from the campaign trail in the closing stretch.

His union event in Pittsburgh over the weekend provided an outlet to attack Donald Trump and boost Harris — but the outing wasn’t heavily promoted by the Harris campaign, unlike higher-profile rallies with the Obamas.

Biden has a few “campaign calls” scheduled this week, where he hopes to rally various groups telephonically behind Harris. He’ll attend a union event in Philadelphia on Friday, but it’s considered an official event rather than a Harris campaign rally.

The rest of his week before the election, for now, is devoted to official tasks: receiving briefings on hurricane recovery, a Diwali reception in the East Room, remarks in Baltimore about infrastructure, trick-or-treating at the South Portico.

Such is the existence of an unpopular incumbent on the way out. He joins a club that includes Bill Clinton and George W. Bush as presidents mostly kept off the campaign trail as their party looks to turn a page.

After so much time in politics, Biden is fully aware of the delicate decisions that govern a campaign season. He has long said – usually as a joke – that he’s willing to campaign for or against his favored candidate, “whichever will help the most.”

Still, that doesn’t make it any easier to watch as the party moves forward without him. Biden believes he could still be of use to Harris among the White, working-class voters in Blue Wall states where he retains sway.

Nor is it lost on Biden — or anyone inside the White House – that he has a lot riding on the outcome. The result of next Tuesday’s election will either burnish his legacy or launch harsh recriminations that he stepped aside too late.

Speaking at the get-out-the-vote event in Pittsburgh on Saturday, Biden seemed to acknowledge his time on the national stage was coming to an end.

“We got a lot more work to do, Kamala and I,” he said, before quickly adjusting: “Kamala does.”

Asked after he voted if his onetime running mate would win, he chose to answer in the collective voice.

“I think we will,” he declared.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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