Joe Biden has never been the greatest orator or had the strongest political backbone, but he has always displayed one important skill throughout his decades in office: representing the center of the Democratic Party, wherever that center may be at any given time. It explains why he followed his party’s ideological journey and went from liberal Democrat in the 1980s to conservative austerian in the 1990s to Iraq War proponent in the 2000s to mildly progressive economic populist in this era. It also explains his announcement on Sunday that he is withdrawing from the 2024 presidential race.

Biden knew rank-and-file Democrats wanted him to step down (for good reason), and he made the belated-but-responsible decision to respect that demand — and potentially save the country from Donald Trump in the process.

Biden will be lauded as making a courageous choice. But while his decision is obviously the right one, the president is hardly a hero in this history-making moment. He and his political machine created this political crisis. They waged a war on Democratic dissent. They brushed off those raising questions about the president’s electoral viability, punished dissenters, killed off any possibility of a contested presidential primary, covered up Biden’s health condition, and then tried to cling to power when everyone in the country saw his decline with their own eyes at the first presidential debate.