Joe Biden gave his reasons for stepping aside in an at-times emotional interview with CBS News Sunday morning, his first since quitting the race in July. He explained that losing the confidence of senior House and Senate Democrats, who feared his unpopularity would hurt them at the polls in November, had weighed on his mind. Via The Guardian:

Ultimately, Biden said, it was a combination of circumstances that led him to make his momentous decision not to seek re-election, which subsequently saw Vice-President Kamala Harris taking over the Democratic ticket and catching or surpassing Trump in several battleground states, according to new polling data.

“Although I have the great honor to be president, I think I have an obligation to the country to do the most important thing you can do, and that is we must, we must, we must defeat Trump,” he said.

Biden said he did not take the decision lightly, and made it in consultation with his family at home in Delaware. At the time, he said, he still believed he could win in November, but events had “moved quickly” after weeks of pressure and growing unease inside his party that, at 81, he was too old for the rigors of a second term.

Those fears were heightened by his disastrous debate performance against Trump in June. “I had a really bad day in that debate because I was sick. But I have no serious problem,” Biden said, denying he was impaired by any cognitive issue.