President Biden will say goodbye to elected office and his five-decade political career in a primetime address from the Oval Office tonight, highlighting what he sees as his successes achieved from behind the Resolute Desk.

In a statement Tuesday, he said he will make the case that Democrats deserve to lead in the years ahead so they can “finish the job.”

“Tomorrow evening at 8 PM ET, I will address the nation from the Oval Office on what lies ahead, and how I will finish the job for the American people,” Mr. Biden said in a post on X Tuesday morning. 

Mr. Biden, up until Sunday, kept telling the public that he would return to the campaign trail to make the case for his reelection. Politico first reported that Mr. Biden only changed his mind on Saturday, when top aides showed him polling that proved he could not win in critical swing states, and was losing ground in reliably Democratic states like Virginia, New Mexico, and Minnesota. 

While he is staying on through the remainder of his term, Mr. Biden’s 50-year career at Washington is functionally over, as legislative priorities typically fall by the wayside during an election year. 

During campaign events in the past, he has declared he wanted to “finish the job” by pushing for higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy during the fight over the expiration of the 2017 tax reform, capping the price of prescription drugs for more Americans, and investing in green energy. 

The greatest problem for Mr. Biden’s campaign among his fellow Democrats was never his agenda, but rather his age and his inability to vigorously campaign. His proclamation that he would finish the job means conveying a clear message tonight on the contrast between Democrats and the former president. 

He will likely spend a good portion of his address singing the praises of Vice President Harris, the presumptive presidential nominee for the Democratic Party this year, who won Mr. Biden’s endorsement for the job just minutes after he announced his retirement. 

Ms. Harris’ own campaign has inherited the money, infrastructure, and senior staff from what was formerly known as the Biden–Harris campaign, but she does so without much of Mr. Biden’s baggage. For more than a year, pollsters found that he was too old to serve a second term as president — polls that were vindicated after the president’s disastrous June debate with President Trump that ultimately forced many Democrats to call on him to stand aside. 

Ms. Harris, at 59 years old, will be the youngest nominee of a major party since President Obama ran in 2008, and she will be only the second woman to lead the ticket in American history. 

Her own campaign is already off to a strong start. Since announcing her candidacy on Sunday afternoon, Ms. Harris has raised more than $100 million for her effort, and more than 58,000 people have signed up to knock doors and make phone calls for her bid. 

The Trump campaign is clearly nervous about running against the vice president this fall, if their public statements are to be believed. The campaign is already setting expectations for reporters, hoping the media won’t be too focused on Ms. Harris’ impressive fundraising and volunteer sign-up numbers. 

In a memo shared with the New York Sun sent to campaign staff by Trump’s pollster, Tony Fabrizio, the campaign says they are prepared for a “Harris Honeymoon” in the weeks before the Democratic National Convention at Chicago next month. 

“The honeymoon will be a manifestation of the wall-to-wall coverage Harris receives from the [mainstream media]. The coverage will be largely positive and will certainly energize Democrats and some other parts of their coalition at least in the short term,” Mr. Fabrizio writes in his memo. “Given what has happened over the past couple of days and her impending VP choice, there is no question that Harris will get her bump earlier than the Democrat’s Convention. And that bump is likely to start showing itself over the next few days and will last a while until the race settles back down.”

Ms. Harris may yet run into problems of her own. The chairman of the Federal Election Commission, Sean Cooksey, has said publicly that the vice president may not be entitled to the nearly $100 million war chest the Biden–Harris campaign has built for the general election. 

“I think I expect there’s going to be probably challenges to that at the agency and probably in the courts,” Mr. Cooksey said in an interview with National Public Radio. “I think everyone would agree, though, that this is completely unprecedented, and it raises a lot of novel questions.”

The Trump campaign has already taken that warning from the chairman and deployed it at the commission. On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that the Republican operation filed a complaint with the FEC challenging Ms. Harris’ ability to use the funds.

“Kamala Harris is seeking to perpetrate a $91.5 million dollar heist of Joe Biden’s leftover campaign cash — a brazen money grab that would constitute the single largest excessive contribution and biggest violation in the history of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, as amended,” the Trump Team wrote in their filing.