It is easy to be a Monday morning quarterback. When it comes to analyzing a U.S. presidential election, the analogy to football is actually weak because a football game, even the Super Bowl, is about 50 times less complicated than a presidential election.

Having said that, there are several things that stand out for discussion from last week’s election.

First and foremost, President Joe Biden, although he served his country with integrity the first three years of his presidency, not to mention 36 years in the U.S. Senate, made a colossal error in deciding to run for a second term. Moreover, his staff and the leaders of the Democratic Party all did a poor job of trying to convince Biden to step aside.

Biden and the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made the same mistake. They stayed in the game too long and thought too much about what they, as individuals, wanted to do. Even though they both were presumably focused on what they thought was best for the country, they obviously did not think hard enough.

Had Ginsburg stepped aside while Barack Obama was still in office, Obama would have had the opportunity to appoint a Democrat in her place. As it turned out, Ginsburg died while Donald Trump was in office, and he appointed a conservative justice, Amy Coney Barrett.

Biden made the same error. He wrongly thought that he was the only person who could beat Trump, when in reality, given his mental and physical state, even a year out, he most probably would have lost to Trump.

In Ginsburg’s case, the situation was different. She was diagnosed with early-stage pancreatic cancer in 2009 and could have stepped aside before the end of Obama’s first or certainly second term. Her mind was fine. The question was whether she might die in office while a Republican was president, which is exactly what happened.

She died in 2020 at age 87, which is very old to be a Supreme Court justice.

In Jewish studies, there is an old question that asks why God did not let Moses enter the Promised Land. A standard answer is that it is because he killed an Egyptian soldier. An answer more in line with good management theory and various traditions of political thought is that Moses’ function was to lead the Jewish people to Canaan but not to then enter it with them and be their leader.

Neither Biden nor Ginsburg passed the function test. Neither could see that they had performed their function serving as president and Supreme Court justice with distinction. They each wanted more. Biden brought us forth from the horrible pandemic years. Ginsburg was a heroic figure on the court since 1993.

Neither knew that the time had come to step aside.

Is this a problem Democrats have more than Republicans? This is hard to say, especially since it is Democrats who are constantly accusing Republicans of being too self-centered, too individualistic and too narcissistic.

Nevertheless, there is a lesson here for the Democratic Party and its leaders. As you criticize the Republican Party for promoting ideals of individualism inimical to social, communitarian and other values, be careful not to fall victim to this destructive individualism regarding your own leadership.

It is ironic that this problem has arisen for Democrats with the rise of a Republican leader who is the epitome of self-centered, ultra-individualism.

It is true that Biden was doing his best to protect the American people from Trump, but his efforts were undermined by his own stubbornness and the complicity of his staff and the Democratic leadership.

Whoever was to run against Trump needed the full primary runway to lift their campaign plane off the ground. Vice President Kamala Harris did her best in the 107 days she had. In retrospect, it was unfair to place her — or anyone — in that position.

Biden did a fine job extricating us from the pandemic — from a political, economic, moral and emotional standpoint. Yet by failing to extricate himself from his own concerns and priorities, he failed his party and Harris.

Tragically, the same can be said of Justice Ginsburg.

In the years ahead, Democrats need to accept the monumental mistakes two of their greatest heroes made and cultivate leaders for the future who will know when it is time to step aside.

Dave Anderson (dmamaryland@gmail.com) taught political philosophy and ethics at the University of Cincinnati, Johns Hopkins University and George Washington University. He is editor of “Leveraging” (Springer, 2014).