Biden drops out of presidential race
The shock decision leaves the Democratic nomination wide open just four months before the November election
Joe Biden has withdrawn from the race for the US presidency, an extraordinary decision upending American politics, that plunges the Democratic nomination into uncertainty just months before the November election against Donald Trump, a candidate he has warned is an existential threat to US democracy.
“While it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and focus solely on fulfilling my duties as president for the remainder of my term,” Biden said in a letter announcing his decision.
Biden thanked the vice-president, Kamala Harris, in his letter, and later endorsed her as the Democratic nominee for president in a tweet. He said he planned to speak to the nation in more detail later this week.
“My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as president for the remainder of my term. My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my vice-president. And it’s been the best decision I’ve made,” he said. “Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats – it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.”
The president made the shocking announcement after a weeks-long pressure campaign by Democratic leaders, organizers and donors who increasingly saw no path to victory so long as the embattled incumbent remained on the ticket. More than 30 Democratic members of Congress had called on Biden to step aside. As recently as Friday, his campaign had insisted he was staying in the race. An ABC News/Ipsos poll released Sunday found that 60% of Democrats believed he should end his bid.
A disastrous debate performance last month, and his uneven public appearances since, have only exacerbated longstanding voter concerns that the 81-year-old president was simply too old to serve another four years.
Democrats immediately praised his decision.
“Joe Biden has not only been a great president and a great legislative leader but he is a truly amazing human being. His decision of course was not easy, but he once again put his country, his party, and our future first,” said Chuck Schumer – the majority leader in the US senate, and one of several Democrats who had been pressuring Biden to step aside – in a statement. “Joe, today shows you are a true patriot and great American.”
Tammy Baldwin, the Wisconsin Democrat seeking re-election in a competitive US senate race, said: “It has been an honor to work with Joe Biden to deliver real, meaningful change for working Wisconsinites across our state … throughout all of that work, I’ve been inspired by his decency, integrity, and dedication to service, and I am deeply grateful for that. Thank you, president Biden.”
Minutes after Sunday’s announcement, Trump told CNN that in his opinion the president had been “the single worst president by far in the history of our country”. Trump also told the network he thinks it is going to be easier to defeat Harris than it would have been to beat Biden.
Elise Stefanik, one of the top Republicans in the US House, said Biden should resign the presidency. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, also called on Biden to leave office on Sunday.
“If Joe Biden can’t run for re-election, he is unable and unfit to serve as president of the United States. He must immediately resign,” she said in a statement. “The Democrat party is in absolute free fall for their blatantly corrupt and desperate attempt to cover up the fact that Joe Biden is unfit for office.”
Biden’s decision to step aside from the race, though remain as president, caps a singular few weeks in American politics, the latest stunning episode in an unusually tumultuous election season.
Trump, the former president and Republican nominee, narrowly survived an attempt on his life during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania that bloodied his ear and left one spectator dead. Biden, after appealing for calm in the wake of attack, had returned to the campaign trail last week determined to salvage his candidacy and once again prove his doubters wrong.
In media appearances, the president was defiant, insisting that he would remain the party’s standard-bearer in November, barring an intervention from the “Lord Almighty”, being struck by a train or a medical condition. On Wednesday, as Biden was set to deliver remarks at a conference in Nevada, he tested positive for Covid.
The president’s withdrawal pushes the Democratic party into largely uncharted waters, with its national convention scheduled to begin on 19 August in Chicago. The nominee will also have a tight window to choose a running mate to take on Trump and his vice-presidential pick, the Ohio senator JD Vance. It is not clear how Democrats will choose a new ticket.
The 95% of delegates who pledged to support Biden following his big wins in the Democratic primaries are now able to vote for a different candidate. Roughly 4,000 Democratic delegates will convene next month to choose a new nominee, and Kamala Harris will arrive in Chicago as an early favorite in the race to replace Biden.
After serving as Biden’s vice-president, Harris, 59, has the largest national profile of any Democratic candidate, and delegates may view her as the safest option with just four months to spare before election day. Campaign finance experts also say that Harris would have the most straightforward legal argument to keep the Biden campaign’s fundraising haul, while another nominee may have to forfeit that money. As of the end of May, the Biden campaign had $91.6m in cash on hand.
Despite Harris’s advantages, her nomination is not automatic, and other lawmakers – including California governor Gavin Newsom, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and Illinois governor JB Pritzker – have been named as potential alternatives. If any of those candidates were nominated in Chicago next month, they would face the monumental task of introducing themselves to voters, crafting a campaign message and defeating Trump all in two-and-a-half months.
Yet many Democrats prefer to risk the unknown than stand behind a nominee of whom nearly two-thirds of his own supporters said should quit the race, according to an AP-Norc Center for Public Affairs Research survey released on Wednesday.
In an interview with BET last week, Biden indicated that he had initially expected to serve one term, as many voters expected, recalling a pledge he made during the 2020 campaign to be a “bridge” to the next generation of Democratic leaders.
“I was going to be a transitional candidate, and I thought I would be able to move on from this and pass it on to somebody else,” the president told BET. “But I didn’t anticipate things getting so, so, so divided.”
Still, in recent days, Biden had stepped up the praise of his vice-president, emphasizing her readiness to serve.
“She’s not only a great vice-president,” Biden said in remarks last week at the NAACP convention in Las Vegas, “she could be president of the United States.”
Culled from The Guardian UK
