Joe Biden has withdrawn from his presidential re-election race and endorsed Vice-President Kamala Harris to take his place at the top of their party’s ticket, an extraordinary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 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 run. The same poll found nearly 76% of Democrats would be satisfied with Harris as the nominee.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump said Biden “was not fit to run for President, and is certainly not fit to serve – And never was!”
Biden “only attained the position of President by lies, Fake News, and not leaving his Basement”, Trump said. “All those around him, including his Doctor and the Media, knew that he wasn’t capable of being President, and he wasn’t.”
Trump went on to list a series of falsehoods about immigration, concluding: “We will suffer greatly because of his presidency, but we will remedy the damage he has done very quickly. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Minutes after Sunday’s announcement, Trump told CNN that in his opinion Biden 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.
It is unclear if any other Democrats will try to challenge Harris for the nomination. And it is still murky whether she is better positioned to beat Trump. An NBC News poll from earlier this month showed Trump leading Biden and Harris by 2 points, which was within the survey’s margin of error.
Harris’s nomination is not automatic, and there are other Democrats – including the Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, California governor, Gavin Newsom, and Illinois governor, JB Pritzker – who could seek the nomination. 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 DonaldTrump all in two-and-a-half months.
“President Biden is a great public servant who knows better than anyone what it takes to defeat Donald Trump,” Whitmer said in a Sunday tweet. “My job in this election will remain the same: doing everything I can to elect Democrats and stop Donald Trump, a convicted felon whose agenda of raising families’ costs, banning abortion nationwide, and abusing the power of the White House to settle his own scores is completely wrong for Michigan.”
The chairperson of the Democratic National Committee, Jaime Harrison, said the party would “undertake a transparent and orderly process to move forward” to choose a candidate to defeat Trump in November.
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.”
The US House speaker, Mike Johnson, suggested during appearances on Sunday talkshows that Republicans would bring legal challenges to attempt to block efforts to change the Democratic ticket. Experts are skeptical those efforts will succeed.
Johnson was also one of several top Republicans who called on Biden to resign the presidency – something Biden is almost certain not to do.
“If Joe Biden is not fit to run for President, he is not fit to serve as President. He must resign the office immediately,” Johnson said, adding that election day on 5 November “cannot arrive soon enough”.
The Ohio senator JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, made similar comments on Sunday.
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 Vance. It is not clear how Democrats will choose a new ticket.
The 95% of delegates who pledged to support Biden after 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 might have to forfeit that money. As of the end of May, the Biden campaign had $91.6m in cash on hand.
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.”
— Culled from The Guardian of London
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