Bowing to relentless pressure in the wake of his disastrous debate performance on June 27, President Joe Biden announced today that he would drop out of the 2024 presidential race. The politically earth-shattering move clears the path for a new Democratic nominee to face off against former President Donald Trump just over three months before Election Day.
“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President,” Biden said in a statement posted on X. “And 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 to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.”
Biden said he will speak to the nation later this week in more detail about his decision. In a second post on X, published less than 30 minutes after the first, he endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to head the ticket against Trump.
Biden’s announcement amplifies the chaos of a political season that was expected to feature a rematch of the 2020 election, in which Biden defeated Trump. Voters have been broadly unenthusiastic about both candidates, and Biden had been trailing Trump in many polls even before the debate. His decision to step aside gives the Democratic Party a chance to mix things up with an exciting new candidate, but it also runs the risk of unleashing a destructive round of infighting that could clinch a victory for Trump.
Long-standing concerns about Biden’s health exploded into full-blown panic within the first minutes of the debate, during which the president spoke in a soft, raspy voice; repeatedly appeared to lose his train of thought; and seemed incapable of countering his Republican opponent’s characteristic litany of lies and distortions.
By the next day, a parade of pundits, as well as the editorial board of The New York Times, had called on Biden to step aside. After mostly failing to reassure the press and public by claiming that the president had simply experienced “one bad night,” possibly because he was suffering from a “cold,” Biden’s loyalists began lashing out over “bed-wetting” within the Democratic Party and arguing that the risks of appointing a new candidate so close to the election were too great. Biden himself and his top surrogates said repeatedly that he had no intention of dropping out. Eventually, however, the rising chorus of pundits, donors, and vulnerable elected Democrats all warning that Biden now had virtually no chance of beating Trump, and risked wiping out his party in races up and down the ticket, became too loud to quell.
Biden’s campaign was predicated on the idea that democracy itself is on the line in this election—an entirely reasonable concern given the fascistic nature of Trump’s rhetoric and policy proposals; the consolidation of the Republican Party under his loyalists; and the new legal and constitutional order ushered in by a recent series of radical Supreme Court decisions, including one granting broad immunity to the president.
Many voters, however, seemed more concerned with immigration, inflation, and Biden’s perceived infirmity. Going into the debate, Biden was struggling to keep pace with his opponent, even after Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts on May 30. After the debate, Biden’s vulnerability became so extreme that many Democrats no longer felt comfortable betting democracy itself on a candidate who appeared to have declined mentally and physically in the four years since his last campaign.
Congressional representatives, donors, business leaders, and allies have called on Biden to step down in the weeks following the debate. Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi reportedly worked behind-the-scenes to persuade the president, and former President Barack Obama was also said to be supportive of a change at the top of the ticket. Private conversations in which Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries asked the president to consider stepping aside took place before Trump was injured in a shooting last weekend, then leaked into public view as the Democratic pressure campaign resumed and intensified. In the past week alone, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, and New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich all urged the president to pass the torch.
It remains to be seen who will step into the nomination and face off against Trump, but Biden’s endorsement of Kamala Harris gives her a significant edge over other possible candidates, among them California Governor Gavin Newsom, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar.
“For now, let me express my deepest gratitude to all those who have worked so hard to see me reelected,” Biden’s statement reads. “I want to thank Vice President Kamala Harris for being an extraordinary partner in all this work. And let me express my heartfelt appreciation to the American people for the faith and trust you have placed in me.”
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