US President Joe Biden’s withdrawal under pressure from fellow Democrats cleared the way for a new nominee to take on former President Donald Trump. He quickly endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris.
President Joe Biden on Sunday (Monday NZ time) abruptly abandoned his campaign for a second term under intense pressure from fellow Democrats and threw his support to Vice President Kamala Harris to lead their party in a dramatic last-minute bid to stop former President Donald Trump from returning to the White House.
“It has been the greatest honour of my life to serve as your President,” he said in a letter posted on social media. “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 then posted a subsequent online message endorsing Harris. “My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President,” he wrote. “And it’s been the best decision I’ve made. 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’s decision upended the race and set the stage for a raucous and unpredictable campaign unlike any in modern times, leaving Harris just more than 100 days to consolidate support from Democrats, establish herself as a credible national leader and prosecute the case against Trump.
Although Democratic convention delegates must ratify the choice of Harris to take over as standard-bearer next month, Biden’s endorsement meant the nomination was hers to lose and she appeared in a powerful position to claim it. While Biden, 81, remained president and still planned to finish out his term in January, the transition of the campaign to Harris, 59, amounted to a momentous generational change of leadership of the Democratic Party.
The president said he would “speak to the nation later this week in more detail about my decision.” One person informed about the matter said Biden had told his senior staff at 1.45pm that he had changed his mind, an announcement that surprised many aides who had been told as recently as Saturday night that his campaign was still full speed ahead. It was not immediately clear whether he wrote the letter himself or had help, nor did his aides know when or how he might address the nation.
The president’s decision meant that a nomination will be settled at a convention rather than through primaries. Harris starts the truncated process in the strongest position. Within minutes of Biden’s announcement, one potential rival, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, announced she would not run. Another, California Governor Gavin Newsom, had previously said he would not challenge Harris.
Biden announced his withdrawal after a disastrous debate performance against Trump cemented public concerns about his age and touched off widespread panic among Democrats about his ability to prevent the former president from reclaiming power. Democratic congressional leaders petrified by dismal poll numbers pressed Biden to gracefully exit, angry donors threatened to withhold their money and down-ballot candidates feared he would take down the whole ticket.
No sitting president has dropped out of a race so late in the election cycle in US history, and Harris and any other contenders for the nomination will have just weeks to earn the backing of the nearly 4000 delegates to the Democratic National Convention. While the convention is scheduled to take place in Chicago from August 19 to August 22, the party had already planned to conduct a virtual roll call vote before August 7 to ensure access to ballots in all 50 states, leaving little time to assemble support.
Biden’s campaign for a second term collapsed in swift and stunning fashion after leading Democrats concluded that he would be unable to defeat Trump in the fall. During their nationally televised debate last month, Biden, the oldest president in US history, appeared frail, hesitant, confused and diminished, losing a critical opportunity to make his case against Trump, a felon who tried to overturn the last election.
Although Trump, 78, is just a few years younger than Biden, he came across as forceful at the debate even as he made repeated false and misleading statements. Questions have been raised about Trump’s own cognitive decline. He often rambles incoherently in interviews and at campaign rallies and has confused names, dates and facts just as Biden has. But Republicans have not turned against him as Democrats did against Biden.
The president’s age was a primary concern of voters long before the debate. Even most Democrats told pollsters more than a year ago that they thought he was too old for the job. Born during World War II and first elected to the Senate in 1972 before two-thirds of today’s Americans were even born, Biden would have been 86 at the end of a second term.
Biden consistently maintained that his experience was an advantage, enabling him to pass landmark legislation and manage foreign policy crises. He maintained that he was the Democrat best equipped to defeat Trump given that he did so in 2020.
But his efforts to reassure Democrats that he was up to the task following the damaging debate failed to shore up support. Instead, his slowness to reach out to party leaders and some of the answers he gave in interviews only fuelled internal discontent.
In bowing out, Biden became the first incumbent president in 56 years to give up a chance to run again. With six months remaining in his term, his decision instantly transformed him into a lame duck. But he can be expected to use his remaining time in office to try to consolidate gains on domestic policy and manage ongoing wars in Europe and the Middle East.
His announcement signalled the end of an improbable life in public office that began more than half a century ago with his first election to the New Castle County Council in Delaware in 1970. Over the course of 36 years in the Senate, eight years as vice president, four campaigns for the White House and more than three years as president, Biden has become one of the most familiar faces in American life, known for his avuncular personality, habitual gaffes and resilience in adversity.
Yet the backslapping deal-maker has struggled to translate decades of goodwill into the unifying presidency he promised. He led the country out of the deadliest pandemic in a century and the resulting economic turmoil, but his hopes of healing the rifts that widened under Trump have been dashed. American society remains deeply polarised, and his predecessor is still a potent force in stirring the forces of division and emboldening white supremacists and anti-Semites.
While he has spent most of his elective career seeking the political centre, Biden advanced an expansive progressive agenda after taking office that his allies likened to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal or Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. Working with the narrowest of partisan margins in Congress, he scored some of the most ambitious legislative victories of any modern president in his first two years.
Among other measures, he pushed through a US$1.7 trillion ($2.8tr) Covid-19 relief package; a US$1tr programme to rebuild the nation’s roads, highways, airports and other infrastructure; and major investments to combat climate change, lower prescription drug costs for seniors, treat veterans exposed to toxic burn pits and build up the nation’s semiconductor industry. He also signed legislation meant to protect same-sex marriage in case the Supreme Court ever reversed its decision legalising it.
He also appointed Ketanji Brown Jackson to become the first Black woman on the Supreme Court and installed more than 200 other judges on lower federal courts despite the razor-thin control of the Senate, more than any other president to this point of his tenure in the modern era. Roughly two-thirds of his choices were women, and roughly two-thirds were Black, Hispanic or members of other racial minorities, meaning he has done more to diversify the federal bench than any president.
Some of the major bills Biden passed drew Republican votes, but his string of legislative successes effectively ended with the 2022 midterm elections when Republicans won a narrow majority in the House, even if not scoring the “red wave” sweep that they had anticipated. Biden has been left to play defence ever since, successfully forging agreements with Republicans to avoid government shutdowns and national default but accomplishing little else more proactive.
On the international front, Biden revitalised international alliances that frayed under Trump, rallying much of the world to stand against Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Despite opposition by Trump and his allies, Biden secured tens of billions of dollars to arm Ukrainian forces and provide economic and humanitarian aid, although some critics have complained that he has been too slow to send the most sophisticated weaponry out of fear of escalation.
Biden supported Israel in its war against Hamas following the October 7 terrorist attack, but he has grown frustrated with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying that Israel is not doing enough to avoid civilian casualties and guarantee humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. Biden alienated many in his own party by not doing more on behalf of Palestinians and then angered supporters of Israel by refusing to ship certain weapons if they were to be used for an all-out assault on the Gaza city of Rafah.
Biden’s decision to pull all forces out of Afghanistan after 20 years, carrying out an agreement that Trump had struck with the Taliban, led to a debacle in the summer of 2021. Taliban forces swiftly took over the country, fleeing Afghans swarmed US planes taking off from Kabul, and a suicide bomber killed 13 American troops and 170 Afghans during the withdrawal.
The president has also struggled to secure the southwestern US border, where illegal migration has soared, and to stabilise the post-pandemic economy, in which inflation rose to its highest level in four decades and gas prices shot up to record levels. While inflation has fallen to 3% from its peak of 9% and unemployment at 4.1% remained near a half-century low, many Americans remain unsettled by economic anxiety.
Biden’s overall approval rating remained mired at an anaemic 38.5%, according to an aggregation of polls by political analysis website fivethirtyeight.com, lower than 9 of the last 11 presidents who made it this far into their terms. His aides brushed off such data, noting that Biden surprised forecasters in the 2020 primaries, as did Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections.
Biden has noticeably slowed down in recent years. His gait has grown stiffer, his voice softer, and his energy level at times has diminished. He mangles his words, gets momentarily confused or forgets names or words that he tries to summon. He exercises most days and does not drink; doctors have pronounced him fit for duty. Aides and others who deal with him have long insisted that he remained sharp and informed in private meetings.
His decision to withdraw makes him an outlier in US history. Only three presidents have served four years or less without seeking a second term, all of them during the 19th century: James K. Polk, James Buchanan and Rutherford B. Hayes. Several others wanted another term but failed to secure their party’s nomination.
The last president who had the option to run again given the two-term limit in the 22nd Amendment but chose not to was Lyndon Johnson, who served the remainder of John F. Kennedy’s term following his 1963 assassination and then won a full term of his own the next year, only to back out of another race in 1968 amid the war in Vietnam.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Peter Baker
Photographs by: Doug Mills and Erin Schaff
©2024 THE NEW YORK TIMES
