President Biden, 81, abandoned his bid for re-election and threw the 2024 presidential contest into chaos on Sunday, caving to relentless pressure from his closest allies to drop out of the race amid deep concerns that he is too old and frail to defeat former President Donald J. Trump.
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After three weeks of often angry refusals to step aside, Mr. Biden finally yielded to a torrent of devastating polls, urgent pleas from Democratic lawmakers and clear signs that donors were no longer willing to pay for him to continue.
Biden’s decision opens a path for Vice President Kamala Harris and other possible replacement candidates, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, to hastily mount a campaign for the nomination ahead of the Democratic National Convention in mid-August.
“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 in a statement. He will address the nation later in the week, he said.
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… pic.twitter.com/x8DnvuImJV
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 21, 2024
The unprecedented announcement came as an increasing number of Democrat lawmakers had begun to publicly call for Biden to step aside and the party’s leadership reportedly was engaged in efforts to convince Biden, 81, he could not win in November’s general election against former President Trump, the 2024 GOP nominee who Biden defeated four years ago to win the White House.
Biden was diagnosed with COVID-19 on Wednesday, a revelation that came on the heels of several TV interviews and campaign appearances in which the president insisted he was remaining in the race. But the interviews failed to reassure supporters and provided critics – including those on the left – with further evidence that Biden was no longer up to the job.
Biden had delivered a strong welcome address to world leaders at last week’s NATO summit in Washington D.C. The showcase served as an opportunity to prove he was fit to continue his current term and eager and able to lead the nation for another four years.
For a time, it seemed Biden could survive the surge of calls for him to quit the race after House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced that they backed Biden’s bid.
But Biden, who has long been known for a propensity to commit gaffes, continued to stumble. His missteps included a glaring error on the world stage at the NATO summit. While speaking on live television, Biden referred to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “Putin,” name-checking Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose invasion of Zelenskyy’s Ukraine has precipitated more than two years of hellish war.
Questions over whether Biden would end his campaign remained the top political story heading into last weekend.
But two blockbuster developments in rapid succession – the attempted assassination of Trump at the former president’s rally in western Pennsylvania on Saturday and Trump’s naming Monday at the Republican National Convention of Sen. JD Vance of Ohio as his running mate – briefly halted the fervor over Biden for a couple of days.
But the call on Wednesday by Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democratic Senate nominee in California, for Biden to end his campaign, as well as reporting that top Democrats such as Schumer, Jeffries, and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had frank conversations with Biden, quickly reignited the political crisis for the president.
Biden’s stunning announcement occurred during the roughest stretch of what was a more than year-long campaign for a second term. Doubts about his viability at the top of the Democratic Party’s 2024 ticket began seeping out into the mainstream after his halting delivery and awkward answers were placed on full display for a national audience during June’s presidential debate with Trump in Atlanta.
The performance sparked widespread panic within the president’s party and almost immediately spurred calls from political pundits, editorial writers and some party donors for Biden to step aside as the party’s 2024 standard-bearer.
As Biden struggled to regain his footing, an increasing number of House Democrats publicly urged the president to end his re-election bid.
Biden huddled with worried Democrats, including governors and congressional leaders, in the wake of the debate debacle and also was engaged in “working the phones,” according to campaign officials.
He started last week in a defiant posture, sending a letter to congressional Democrats in which he vowed that he was committed to campaigning against and beating Trump in November. Biden also urged lawmakers to stop focusing on the debate and end the calls for his withdrawal – pleas that he said only helped Trump.
Biden followed that up with a call with members of the Congressional Black Caucus and also gained the support of members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
But concerns mounted and intensified. Democrat lawmakers met behind closed doors hoping to come to a consensus and support the president, but some were hesitant.
The Biden campaign met with Senate Democrats on Capitol Hill and, for days, the White House and the Biden campaign – and the president himself – said Biden had no intention of dropping out of the race.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre had told reporters that the president was “absolutely not” considering dropping out.
And Quentin Fulks, the principal deputy Biden campaign manager, emphasized that “the president is in this race to win it. He is the Democratic nominee.”
On the day after the presidential debate, Biden acknowledged at a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, “I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious.”
“Folks, I don’t walk as easy as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to,” Biden added. “But I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong. And I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done. And I know, like millions of Americans know, when you get knocked down, you get back up.”
And the president, pointing to his 2024 rematch with Trump, emphasized, “I would not be running again if I did not believe with all my heart and soul that I can do this job.”
But Biden soon was staring down a slew of polls showing his standing against Trump was slipping while concerns over his age were surging.
The president’s shocking announcement brings to an end his 2024 presidential campaign, which he launched in April of last year.
And it also seemingly brings to an end a half-century-long career in national politics.
Biden was first elected to the Senate representing his home state of Delaware in 1972. During his nearly four decades in the Senate, he notably drafted and steered to passage the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act and the Violence Against Women Act, chaired the Senate Foreign Relations and Judiciary committees and oversaw six Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
He also ran unsuccessfully for the 1988 and 2008 Democratic presidential nominations.
After dropping out of the 2008 race, then-Democratic presidential nominee and Sen. Barack Obama named Biden as his running mate. Biden served eight years as the nation’s vice president as he and Obama won the 2008 election and re-election in 2012.
Biden considered, but ultimately decided against, a run for the White House in the 2016 election cycle, as he mourned the loss of his elder son, Beau, to brain cancer. With Biden on the sidelines, the party coalesced around the candidacy of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
But four years later, Biden launched a bid for the 2020 nomination. After dismal early finishes in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, Biden turned his campaign around and a landslide victory in the South Carolina primary propelled him to the Democratic nomination. Biden went on to defeat Trump and win the White House.
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