Joe Biden has withdrawn from the race for the US presidency, an extraordinary decision that plunges the Democratic nomination into uncertainty just months before the November election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 American 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, but did not endorse her as his successor on the ticket. He said he planned to speak to the nation in more detail later this week.
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. 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.
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.
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.”
More details soon …
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