President Joe Biden announced he would drop out of the 2024 race. Photo: AFP via Getty Images/TNSAfter weeks of intense pressure from across the political spectrum, US President Joe Biden made the extraordinary move on Sunday of withdrawing as the Democratic candidate to lead the party in the November election, the president announced on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Biden, 81, gave his support for Vice-President Kamala Harris to succeed him.
His decision makes him the first elected American president since Lyndon Johnson in 1968 to opt not to seek a second term.
“I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down,” he said in his early afternoon message, adding a few minutes later: “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.”
Biden said he would speak to the nation later in the week in more detail about his decision. The political earthquake comes less than a month before the Democratic party convention.
“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,” Biden added. “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.”
Harris said in a statement that she was honoured to have Biden’s endorsement and that she intended to “earn and win this nomination”.
The decision follows the first televised debate last month against the Republican nominee, former president Donald Trump, that the Biden campaign asked for, yet ultimately proved politically disastrous for the octogenarian.
In the weeks following the debate, Biden and his advisers went into overdrive hoping to repair the damage, with defiant statements, interviews and campaign events trying to convince donors and Democratic Party stalwarts that he was mentally sharp and physically capable.
“When you get knocked down, you get back up,” he said at a rally in North Carolina.
These included an ABC News interview with George Stephanopoulos, radio interviews involving questions pre-vetted by the White House and an hour-long Nato press conference in which he mistakenly referred to Vice-President Kamala Harris as Trump.
But ultimately the debate memes and verbal lapses, reinforced incessantly on social media, proved decisive. A bout of Covid-19 in mid-July that briefly kept Biden from actively campaigning and fed into Trump’s narrative of a frail opponent did not help.
How do US presidential elections work?
It came a week after an attempted assassination of Trump just ahead of the Republican National Convention that prompted Biden to temporarily suspend campaigning and pull advertisements.
“There is no place in America for this kind of violence,” Biden said.
This has diverted voter attention from Trump’s shortcomings, including his own age, slower gait, verbal missteps and at times nonsensical statements.
The Republican convention in mid-July also seemed at times more like a coronation of an inevitable next president than a battle still under way, political analysts said.
That confidence was seen in Trump’s choice for vice-president, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, a white male who does little to appeal to female and minority voters and who has termed China the “biggest threat” to the US. Biden’s exit may require a significant Republican retooling just weeks before the election.
It was not immediately clear whether Democrats will unite behind Harris.
California Governor Gavin Newsom endorsed Harris to lead the Democratic ticket, which removed from the running someone who had been seen as a logical replacement for Biden, and a strong contender.
Some lawmakers in the party’s progressive wing, including Washington’s Representative Pramila Jayapal and New Hampshire’s Representative Annie Kuster quickly expressed their support.
However, while lauding Biden’s decision, former president Barack Obama said the Democratic Party will be “navigating uncharted waters in the days ahead” and that it will be up to party leaders “to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges”.
Meanwhile, Vance, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and more than a dozen other Republican lawmakers are calling for Biden to step down, arguing that the president’s decision to not finish his re-election campaign means that he is not fit to undertake his official duties.
The last time such a late decision was made not to run was over a half-century ago when Johnson shocked the nation with his televised announcement in March 1968.
Amid strong criticism of his escalation of the Vietnam war and nationwide campus unrest, Johnson faced primary challenges from Senators Robert Kennedy of New York and Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota.
Swing into election season with these political idioms
But Johnson made his announcement when party primaries were still going on, and Johnson’s vice-president, Hubert Humphrey, had time to step in. After Kennedy was assassinated in June 1968, Humphrey won the nomination at a chaotic convention in Chicago only to lose a close election to the Republican nominee, Richard Nixon.
In Biden’s case, he faced only token challenges during this year’s primaries and secured the necessary number of delegates for the nomination early in the process.
Now uncertainty surrounds Biden’s successor, as it is not immediately clear how to transfer campaign funds and delegate votes earmarked for Biden to a new candidate.
The new Democratic presidential candidate will also have a relatively short period to build public support before the November 5 election, in a US presidential election process that can seem interminable.
Analysts said the US is in uncharted territory. Several potential Democratic candidates have done marginally better than Biden in recent polling. But Harris enjoys stronger name recognition, and would seem to offer her party the easiest transition in advance of the November 5 showdown.