Biden Steps Out Of Presidential Race, Endorses VP Harris

As pundits predicted last week, President Joseph Biden decided today that he will no longer pursue re-election. An official missive  was released by the White House on X. 

UPDATE: Former President Barack Obama has not endorsed Kamala Harris in her yet-to-be announced presidential nomination bid. Obama said Democrats would pick an unnamed “outstanding nominee” in his first statement on President Biden stepping away from a re-election bid. “We will be navigating uncharted waters in the days ahead,” Obama write, “But I have extraordinary confidence that the leaders of our party will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges.” For their part Hillary Clinton and former president Bill Clinton both tweeted their endorsement of a bid by Harris.

Since his June 27 debate with Republican contender and former president Donald Trump, in which Biden was seen to appear dazed and confused, Biden announced his decision on his official X account and added that he will reveal more details this week. In his message, Biden did not endorse Vice President Kamala Harris, nor any other Democrat for the nation’s highest office. However, Biden subsequently endorsed Harris.

“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President,” Biden wrote. “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 wrote.

For weeks, if not months, concerns have been raised about his mental capacity and overall health, as well as his fitness to defeat Trump at the polls in November and continue as president at the age of 81. This is the first time a ruling president has declined a reelection bid since 1968, when President Lyndon Johnson’s similar announcement during the height of the war in Vietnam.

Biden’s political career began in his home state of Delaware nearly 50 years ago. He has served in the United States Senate for much of that time, but also spent eight years as Vice President during President Barack Obama’s eight year term.

Since the Biden-Trump debate, nearly two dozen elected Democrats have publicly called for Biden to rescind his campaign bid. Congressional Democrats had become increasingly worried that Biden was facing a wipe out in a match-up with Trump, who is riding high since the failed assassination attempt on his life July 13. 

Questions about his age and fitness have plagued Biden for nearly a decade. These have only been intensified since his disastrous performance at the debate. White House aides sought to reassure Democrats and the public that Biden was fully ready to continue governing, despite Democrats such as former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who was lukewarm about Biden’s chances. Pelosi told Biden him after the debate that polls showed he could not win. According to CNN, Biden had become “receptive” to stepping aside: “He’s gone from saying, ‘Kamala can’t win,’ to ‘Do you think Kamala can win?”

Biden himself admitted that he had put in a poor performance, saying at a campaign rally on the next day. He said: “I don’t walk as easy as I used to,” Biden said. “I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to. But I know what I do know: I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong. I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done.”

Just two days after the debate, intra-party grumbling about Biden came out into the open. Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas became the first Democrat to ask him to step down. Soon, dozens of lawmakers asked him to bow out. 

Major donors also began to fall away. Democrat activist and actor George Clooney wrote on July 10 in a New York Times opinion piece that Democrats “are not going to win in November with this president” and called for the party to pick a new nominee.

As defections proliferated, Biden appeared more open to dropping out of the race. Biden told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on July 5 that only the “Lord Almighty” could convince him to drop out. At a NATO news conference, Biden said he would drop out if polls showed he could not win. Later, he suggested he might drop out if he had “some medical condition that emerged.” The White House then announced that Biden had Covid-19.