President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race for the White House on Sunday, ending his bid for reelection following a disastrous debate with Donald Trump that raised questions about his fitness for office just months before the election. He endorsed his Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee for President, but a smooth transition is by no means assured.
The decision comes after escalating pressure from the president’s Democratic allies to step aside following the June 27 debate, in which the president trailed off, often gave nonsensical answers and failed to call out the former president’s many falsehoods. Shortly after announcing his withdrawal from the race, President Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to take on Trump, and encouraged his party to unite behind her.
Mr. Biden plans to serve out the remainder of his term in office, which ends at noon ET on Jan. 20, 2025.
“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President. 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,” President Biden wrote in a letter posted to his X account.
Nearly 30 minutes later, Mr. Biden threw his support behind Vice President Harris, the party’s instant favorite for the nomination at its August convention in Chicago.
“Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year,” he said in another post on X. “Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump.”
Mr. Biden’s decision came as he has been isolating at his Delaware beach house after being diagnosed with COVID-19 last week, huddling with a shrinking circle of close confidants and family members, discussing his political future. Mr. Biden said he would address the nation later this week to provide “detail” about his decision.
Senior campaign and White House staff were notified just minutes before the letter went out, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Biden had been reflecting on his future for the past couple days, and the decision was closely held.
The White House confirmed the authenticity of the letter.
The announcement is the latest jolt to a campaign for the White House that both political parties see as the most consequential election in generations, coming just days after the attempted assassination of Mr. Trump at a Pennsylvania rally.
A party’s presumptive presidential nominee has never stepped out of the race so close to the election. The closest parallel would be President Lyndon Johnson who, besieged by the Vietnam War, announced in March 1968 that he would not seek another term.
Now, Democrats have to urgently try to bring coherence to the nominating process in a matter of weeks and persuade voters in a short amount of time that their nominee can handle the job and beat Mr. Trump. For his part, Mr. Trump must shift his focus to a new Democratic opponent after years of training his attention on President Biden.
The decision marks a swift and stunning end to Mr. Biden’s 52 years in electoral politics, as donors, lawmakers and even aides expressed to him their doubts that he could convince voters that he could plausibly handle the job for another four years.
Mr. Biden had won the vast majority of delegates and every nominating contest but one, which would have made his nomination a formality. Now that he has dropped out, those delegates will be free to support another candidate.
Vice President Harris, 59, appeared to be the natural successor, in large part because she is the only candidate who can directly tap into the Biden campaign’s war chest, according to federal campaign finance rules.
The President’s backing helps clear the way for Ms. Harris, but a smooth transition is by no means assured.
The Democratic National Convention is scheduled to be held Aug. 19-22 in Chicago, but the party had announced that it would hold a virtual roll call to formally nominate Mr. Biden before in-person proceedings begin.
It remained to be seen whether other candidates would challenge Ms. Harris for the nomination, or how the party may need to adjust its rules again to smooth the Vice President’s nomination on the floor.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Mr. Biden’s decision to leave the race, but former President Trump and his team had made their preference for facing Mr. Biden clear. Nonetheless, his team has ramped up its attacks on Ms. Harris as pressure intensified on Mr. Biden to step down.
Democratic officials, including many who were behind the effort to push Mr. Biden from the race, quickly released statements praising the president’s decision.
“His decision of course was not easy, but he once again put his country, his party, and our future first,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York. “Joe, today shows you are a true patriot and great American.”
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said Mr. Biden should immediately resign if he is not fit enough to run for office. In a statement, Mr. Johnson said, “November 5 cannot arrive soon enough.”
In 2020, Mr. Biden pitched himself as a transitional figure who wanted to be a bridge to a new generation of leaders. But once he secured the job that he had spent decades struggling to attain, he was reluctant to part with it. Mr. Biden was once asked whether any other Democrats could beat Mr. Trump.
“Probably 50 of them,” President Biden replied. “No, I’m not the only one who can defeat him, but I will defeat him.”
Mr. Biden is already the country’s oldest president and had insisted repeatedly that he was up for the challenge of another campaign and another term, telling voters all they had to do was “watch me.”
And watch him they did. His poor debate performance prompted a cascade of anxiety from Democrats and donors who said publicly what some had said privately for months, that they did not think he was up to the job for four more years.
Concerns over Mr. Biden’s age have dogged him since he announced he was running for reelection, though Trump is just three years younger. Most Americans view the president as too old for a second term, according to an August 2023 poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. A majority also doubt his mental capability to be president, though that is also a weakness for Mr. Trump.
President Biden often remarked that he was not as young as he used to be, doesn’t walk as easily or speak as smoothly, but that he had wisdom and decades of experience, which were worth a whole lot.
“I give you my word as a Biden. I would not be running again if I didn’t believe with all my heart and soul I can do this job,” he told supporters at a rally in North Carolina a day after the debate. “Because, quite frankly, the stakes are too high.”
But voters had other problems with him, too — he has been deeply unpopular as a leader even as his administration steered the nation through recovery from a global pandemic, presided over a booming economy and passed major pieces of bipartisan legislation that will impact the nation for years to come. A majority of Americans disapprove of the way he’s handling his job, and he’s faced persistently low approval ratings on key issues including the economy and immigration.
Mr. Biden’s age surfaced as a major factor during an investigation of his handling of classified documents. Special counsel Robert Hur said in February that the president came across in interviews with investigators as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
The president’s allies seized on the statement as gratuitous and criticized Mr. Hur for including it in his report, and the president himself angrily pushed back on descriptions of how Mr. Hur spoke about his late son.
Mr. Biden’s motivation for running was deeply intertwined with Mr. Trump. The current President had retired from public service following eight years serving as vice president under President Barack Obama and after the death of his son Beau. But he decided to run after hearing Mr. Trump’s comments following a “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, when white supremacists descended on the city to protest the removal of its Confederate memorials.
Mr. Trump said: “You had some very bad people in the group, but you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. On both sides.”
That a sitting president didn’t unequivocally condemn racism and white supremacy deeply offended Mr. Biden. Then, when he won the 2020 election, Mr. Trump, who was until then the president, refused to concede and stood by for hours while his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, beating and bloodying law enforcement in a failed attempt to overturn the certification of Biden’s win.
“If Trump wasn’t running, I’m not sure I’d be running,” Mr. Biden once said during at a campaign event.
President Biden’s wife, First Lady Jill Biden, responded to the president’s announcement by reposting her husband’s letter announcing his decision and adding red heart emojis.
Granddaughter Naomi Biden Neal said on social media that “I’m nothing but proud of my Pop.” She said he has served the country “with every bit of his soul and with unmatched distinction” and that “our world is better today in so many ways thanks to him.”
This story was reported by The Associated Press. Darlene Superville reported from Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. AP writer Jill Colvin in New York contributed to this report.
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