From his beach home in Rehoboth, Delaware, President Biden announced Sunday that he will not seek four more years in the White House but will instead throw his support to Vice President Kamala Harris while he serves out the remainder of his term before exiting the presidency.
“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your president,” Biden wrote in a statement after weeks of vowing that he would not exit early.
“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 added.
Almost half an hour later, Biden released a second statement. “Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year,“ he said. “Democrats – it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.”
For his part, Trump posted a caustic response on social media.
“Crooked Joe Biden is the Worst President, by far, in the History of our Nation. He has done everything possible to destroy our Country, from our Southern Border, to Energy Dominance, National Security, International Standing, and so much more. He was annihilated in an Earth Shattering Debate, and now the Corrupt and Radical Democrats are throwing him overboard,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “He was not fit to serve from the very beginning, but the people around him lied to America about his Complete and Total Mental, Physical, and Cognitive Demise. Whoever the Left puts up now will just be more of the same. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
The 81-year-old Biden is just the seventh president not to seek a second term. Although his name will now go into the history books alongside Presidents James K. Polk, James Buchanan, Rutherford B. Hayes, Theodore Roosevelt, and Calvin Coolidge, the most recent and relevant precedent is President Lyndon B. Johnson’s surprise decision to bow out of the 1968 primaries.
Like LBJ, Joe Biden’s departure was not pre-planned. He fought it bitterly until the very end.
Biden insisted in the aftermath of a disastrous June 27 debate with former President Trump, where his advanced age and lagging mental acuity were on full display, that he would not go quietly into that good night. His political party had other ideas. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former President Barack Obama let it be known that they doubted his ability to defeat Trump in November.
In the aftermath of the debate, White House officials and the Biden campaign attempted an immediate reset -- first during an interview with ABC News, then during a press conference at the NATO Summit and another sit-down interview, this one with NBC News. In the end, nothing worked. The gaffes kept coming from the elder statesmen who insisted all the while that his age wasn’t an issue.
During an address to the nation from the Oval Office in the aftermath of the Trump assassination attempt, even while reading from a teleprompter, Biden could not finish a speech cleanly. He attempted to say that Americans settle their political disagreements at the ballot box, not on the battlefield. He said, “battle box.”
Even as Biden dug in his heels against pressure from friendly pundits and fellow Democrats, the flubs just kept coming. Biden called Ukrainian President Zelensky “President Putin.” He confused Vice President Harris, calling her “Vice President Trump.” He forgot the name of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin during an interview, referring to him only as “the black man.”
But Biden could not hold back the storm. The White House abruptly announced last week that the president was sick with COVID-19.
For years, Biden’s handlers had successfully shielded him from the press, sheltering him from the cameras. No, White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre told RealClearPolitics, Biden had not slowed down. Instead, she said, he was “as sharp as ever.” Reporters who questioned his fitness were shunned. Video of the president appearing dazed or confused, the White House told the public, were “disinformation” and “cheap fakes.”
Even his exit was not handled cleanly. Biden announced at 1:46 p.m. Sunday that he would not seek reelection. He did not endorse Harris to be the Democratic nominee until 2:13 p.m. Twenty-seven minutes transpired where Democrats were not only thrown into uncertainty but where it was unclear what Biden would do with his remaining political capital.
It is not clear whether Harris will face a challenger for the nomination. Party officials are still scurrying to read the rule book for the Democratic National Convention in Chicago slated for Aug. 18.
Democratic National Chairman Jaime Harrison released a written statement saying that his party “will undertake a transparent and orderly process to move forward as a united Democratic Party with a candidate who can defeat Donald Trump in November.” He said that process “will be governed by established rules and procedures of the Party.”
The news even caught former top aides by surprise as the Biden family shrunk their circle of confidence in the closing days of his presidency. Former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on MSNBC that she had gotten “little indication” that an exit was imminent.
Republicans were already previewing their line of attack at their Republican National Convention. The Trump campaign declined to make vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance available for a debate against Harris because that would be “unfair,” they said, to whomever she eventually chooses as her running mate once Biden was gone.
On Sunday, Vance got in a more direct dig. “Not running for reelection would be a clear admission that President Trump was right all along about Biden not being mentally fit enough to serve as Commander-in-Chief,” Vance wrote on X. “There is no middle ground.”
The Trump campaign is bullish about their odds against Harris. Their internal polling had Trump up over Biden nationally by two percentage points. Against Harris, they say Trump leads by five points. And now it is Republicans who say their opponents are behaving in an anti-democratic fashion.
Said Trump campaign pollster John McLaughlin in an interview with RCP, “Let the bosses decide in the backroom in Chicago? That’s not very democratic.”
Beyond the politics, Republicans argue that there is a good-government issue. If Biden is not capable of running for reelection, argued Florida Sen. Rick Scott after the news broke, “he is not capable of serving as president for the next six months and needs to resign today.”
Abandoned by his party already, cajoled out of running for a second term, there was no indication Sunday that Biden would pack up and leave the White House early.
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