President Joe Biden drops re-election bid, endorses Kamala Harris

WASHINGTON >> President Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign today after his fellow party members lost confidence in his mental acuity and his ability to defeat Donald Trump.

He endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him as the Democratic Party’s nominee.

Biden, 81, said in a message on X that he will remain president and commander in chief until the end of his term in January 2025 and that he will address the nation this week.

“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President. And while my intention was to be re-elected, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country to step down and focus solely on fulfilling the duties of my President for the remainder of my term,” Biden wrote.

In his initial statement, he did not express support for Harris, but he did so a few minutes later.

Harris, 59, would become the first black woman in the country’s history to run for a major party.

Former President Trump, the Republican nominee in the Nov. 5 election, told CNN today that he thinks Harris will be easier to defeat.

Biden had a change of heart, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters. The president told allies on Saturday night that he planned to stay in the race before changing his mind this afternoon.

“Last night the message was: keep going, full steam ahead,” a source familiar with the matter told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Around 1:45 today: the president told his senior team he had changed his mind.”

Within minutes, he announced his decision via social media.

It was unclear whether other leading Democrats would challenge Harris for the party’s nomination — she was seen by many party officials as the favorite — or whether the party itself would choose to clear the way for nominations.

Biden’s announcement follows a wave of public and private pressure from Democratic lawmakers and party officials to withdraw from the race after his shockingly poor performance in a televised debate on June 27 last month against his Republican rival Trump, 78.

Biden’s failure to complete clear sentences at times diverted public attention from Trump’s performance, in which he made a series of false statements, and focused instead on questions about Biden’s eligibility for another four-year term.

A few days later, he expressed new concerns in an interview, dismissing Democrats’ worries and the growing gap in the polls and saying he would be fine with losing to Trump if he knew he had “given everything.”

His gaffes at a NATO summit – mentioning Russian President Vladimir Putin when he meant Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and calling Harris “Vice President Trump” – further fueled concerns.

Just four days before today’s announcement, Biden was diagnosed with COVID-19 for the third time, forcing him to cut short his campaign trip to Las Vegas. More than one in 10 Democrats in Congress had publicly called on him to drop out of the race.

Biden’s historic move — the first sitting president to give up his party’s nomination for re-election since President Lyndon Johnson in March 1968 — gives his replacement less than four months to campaign.

If Harris becomes the nominee, it would be an unprecedented gamble for the Democratic Party: She would be the first Black and Asian American woman to run for the White House in a country that has elected one Black president in more than two centuries of democracy and never a female president.

Biden was the oldest U.S. president ever elected when he defeated Trump in 2020. During that campaign, Biden described himself as a bridge to the next generation of Democratic leaders, a move some interpreted as a transitional figure who could defeat Trump and return his party to power.

But he set his sights on a second term, convinced he was the only Democrat who could beat Trump again, amid questions about Harris’s experience and popularity. Lately, though, his advancing years have begun to show. His gait has become stiff and his youthful stutter has occasionally returned.

His team had hoped that a strong performance at the June 27 debate would allay concerns about his age. It did the opposite: A Reuters/Ipsos poll after the debate showed that about 40% of Democrats thought he should leave the race.

Donors revolted and Harris’ supporters began to rally around her. Top Democrats, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a longtime ally, told Biden he could not win the election.

Biden initially resisted pressure to step aside. He held damage control talks and meetings with state legislators and governors, and gave rare television interviews. But it wasn’t enough. Polls showed Trump’s lead widening in key swing states, and Democrats began to fear elimination in the House and Senate. On July 17, California Rep. Adam Schiff called on him to drop out of the race.

Biden’s departure creates a new, stark contrast between the Democratic nominee’s presumptive new candidate, Harris, a former prosecutor, and Trump, two decades her senior and facing two outstanding criminal charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. He is expected to be sentenced in New York in September on a conviction for trying to cover up a hush-money payment to a porn star.

Earlier this year, Biden easily won the Democratic Party’s primary to choose a presidential nominee, despite voter concerns about his age.

However, his unwavering support for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza eroded support among some in his own party, particularly young, progressive Democrats and voters of color.

Many black voters say Biden has not done enough for them, and enthusiasm among Democrats overall for a second Biden term has been low. Even before the debate with Trump, Biden was trailing the Republican in some national polls and in the swing states he needed to win on Nov. 5.

Harris was tasked with reaching out to these voters over the past few months.

During the primaries, Biden gathered more than 3,600 delegates for the Democratic National Convention to be held in Chicago in August, nearly double the 1,976 needed to win the party’s nomination.

Unless the Democratic Party changes the rules, the delegates who have pledged to Biden will enter the convention “uninvolved” so they can vote on his successor.

Democrats also have a system of “superdelegates,” uncommitted senior party officials and elected leaders whose support is limited on the first ballot but who can play a decisive role in subsequent rounds.

Biden defeated Trump in 2020 by winning key battleground states, including close races in Pennsylvania and Georgia. Nationally, he defeated Trump by more than 7 million votes, taking 51.3% of the vote to Trump’s 46.8%.