Biden bows to pressure, drops out of 2024 race, quickly endorses VP Kamala Harris

President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 White House race on Sunday, ending his re-election bid after a disastrous debate with Donald Trump that raised doubts about his fitness for office just four months before the election. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

After nearly a month of persistent calls to make way for a younger alternative following his disastrous performance at the presidential debate, President Joe Biden has announced that he will drop his candidacy for a second term.

Biden’s announcement upends U.S. presidential election politics, with just four months to go before the general election and just weeks before the Democratic National Convention begins on Aug. 19. It leaves his party with little time to nominate a successor and realign itself against the relatively united Republican Party and the campaign of former President Donald Trump.

The 81-year-old 46th president said he is proud of his record of service but that it has become clear that it is time to pass the torch.

“I believe it is in the best interests of my party and the country that I step down and focus solely on fulfilling the duties of my president for the remainder of my term,” Biden said in a statement shared on his social media accounts.

In his announcement, Biden thanked Vice President Kamala Harris for her service and later endorsed her candidacy to replace him at the top of the party.

“My very first decision as a party candidate in 2020 was to choose Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it is the best decision I have ever made. Today I want to give my full support and endorsement to Kamala to be our party’s nominee this year. Democrats — it’s time to come together and defeat Trump. Let’s do this,” he wrote.

Harris said Biden’s decision to step aside was a “selfless and patriotic act.”

“President Biden is doing what he has done his entire life: putting the American people and our country above all else. I am honored to have the President’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination,” she said in a statement shared by their joint campaign.

Trump quickly responded to the news, saying Biden was not fit to hold the White House anyway.

“He only got to the position of President through lies, fake news and not leaving his basement. Everyone around him, including his doctor and the media, knew he was not fit to be President, and he was not – And now look at what he has done to our country, with millions of people crossing our border, completely unchecked and uncontrolled, many from prisons, mental institutions and record numbers of terrorists. We will suffer greatly because of his presidency, but we will repair the damage he has done very quickly,” he wrote on his Truth Social Media platform, in all caps.

“Crooked Joe just got knocked out so now I have to do it for the FOURTH TIME!!!” he later added.

Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who narrowly lost to Trump in 2016, said they were “honored to join the President in endorsing Vice President Harris and will do everything we can to support her.”

Biden’s decision to step down follows weeks in which liberal lawmakers have spoken out against his continued participation in the race. His debate performance set off an avalanche of calls to step aside, but the problem has been compounded by other public appearances in which the president has appeared less equipped than he did just four years ago.

No one knows exactly what will happen next in Democratic politics.

DNC rules do not allow Biden to simply award delegates pledged to him to another candidate, even the one sharing the ticket with him. That means Democrats will hold an open convention next month, with more than 4,000 delegates up for grabs for anyone opportunistic enough to seek them out.

DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison acknowledged that the party now has an unprecedented amount of work to do, but that time is limited.

“This process will be governed by established Party rules and procedures. Our representatives are prepared to take seriously their responsibility to quickly deliver a candidate to the American people,” he wrote.

Former President Barack Obama said in a statement that the party “will navigate uncharted waters in the days ahead.

“But I have extraordinary confidence that the leaders of our party can initiate a process that will produce an excellent candidate,” he said.

According to Trump campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, Biden’s announcement that he will not run amounts to an admission that he cannot hold office until January 2025.

“The question for Kamala Harris is simple: knowing that Joe Biden withdrew from the campaign trail due to his rapidly deteriorating condition, does Harris believe the people of America are safe and secure with Joe Biden in the White House for another six months,” the statement said.

One thing is certain, said Casey Burgat, director of the Legislative Affairs Program at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management: Democrats have just exposed themselves to a whole new set of problems.

“Biden’s withdrawal raises interesting questions about whether it reflected the will of voters or whether party leaders and donors were the ones making the decisions. Both are true, but Republicans will surely insist that liberal elites ignored everyday voters in an attempt to change the rules of the game when it became clear they couldn’t win fairly,” he said.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson reiterated calls for Biden to resign if he is not fit to run. In a statement, Johnson said: “November 5 can’t come soon enough.”

Johnson also predicted on Sunday that Republicans would question whether Democrats can legally replace Biden as the nominee after he won a series of primaries across the country.

“I think they have legal hurdles in some of these states, and it’s going to be fought out, I expect, on the ground and they’re going to have to figure that out. They have a real problem,” Johnson said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

The Herald news agencies have contributed.