In the end, the pressure for President Biden to step down, engineered by increasingly blatant leaks from Democratic leaders and public abandonment by members of his party, apparently became too great to avoid.
With donors pulling out of the president’s campaign coffers, nearly two-thirds of Democrats not wanting him to win a second term, and a guaranteed television appearance to publicly declare “Joe has to go,” even a sitting president with any record of merit cannot run for reelection.
The seismic shift came just days after Biden, who is recovering from COVID-19, shocked the 2024 presidential race by endorsing Kamala Harris, potentially giving Harris the nomination. Shortly after Biden declared that “it is in the best interest of the party and the country that I step aside,” Harris said, “I’m honored to have the president’s endorsement and my intention is to seek and win this nomination.”
Politics is a ruthless business, and journalists and pundits quickly began speculating about who Harris’ running mate might be.
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President Biden (left) and Vice President Kamala Harris on the Truman Balcony at the White House in Washington, DC, USA, Thursday, July 4, 2024. (Tierney L. Cross)
What I’ll never understand is why Biden has sent so many signals that he absolutely remains in the race. He said he’s looking forward to campaigning this week, had his campaign manager, Jen O’Malley Dillon, make a rare television appearance to say he has no plans to drop out of the campaign, and had his White House press secretary criticize news articles that suggested otherwise.
Harris has undeniable strengths and weaknesses, but at 59 years old, she is the youngest candidate facing Donald Trump.
And this latest shocking development – the president stepping down after all the primary votes were counted – comes a week after Trump was nearly assassinated when he was saved by a simple turn of his head that grazed his ear.
“I took a bullet for democracy,” Trump said at a weekend rally.
On yesterday’s “Media Buzz,” which ended before Biden’s announcement, Kevin Koch of Rehoboth Beach said the Democratic Party “will be over for quite some time. The idea that a Black woman would be ignored would be devastating because of how it would be perceived within the community.”
The person most responsible for Biden’s resignation is Nancy Pelosi: She warned the president privately, had allies like Adam Schiff warn him publicly, and used leaks to the press to deny Biden his position.
The former speaker has not endorsed Harris, nor has Barack Obama, who has publicly said he believes the former vice president will lose and said yesterday that a process to decide the nomination is necessary.
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This may be because they believe that Harris beating someone in a mini-primary would be more powerful than what would seem to be a choice imposed by party leaders. While that may seem undemocratic, most of Biden’s delegates would likely follow the president’s lead.
The biggest mistake many journalists make is to assess Harris’ chances of winning based on her current polling position.
Trump has been eager to face Biden, especially since that disastrous debate, but as he taunted Kamala from his golf cart, he predicted he would face her.
President Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race on Sunday. (Anna Moneymaker)
After a tumultuous first two years, during which he clashed with White House allies, the vice president has become more calm and confident over the past year.
Her assets and liabilities are as follows:
Harris can claim some of Biden’s legislative achievements (although that has always looked too far back), but that means she also shoulders Biden’s failures, like Afghanistan and the border (where she was nominally in charge in a no-win situation), and Biden waited too long to crack down on asylum seekers.
She is already being questioned about whether she was involved in a cover-up in which she vouched for the president’s mental clarity while closely watching the signs of his decline. These are difficult questions.
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Biden, for reasons we now know, was unable to capture the nation’s attention as aides kept him away from journalists and even from Super Bowl interviews.
Harris needs to demonstrate her ability to get the message across and should do lots of interviews.
Whether or not other Democrats challenge her, Harris, who began making calls yesterday, will have to quickly assemble a team to take on a Trump campaign that has been operating smoothly all year.
“Several Democratic officials have privately said that, under increasing pressure from his party’s congressional leaders and close friends, President Biden may decide to drop out of the race as soon as this weekend,” Axios reported. But deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks told reporters that Biden “is not fazed by anything. The president has made a decision.”
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign rally in Las Vegas on June 28, 2024. (Bizayev Tesfaye)
And the New York Times reported, “People close to President Biden said Thursday they believe he is beginning to accept the idea that he may not win the November election and that he may have to cave in to growing demands from many anxious members of his party and withdraw from the race,” and they were right.
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And herein lies the final irony: Some Republicans and conservatives, including National Review, are saying that if Biden is unfit to campaign, he cannot run the country right now and should step down.
Of course, that would give Kamala Harris a four-month head start as president.
