Biden Drops Out of 2024 Election, Endorses Kamala Harris

U.S. President Joe Biden said he will not seek reelection, a historic reversal that came after weeks of pressure from Democrats for the 81-year-old to exit the race in hopes of improving their chances of preventing Donald Trump from returning to the White House.

Biden announced his decision on Sunday and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, 59, to become the Democratic nominee. The move came less than four months before Election Day and just weeks ahead of the party’s nominating convention in Chicago.

“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 focus solely on fulfilling my duties as president for the remainder of my term,” Biden said in a statement he posted to X.

“It’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this,” Biden said in a subsequent post offering his “full support and endorsement” to Harris.

The first president in more than half a century not to seek reelection, Biden had until now repeatedly rejected calls to drop his bid in favor of a younger candidate.

Those appeals grew stronger following a disastrous debate performance in late June that crystallized doubts among Democratic leaders, donors and voters that he was up to the challenge of beating Trump and serving another term.

Biden’s campaign was dealt another blow when he tested positive for Covid-19 last week, forcing him off the campaign trail just as he was trying to regain momentum. Sill, it wasn’t clear until Sunday that Biden would relent to the pressure — at one point he said only the “Lord Almighty” could get him to stand down.

The president’s announcement prompted calls from Republicans for him to resign.

“If Joe Biden is not fit to run for President, he is not fit to serve as President. He must resign the office immediately. November 5 cannot arrive soon enough,” US House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement.

Biden leaves a race where polls show Trump’s lead is growing, especially after the Republican candidate was grazed by an assassin’s bullet at a Pennsylvania rally on July 13. Trump told CNN in an interview Sunday that he believes Harris will be easier to defeat, and said Biden will be remembered as “the worst president in the history of our country.”

Trump cemented his control of the GOP at the convention in Milwaukee, naming Ohio Senator JD Vance, a 39-year-old populist firebrand, as his running mate.

Democratic Angst

Democrats grew increasingly fearful that Biden’s weakened state would allow Republicans to take control of Congress, as well as the White House. Around three dozen Democratic lawmakers publicly called on the president to step aside.

A series of decisions this year by the Supreme Court — where Trump named three of the nine justices — has dramatically strengthened presidential power, further raising the stakes for the vote.

From foreign capitals to financial markets, the prospect of a Trump victory in November is seen as increasingly likely, bringing policy shifts from sweeping import tariffs and immigration limits to a pullback from treaty commitments that could transform the global economy and the US role in the world.

Legal Challenge

Republicans in recent days have suggested they could mount legal challenges to keep an alternate candidate off the ballot. Johnson, the House speaker, said at a Politico event on the sidelines of the GOP convention that “small armies of lawyers” would be needed to sort out the legal ramifications of any change in the Democratic ticket.

“I think they have got legal hurdles in some of these states, and it’ll be litigated, I would expect, on the ground there, and they will have to sort through that,” he added Sunday in an interview with CNN. “They have got a real problem.”

The Heritage Foundation, a prominent conservative think tank, has said it is already preparing to mount a court case.

“We are monitoring the calls from across the country for President Biden to step aside, either now or before the election, and have concluded that the process for substitution and withdrawal is very complicated,” Mike Howell, executive Director of the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, said in a statement.

“We will remain vigilant that appropriate election integrity procedures are followed,” Howell added.

Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita was more circumspect when asked about how the campaign would respond at a CNN-Politico event at the convention, noting legal challenges to Democratic efforts to remove a nominated candidate from the ballot in a 2014 US Senate race in Kansas.

“We are certainly not going to tip our hand on what we’re going to do,” he said.