By Mary Trimble, Peter Gattuso, Aayush Goodapaty, and Grant Lefelar
Monday, July 22, 2024
President Joe Biden will be a one-term president.
That may be the only thing we can say for certain today.
After more than three weeks of unrelenting
pressure from politicos, donors, and members of his own party, the
81-year-old president announced his decision
to withdraw from the presidential race on Sunday and almost immediately endorsed Vice
President Kamala Harris to succeed him. Key lawmakers, kingmakers, and
potential nominees seemed to quickly fall in line with Harris as the new
standard-bearer, but the matter is nowhere near settled as Democrats start the
countdown to their Chicago convention—now just three weeks away—where the party
will formally pick a ticket to face off against former President Donald Trump
and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, in November.
There was no dramatic East Room address to close out
Biden’s ill-fated presidential campaign on Sunday, nor a rally where he could
make a show of passing the torch to the next generation—as he once
promised to do.
No, the president—recovering from COVID-19 at his
Rehoboth, Delaware, residence—instead took a page out of his predecessor’s
book, delivering history-changing news in a tweet. The statement reportedly
came together in less than 24 hours over the weekend, the work of a tight
circle of just a couple of Biden’s most trusted advisers. Harris apparently
learned of Biden’s decision only minutes before the tweet went live, and many
White House staffers found out their boss
was dropping out of the race when they saw it on social media.
“While it has been my intention to seek reelection,”
Biden wrote in the
letter posted early Sunday afternoon, “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.”
Scores and scores of Democrats had been waiting to hear
those words since Biden’s disastrous
debate performance on June 27. The president, whom voters have long
believed is too old to do the job, looked feeble and gaunt and sounded
functionally incoherent during the debate, shocking even loyal Democrats into
pushing for a change at the top of their party’s ticket.
Since June 27, roughly three dozen congressional
Democrats had publicly called on the president to step aside, including several
sitting senators. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader
Chuck Schumer, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries had reportedly
warned Biden in recent days that he was destined for a shellacking in
November, and that he would be a potentially majority-losing drag on House and
Senate races. Donors—and the people
who assemble them—were jumping
ship, too, prompting questions about whether the president’s war chest
could hold out until November.
As we’ve reported
several
times,
Biden made a handful of unsuccessful attempts to reassure his erstwhile allies
and the American people that the debate was “one bad night,” as so many Biden
surrogates put it, and not the norm for an octogenarian three years into
arguably the most stressful job in the world. He did sit-down interviews,
called into MSNBC’s Morning Joe, and delivered remarks from a
teleprompter at several campaign events. He also addressed the nation in
prepared remarks about the Supreme Court, during an hour-long press conference
to cap the NATO Summit, and in an Oval Office address about the attempt on
Trump’s life last week.
And those appearances were, by-and-large, not pretty.
When faced with questions about his age and fitness, Biden was frequently defensive
and hostile.
At the NATO summit, he confused Harris for Trump in his first answer—after only
hours earlier calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “President Putin.”
When asked by NBC News’ Lester Holt what would happen if he had another
“episode” like he had at the debate, Biden paused, tried to repeat the
question, and uttered something the NBC
News transcript could only mark down as “INAUDIBLE.” In a recent interview
with Black Entertainment Television, Biden seemed unable
to recall the name of his own secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, calling
him instead “the black man.”
Such performances did little, if anything, to assuage
voters’ concerns. Biden’s poll numbers—already poor
before the debate—have been in freefall in the weeks since. As of Wednesday, 65
percent of Democrats surveyed by the Associated
Press-NORC thought he should step aside. One by one, formerly safe blue
states—like Virginia, New Hampshire, and New Mexico—turned
purple or were at risk of moving into “toss-up” territory. The latest
national polling from
CBS News showed Trump running 5 points ahead of Biden. All the while, Biden
insisted the polling wasn’t accurate. “You guys keep saying that,” Biden told
ABC News’ George Stephanopolous earlier this month, when Stephanopolous
pressed him about falling behind in the polls. “Do you—look, you know polling
better than anybody. Do you think polling data as accurate as it used to be?”
The steady stream of leaks from concerned Democrats and
public calls for Biden’s withdrawal seemed to dry up immediately after the
assassination attempt on Trump last Saturday, but it was a rushing river once
again again by the latter half of the week. On Wednesday, Biden was diagnosed
with COVID-19, and retreated to Delaware. On Friday, some dozen more Democratic
lawmakers called on him to step aside.
The Biden campaign and the White House were unwavering in
their denials of the rumors late last week that Biden was nearing a decision to
withdraw from the race. “Joe Biden is more committed than ever to beat Donald
Trump,” Jen O’Malley Dillon, the Biden campaign chair, said
on Morning Joe Friday morning. Twice that same day, White House
senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates tweeted denials of
reports that Biden was considering dropping out, saying “Keep the faith.”
Biden was reportedly telling his own staff as
late as Saturday morning that it was “full steam ahead” on his reelection
bid, and seemed set to hit the campaign trail again next week, after he’d
recovered from COVID-19.
But that changed Saturday evening. Steve Ricchetti and
Mike Donilon, two of Biden’s closest advisers, drove from Washington, D.C., to
Delaware to tell him that new internal polling—the first of some crucial
battlegrounds in two months—had revealed there was now no path to victory in
November, Politico reported
on Sunday. Not only was he losing in the six key swing states, he was
cruising toward a loss in Virginia and New Mexico. Biden finally believed the
numbers.
At 1:45 p.m. ET, he informed some key staff he was
dropping out. At 1:46 p.m. ET, the tweet went
live.
His announcement was followed about 30 minutes later by a full endorsement of
Harris. “My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick
Kamala Harris as my Vice President,” he tweeted. “And it’s been the best
decision I’ve made. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for
Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year.”
Harris, for her part, quickly put out a statement of her
own confirming she was interested in the top of the ticket. “I am honored
to have the President’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this
nomination,” she tweeted.
Before Biden dropped out, who would replace him in the
event that he did was more or less an open question. While Harris was viewed as
the favorite, a handful of Democratic up-and-comers—including Govs. Josh
Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Roy Cooper of North
Carolina, Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Jared Polis of Colorado, Gavin Newsom of
California, and J.B. Pritzker of Illinois—seemed like potential contenders who
could try to leapfrog the unpopular
vice president.
But in a flash on Sunday, Democrats—who had spent the
last month in the deepest kind of disarray—fell squarely in line behind Harris
as they praised Biden for his selflessness and patriotism. Nearly 150 of the
212 Democratic
House members and 32 of the 51 senators who vote with the Democratic
majority endorsed Harris. The vast majority of the governors who’d seemed most
likely to try to box her out backed Harris, as did Transportation Secretary
Pete Buttigieg—potentially in an effort to earn the running mate nod. “The best
path forward for the Democratic Party is to quickly unite behind Vice President
Harris and refocus on winning the presidency,” Shapiro said in a
statement. “The contrast in this race could not be clearer and the road to
victory in November runs right through Pennsylvania—where this collective work
began. I will do everything I can to help elect Kamala Harris as the 47th
President of the United States.”
In another boost for Harris, the Democratic fundraising
platform ActBlue reported that it had taken in more than $50 million in
donations on Sunday, one of the strongest
fundraising days Democrats have ever seen. The Biden reelection
campaign reported having almost $100 million cash-on-hand at the end of
June—and it’s unclear whether or how Harris or any other nominee could get
ahold of that money. Politico
reported that the $95 million war chest would automatically transfer to
Harris to use, since she was already on a ticket with Biden and the Biden
campaign transferred the FEC filing into her name.
But our own Sarah Isgur is not so sure. “This was a
primary. Joe Biden was running the primary,” Sarah explained on Dispatch
Live Sunday night. “Joe Biden dropped out of the primary—same as lots
of people do in every primary. You don’t just get to give all of your money to
your favorite candidate who’s still in the primary. … [Harris is] not
officially on anything.” The Biden PAC could, Sarah suggested, transfer
the money to the Democratic National Committee for it to spend on her behalf.
Endorsements and fundraising aside, in order to formally
become her party’s nominee at the convention in Chicago set for August 19-21,
Harris would have to secure the votes of the more than 4,000 Democratic
delegates—many of whom, unlike the Republican Party’s delegates, are
professional political operatives vetted
for loyalty to the president. Harris and her team are reportedly already
making calls to shore up their support, and with Biden’s endorsement, it
seems likely that she will be able to secure the requisite number to become the
nominee.
The opponent switcheroo is a development the Trump
campaign has been preparing for, egging on, and dreading, all at once. “Crooked
Joe Biden is the Worst President, by far, in the History of our Nation,” Trump
posted on social
media shortly after the announcement, gloating over Biden’s decision to
drop out. “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.”
But in a perhaps more revealing post just a few hours
later, the reality of facing another opponent seemed to have hit the former
president. “So, we are forced to spend time and money on fighting Crooked Joe
Biden, he polls badly after having a terrible debate, and quits the race,” he wrote.
“Now we have to start all over again. Shouldn’t the Republican Party be
reimbursed for fraud?”
Indeed, Tim Alberta, who interviewed Trump campaign
co-chairs Chirs LaCivita and Susie Wiles, wrote
for The Atlantic last week that the campaign wasn’t prepared for
another opponent. “If Wiles and LaCivita were too successful—if too many
Democrats decided, too quickly, that Biden was no longer capable of defeating
Trump, much less serving another four years thereafter—then they risked losing
an ideal opponent against whom their every tactical maneuver had already been
deliberated, poll-tested, and prepared,” he reported. “Campaigns are usually on
guard against peaking too soon; in this case, the risk for Trump’s team was Biden
bottoming out too early.”
The Republican narrative in the aftermath of Biden’s
decision seemed to coalesce around the idea that Biden should resign the
presidency if he’s too impaired to run for reelection—and that Harris was
complicit in covering up Biden’s mental state. The main super PAC for Trump on
Sunday launched ads in key
battleground states to that effect, saying Harris was “in on it” and had
worked to cover up “Joe Biden’s obvious mental decline.”
At this point, what this all means for the general
election is anyone’s guess. But back in January, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki
Haley predicted
that “the first party to retire its 80-year-old candidate is going to be
the one who wins this election.”
Democrats are surely hoping that she was right.
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