President Joe Biden endorsed Kamala Harris on Sunday after withdrawing from the 2024 election, instantly elevating the vice president to frontrunner status in an unplanned and compressed Democratic primary process that’s kicking off just months before voters go to the polls.
“My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term. My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President,” Biden said on X. “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. Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.”
Biden’s withdrawal marks the culmination of a successful weeks-long pressure campaign prompted by Biden’s disastrous debate performance against former president Donald Trump late last month. As the Biden campaign and the White House continued to dig in their heels, prominent lawmakers, activists, and pundits, piled on the calls for him to withdraw from the race due to his obvious cognitive decline.
It’s unclear whether Democratic delegates will coalesce behind Harris during a virtual roll call set to take place sometime after August 1 — but should they decide against it, the vice president has a significant advantage over potential party rivals since she is the only candidate who is able to easily access the tens of millions of dollars donated to the Biden-Harris campaign.
“I want to thank Vice President Kamala Harris for being an extraordinary partner in all this work,” Biden said in a letter on Sunday. “And let me express my heartfelt appreciation to the American people for the faith and trust you have placed in me.”
“I believe today what I always have: that there is nothing America can’t do — when we do it together. We just have to remember we are the United States of America,” he said.
Last week, the White House dismissed reports that Biden was assessing Harris’s viability as a candidate, and added that Biden “is more committed than ever” to winning in November.
Some Democrats have pushed for a closed virtual nomination, wherein delegates could quickly replace Biden with Harris on the ticket. Others want to settle the debate at the Democratic National Convention in mid-August with an open primary in which various candidates would vie for delegate support on the convention floor.
“When people voted for [Biden] as the nominee they were voting for this ticket, so it just has to be concluded that the best way to validate the vote of the primary voters is to support the vice president as our nominee,” Eleni Kounalakis, lieutenant governor of California and a Democratic convention delegate told CNN. “There’s so much respect for President Biden that if he asked delegates to support her, even with a public chaotic media swirl, I believe most delegates would honor his wishes as the person who was chosen through the primary process and as our president.”
Born in Oakland, California, Harris was elected District Attorney of San Francisco in 2004, and was then in 2010 elected as the Attorney General of California. Recent polling puts Harris’s approval ratings slightly higher than Biden’s — according to Five Thirty Eight, 38.6 percent of Americans approve of Harris and 50.4 percent disapprove, whereas 38.5 percent of Americans approve of Biden and 56.2 percent disapprove.
“If President Biden decides to step back, we have Vice President Kamala Harris, who is ready to step up, to unite the party, to take on Donald Trump, and to win in November,” Senator Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) said on Saturday, adding that Harris’s background as a prosecutor has prepared her to take on President Donald Trump.
While Harris is now the frontrunner, Democrats have not yet united behind her: Senator Heidi Heitkamp, (D., N.D.) told the New York Times last week that “most Democrats think it should be an open process.”
“What I would say is the best thing is for Kamala Harris is to win a contested convention fight because it would legitimize her candidacy,” she said. “If it’s a backroom deal, you haven’t earned it and people want you to earn it. And once you earn it, you get a huge bounce.”
Democratic National Committee chairman Jamie Harrison said in a statement that “the Party will undertake a transparent and orderly process to move forward as a united Democratic Party with a candidate who can defeat Donald Trump in November,” and added that “this process will be governed by established rules and procedures of the Party. Our delegates are prepared to take seriously their responsibility in swiftly delivering a candidate to the American people.” Some prominent Democrats announced their support for Harris on Sunday, including former President Bill Clinton and the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
“We are honored to join the President in endorsing Vice President Harris and will do whatever we can to support her,” the Clintons said in a joint statement on X. “We’ve lived through many ups and downs, but nothing has made us more worried for our country than the threat posed by a second Trump term. He has promised to be a dictator on day one, and the recent ruling by his servile Supreme Court will only embolden him to further shred the Constitution. Now is the time to support Kamala Harris and fight with everything we’ve got to elect her. America’s future depends on it.”
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