WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — Embattled Democrat President Joe Biden has announced he is withdrawing his bid for reelection and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for the presidential nomination.
In a statement released Sunday afternoon, Biden stated he is dropping out of the 2024 presidential race because “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.”
Biden added that he will address the nation about his decision “later this week in more detail.” In a separate statement posted to social media, the president affirmed his “full support and endorsement” of Vice President Harris to become the Democrat presidential nominee.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 21, 2024
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. And it’s been the best… pic.twitter.com/x8DnvuImJV
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 21, 2024
At age 81, Biden is the oldest president in U.S. history, and throughout his tenure he has been hounded by concerns that he has been suffering cognitive decline, based on increasingly frequent public instances of odd statements, incoherence, tripping, and apparent fatigue and confusion, with polls finding majorities considered him too old to effectively serve a second term.
Democrats and their allies in the mainstream press have largely dismissed such concerns as unfounded; as recently as June 21, left-wing “fact-checking” outlet PolitiFact attributed the narrative in large part to “videos of President Joe Biden that have been selectively edited or taken out of context.”
Just six days later, however, the narrative on the Left changed almost overnight with Biden’s performance against Trump in a debate hosted by CNN. LifeSiteNews’ Ashley Sadler described the president as “appear(ing) visibly unwell from the beginning of the debate, struggling with numerous answers (including, early in the debate, claiming to have ‘finally beat Medicare’), speaking with a hoarse voice, and frequently seeming vacant.”
Ever since, Democrat commentators, strategists, and activists began speaking openly about their fear and panic over winning the election if Biden remained their nominee, with multiple mainstream media outlets publishing damning insider accounts of private acknowledgment of Biden’s condition and the extraordinary measures White House staffers take to manage his public appearances. Yet for weeks the White House resisted calls for the president to bow out.
Despite Biden’s insistence on staying in the race, public calls to drop out by more than two dozen current and former Democrat members of Congress only continued to grow, with party leaders such as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and former President Barack Obama reportedly conveying similar messages in private as well. Almost two-thirds of Democrat voters wanted Biden to drop out, according to a July 17 poll by the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
As the sitting Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris would normally be considered a favorite to step in. But long-standing discontent with her own job performance and doubts as to whether she would fare any better against Republican nominee Donald Trump keep her nomination from being a certainty. Other prominent Democrats who have been suggested as possible replacement nominees include California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro.
Polling aggregations by RealClearPolitics and RaceToTheWH indicated a slim popular-vote lead for Trump in the November election, and, more important, leads in swing states translating to an Electoral College advantage over Biden. It remains to be seen how a new Democrat nominee, with an all-new resume, policy record, presentation, and message, will poll against the former GOP president. A Morning Consult poll released July 18 showed Trump leading Biden 46 percent to 42 percent, but with 8 percent who chose “Other” still up for grabs.
The Democratic National Convention, where Democrats’ choice for president is supposed to be formally nominated, begins August 19 in Chicago, Illinois.