Biden’s withdrawal opens up uncertain scenario and reactivates electoral battle

It has taken 24 agonizing days since the disastrous debate that pitted him against Donald Trump in Atlanta for Joe Biden to succumb to the mounting pressure: the president of the United States announced Sunday that, at 81 years of age, he is stepping aside from his bid for re-election to the White House in the November election. “My fellow Americans,” Biden opened a text in which he describes holding the office of president as “the greatest honor” of his life. “While it has been my intention to seek re-election, 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.”

“Over the past three and a half years, we have made great progress as a nation,” he states, before going on to defend the legacy of his tenure in the White House, where he arrived with the task of stitching up the wounds of a country in tatters after four years of Donald Trump, and which he leaves pushed aside by members of his own party and amid a global clamor of suspicion regarding his physical and mental abilities.

With that historic decision, announced on Sunday with a surprise message on the social platform X, the most atypical American campaign in recent memory sank a little deeper into chaos, with a Democratic party without a clear candidate — although Biden quickly endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris — and the Republican party at the feet of a leader who has just survived an assassination attempt and who is now, as a consequence of that, worshiped almost as a messianic figure.

In his statement, Biden summarizes some of the achievements of his administration: the U.S. economy, he writes, is “the strongest economy in the world.” During his presidency, the price of medicines has been lowered and health benefits increased; the first gun control legislation in 30 years was passed and the first African-American woman in the history of the Supreme Court was appointed. None of that proved sufficient for the world to believe Biden when he insisted he was qualified to continue in office, in light of almost all polls indicating a Trump victory with fewer than four months remaining before the election.

In a second message also posted on X and addressed to Democrats, Biden announced that he supported the candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed him at the head of the campaign. “My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President,” the post read. “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.”

The Democrats’ feared rival at the polls, who emerged in Milwaukee last week officially anointed as the GOP nominee at a Republican convention that provided evidence he has the conservative formation at his feet, reacted to the sensational news by saying he believes he will have an “easy time” beating Harris at the polls.

Biden’s statements brought an end to half a century of one of the most tenacious political careers in Washington — that of a man who before becoming president served as vice-president and a senator — and at the same time heralded a period of uncertainty with unpredictable consequences for the United States. They were also the culmination of almost a month of doubts about Biden’s physical and mental capacity to win in November, and more importantly, his ability to continue for four more years in the White House. Since the Atlanta debate, pressure has been mounting in public and in private from donors, strategists, analysts, media, senators, members of Congress and the party’s leaders in both Houses, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, as well as from Democratic stalwarts such as Nancy Pelosi and former president Barack Obama.

Initially, it was the “panic” felt by his supporters when they saw his erratic performance, from lapse to lapse, during the first presidential debate. Then came The New York Times editorial calling for him to step down, and the first Democratic legislators joining the list of those begging him to consider his position, which grew in number and in the prominence of its signatories until it exceeded 30. On Sunday, one last heavyweight name was added: West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, who had resigned from the party in May but still represented it on Capitol Hill.

Last Friday, Biden signaled his intention to return to the campaign trail as of Monday. Suffering from a Covid-19 infection, he spent the weekend secluded at his Rehoboth beach house in Delaware, taking Paxlovid and maintaining a light work schedule that included a call with Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission. U.S. media reports that Biden, as well as being ill, is angry with old allies who he views as having turned their backs on him and hurt by what he considers a betrayal, particularly in the case of Barack Obama.

Eventually Biden, who spent all that time defending his ability to hold office and defeat Trump despite the evidence to the contrary, gave in to the pressure and made a historic decision that takes the United States into uncharted territory.

The most pressing question is whether the party will agree with the president that Harris should succeed him. There is not a great deal of time for discussion: the Democratic National Convention will be held in Chicago from August 19-22. It is no longer solely the issue that Democrats must arrive at that date on the same page to avoid a chaotic spectacle like that of 1968. There is another clock ticking: the party has set a deadline of the end of the first week of August to name its chosen candidate, be it Biden or someone else.

Some Democratic voices, led by Pelosi, have advocated holding a mini-primary. If, through a snap election that anointed Harris or the logic of Biden’s nomination, the vice-president ends up being the party’s choice for the November ballot, it remains unclear who would be her running mate.

When Biden chose Harris as his second-in-command for the 2020 election, he did so because of the symbolism of running alongside a candidate who would become the first woman and the first person of Black and Asian descent to serve as vice president, but also because of her age: Harris is 59, and Biden campaigned that year as providing a mere “bridge” to the new generation.

By the time he broke the record as the oldest president of the United States, Biden had already changed his mind, and in April 2023 he launched his candidacy for reelection to what is perhaps the most difficult office in the world: president of the world’s leading power. Doubts about whether he was fit for the job go back much further than the June 27 debate, although his administration, his allies, and the liberal media tended to play them down. The first serious warning sign came this year, when special prosecutor Robert Hur, in charge of investigating Biden’s handling of confidential papers he still possessed without permission after leaving office as Obama’s right-hand man, recounted in his report that the president appeared unable to remember the name of his son, Beau, who died in 2015, and defined him as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

At the end of the bombshell that turned the United States and the world on its head Sunday, Biden fell back on one of his favorite arguments. “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 that we are the United States of America.”

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