- Biden will remain in office as president until his term ends in January 2025.
- “The best thing for my party and my country is for me to resign.”
- Harris becomes the first black woman to lead the Democratic ticket.
- Trump says Kamala Harris would be 'easier to beat' in US election.
WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden on Sunday ended his re-election campaign after fellow Democrats lost faith in his mental acuity and ability to beat Donald Trump as they backed Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him as the party's nominee.
Biden, 81, in a post on X, said he will remain in his role as president and commander in chief until his term ends in January 2025 and will address the nation this week.
“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President. And while my intention has been to seek re-election, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to step down and focus exclusively on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term,” Biden wrote.
His initial statement did not include an endorsement of Harris, but a few minutes later he expressed his support.
Harris, 59, would become the first black woman to run for office on a major party ticket in U.S. history.
Former President Trump, the Republican nominee in the November 5 election, told CNN on Sunday that he believed Harris would be easier to defeat.
Biden has changed his mind, a source familiar with the matter said. ReutersThe president told allies as of Saturday night that he planned to stay in the race before changing his mind Sunday afternoon.
“Last night the message was to move forward with everything, full speed ahead,” said a source familiar with the matter. Reuters“At around 1.45pm today, the president informed his senior team that he had changed his mind,” said the spokesman, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
He announced his decision on social media within minutes.
It was unclear whether other senior Democrats would challenge Harris for the party's nomination — she was widely seen as the pick by many party officials — or whether the party itself would choose to open the field for nominations.
Biden's announcement follows a wave of public and private pressure from Democratic lawmakers and party officials to drop out of the race after his surprisingly poor performance in a televised debate on June 27 last month against his Republican rival Trump, 78.
Biden's failure at times to complete clear sentences diverted public attention from Trump's performance, in which he made a series of false statements, and focused it on questions related to Biden's suitability for another four-year term.
Days later, he raised fresh concerns in an interview, downplaying Democrats' worries and the growing gap in opinion polls, and saying he wouldn't mind losing to Trump if he knew he had “given it his all.”
His gaffes at a NATO summit — invoking Russian President Vladimir Putin's name when referring to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and calling Harris “Vice President Trump” — further fueled anxiety.
Just four days before Sunday's announcement, Biden was diagnosed with COVID-19 for the third time, forcing him to cut short a campaign trip to Las Vegas. More than one in ten Democratic congressmen had publicly called on him to drop out of the race.
The historic decision by Biden — the first sitting president to forgo his party’s nomination for reelection since President Lyndon Johnson in March 1968 — leaves his replacement with less than four months to launch a campaign.
If Harris emerges as the nominee, the move would represent an unprecedented gamble by the Democratic Party: its first Black woman and Asian American to run for the White House in a country that has elected a Black president and never a female president in more than two centuries of democracy.
Biden was the oldest U.S. president ever elected when he defeated Trump in 2020. During that campaign, Biden portrayed himself as a bridge to the next generation of Democratic leaders. Some interpreted that to mean he would serve one term, a transitional figure who defeated Trump and led his party back to power.
But he sought a second term because he believed he was the only Democrat who could defeat Trump amid doubts about Harris's experience and popularity. But lately, his advancing age began to show more. His gait became stilted and his childhood stutter occasionally reappeared.
His team hoped a strong performance in the June 27 debate would ease concerns about his age. It did the opposite: a Reuters/Ipsos The poll taken after the debate showed that about 40% of Democrats thought he should drop out of the race.
Donors began to rebel and Harris' supporters began to rally around her. Top Democrats, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a longtime ally, told Biden he cannot win the election.
Biden initially resisted pressure to step aside. He held damage-control calls and meetings with state lawmakers and governors, and gave television interviews on rare occasions. But it wasn’t enough. Polls showed Trump’s lead in key battleground states widening, and Democrats began to fear a crushing defeat in the House and Senate. On July 17, California Rep. Adam Schiff called on him to drop out of the race.
Biden’s departure sets up a stark new contrast between the Democrats’ presumptive nominee, Harris, a former prosecutor, and Trump, who is two decades her senior and faces two pending criminal cases related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election result. He is scheduled to be sentenced in New York in September on a conviction for trying to cover up a payment to a porn star to silence her.
Biden had problems before the debate
Earlier this year, facing little opposition, Biden easily won the Democratic Party primary to choose its presidential nominee, despite voter concerns about his age.
But his steadfast support for Israel's military campaign in Gaza eroded support among some members of his own party, particularly young, progressive Democrats and voters of color.
Many Black voters say Biden hasn’t done enough for them, and enthusiasm among Democrats overall for a second Biden term had been low. Even before the debate with Trump, Biden was trailing the Republican in some national polls and in battleground states he would have needed to win on Nov. 5.
Harris has been tasked with reaching out to those voters in recent months.
During the primaries, Biden amassed more than 3,600 delegates for the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August. That number is nearly double the 1,976 needed to win the party's nomination.
Unless the Democratic Party changes the rules, delegates pledged to Biden would enter the convention “unpledged,” allowing them to vote for his successor.
Democrats also have a system of “superdelegates,” uncommitted senior party officials and elected leaders whose support is limited on the first ballot but who could play a decisive role in later rounds.
Biden defeated Trump in 2020 by winning key states, including close contests in Pennsylvania and Georgia. Nationally, he outperformed Trump by more than 7 million votes, earning 51.3% of the popular vote to Trump's 46.8%.
Shortly after Biden's announcement, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said: CNN on Sunday that he believes Vice President Harris will be easier to defeat in the November election than Democratic President Biden.
