After intense pressure from within his own party, President Joe Biden announced that he was ending his campaign and backing Vice President Kamala Harris to run in his place. Ms. Harris said she would seek the nomination, adding: "Together, we will fight. And together, we will win."
"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 focus entirely on fulfilling my duties as president for the remainder of my term," Mr. Biden said in a statement. He called it "the greatest honor of my life to serve as your president."
President Biden gave Harris his "full support and endorsement" in a social media post. "Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump," he added. "Let’s do this." Harris said she was "honored" by Biden’s endorsement and that her intention was to "earn and win" the party’s nomination.
"Together, we will fight," she said in a statement. "And together, we will win." After getting off to a rocky start as vice president, Harris now stands at the brink of leading her party’s ticket.
President Biden’s decision ends a political crisis that began when the president delivered a calamitous debate performance against Trump on 27 June. For weeks, the president insisted that he would remain in the race, but a senior administration official familiar with Biden’s thinking said he changed his mind in part because he had tried for weeks to flip the attention back to Trump.
No sitting American president has dropped out of a race so late in the election cycle. The Democratic National Convention, where Biden was to have been formally nominated by 3,939 delegates, is scheduled to begin 19 August in Chicago, and Democrats are gaming out the scenarios for a new nominee, even if Harris has certain built-in advantages — including with the "Biden for President" campaign committee officially filing paperwork to rename itself "Harris for President." One crucial question: What happens to the US$ 96 million already in the Biden campaign’s coffers? It seems likely that Harris can inherit it.
President Biden’s endorsement of Harris expected to set off a flood of support from his fellow Democrats. Among them: former President Bill Clinton; Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state and Democratic nominee in 2016. Governors Gavin Newsom of California and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, both of whom had been seen as potential contenders themselves, also backed her, as did a number of high-profile lawmakers, including the leaders of three major power centers on Capitol Hill: the Progressive Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus and the centrist New Democrats.
However, while four of the party’s most influential figures issued statements praising President Biden, they stayed silent on Harris, this include former President Barack Obama, who was said to be maintaining the neutral stance he took during the 2020 primaries. While many Democrats on Capitol Hill rallied around Harris, Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the New York Democrats who lead the party in Congress; and Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the former House speaker, stayed silent.