President Joe Biden announced Sunday he is dropping his reelection bid and endorsing Vice-President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee to run against Donald Trump this fall. Democrats have since rallied behind Harris so completely that it’s now a matter of when, not if, she will receive the nomination and select a VP. Below are live updates on this developing story.
As of late Monday night, according to the count of the Associated Press, Harris has amassed the support of 2,579 Democratic delegates — enough to win the party’s presidential nomination. That confirms that she is now the Democrats’ presumptive nominee, less than 36 hours after President Biden dropped out and endorsed her to replace him.
Shortly after the AP’s call, Harris said in a statement:
When I announced my campaign for President, I said I intended to go out and earn this nomination. Tonight, I am proud to have secured the broad support needed to become our party’s nominee, and as a daughter of California I am proud that my home state’s delegation helped put our campaign over the top. I look forward to formally accepting the nomination soon.
According to the Wall Street Journal, at least five Democratic governors and one senator:
This may not be accurate, however, since people close to Pritzker told the Chicago Sun-Times on Monday night that he has not yet received a request for vetting materials.
Harris’s first official campaign event will be held in Milwaukee, currently scheduled for 1:05 p.m. Central time on Tuesday.
As expected, candidates will have to submit the signatures of 300 delegates, with no more than 50 from any one state, to qualify. The nomination process will then happen between August 1 and 7. Politico reports:
Delegates to the Democratic convention could begin voting on the party’s presidential and vice presidential nominees as early as next week, under a draft plan released Monday by the Democratic National Committee. The proposal is scheduled to be taken up on Wednesday by members of the DNC’s Convention rules committee. Such a timeline, if it were implemented, could result in Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden’s endorsed successor, selecting her running mate by the middle of next week. …
In a call with reporters Monday night, the DNC previewed their nomination rules, which they pledged would represent a “transparent, swift and orderly process,” said DNC Chair Jaime Harrison. The DNC committed to a virtual nomination process back in May, defending against any Republican-backed legal challenges that might keep them off the ballot, particularly in Ohio.
On Monday, she received a number of additional big endorsements, as Noam Scheiber reports:
She gave a speech during her visit to campaign headquarters on Monday, including this line of attack on Trump:
This was the contrast many expected Harris to adopt against Trump.
She ended her speech with a call to arms for her newly inherited staff:
Harris’s speech was undoubtedly at least a partial preview of what she’ll be saying on the campaign trail, including a lengthy section highlighting Trump’s criminal behavior — and framing the election as a choice between the future and past. Watch her full remarks, which begin at about 9 minutes in, here.
She told staff that Julie Chavez Rodriguez will remain campaign manager, and Jen O’Malley Dillion will be sticking around and running the Harris campaign, as well.
That doesn’t mean Harris won’t bring in new consultants and advisers, however.
Harris visited the campaign’s Wilmington, Delaware headquarters on Monday evening — and President Biden called in via speakerphone to address his former staff while she was there.
“I know yesterday’s news was surprising and, it was hard for you to hear, but it was the right thing,” Biden said.
“I want to say to the team: Embrace her. She’s the best.”
“I’m hoping that you’ll give every bit of your heart and soul that you gave to me, to Kamala. And I want you to you, I won’t be on the ticket but I’m going to be fully, fully engaged.”
He also chimed in after Harris began speaking:
Here are Biden’s full remarks:
The CBS News/YouGov poll found overwhelming support for the two moves:
That’s all since Biden dropped out and endorsed Harris. According to the campaign, the number of first-time volunteer sign-ups is 100-times more than what’s normal for a day.
And it’s not just for the top of the ticket:
All 23 has officially endorsed her as of Monday afternoon, with Rhode Island’s Dan McKee being the last:
Per a new press release, the money has been rolling in:
That includes more than 888,000 donations, the campaign says, and 60 percent were from first-time 2024 donors.
And over $100 million has apparently been processed by ActBlue over the same time period, indicating that the big wave is benefiting other Democratic candidates and aligned organizations, as well:
David Plouffe, a leading adviser to former President Barack Obama, has been approached by allies of Vice President Kamala Harris to join a hybrid team of consultants at the top of her organizational chart, according to two people familiar with the outreach.
Plouffe’s admirers are encouraging him to accept a position in the Harris campaign, believing she needs more proven hands who offer a voice from outside both the Biden and Harris orbits. The addition of Plouffe to Harris’ team would immediately inject A-list talent in the most senior ranks of the operation as they work to reintroduce Harris and ensure she’s on solid footing ahead of her biggest first decision: whom to select as her vice presidential nominee.
Plouffe would also provide a conduit to top donors and leaders across Silicon Valley, said a third person who wants him to join Harris, where he’s worked on policy and strategy for the likes of Uber after exiting his role with Obama.
Per Reuters:
Just another sign of the influx of donations since Sunday afternoon:
The Washington Post notes:
“Kamala is even more radical and incompetent than old Joe Biden,” said Jesse Watters, who labeled her a “California socialist” and declared her “even more unpopular than the most unpopular president in American history.”
Sean Hannity, who has been an on-air ally and off-air adviser to Donald Trump, described her as having a “horrendous” and purportedly “far-left” track record, insisting that voters “seem to detest Kamala Harris.”
Laura Ingraham decried the vice president as a “puppet of the globalists” who replaced “the old puppet of the globalists.”
“No one who truly loves this country, no one who truly wants the best for the American people, would ever subject us to someone like Kamala Harris,” Ingraham said. “They know that Harris is incompetent, just as they knew that Biden is incompetent.”
Watters also described Harris as being something of a pawn for the Democratic establishment. “Kamala is probably easier to manipulate than Joe Biden,” he said.
Several Fox hosts accused Harris of being part of “a coverup,” as Watters put it, complicit in hiding the extent of Biden’s decline. “Right up until the last minute, she’s been lying to the American people,” Ingraham said. On Hannity’s show, former Trump White House official Kellyanne Conway said Harris “led the chorus of liars.” Fox host Mark Levin took an even grander and conspiratorial tone, saying Harris “violated the constitution every day since she’s been vice president of the United States” by not invoking the 25th Amendment to remove the president, and therefore “should never be anywhere near the Oval Office.”
So she waited almost 24 hours:
One prolific Trump-backing tweeter, Bill Ackman, is going off the deep end:
Already more than a thousand, per CNN:
The Pennsylvania senator had been one of the most vocal Democrats still supporting Biden after the debate, and he criticized other Democrats who were trying to push the president out. On Monday, he announced he was “all in” for Harris:
The Washington Post reports:
Within hours of Biden announcing his decision, the committee tried to make the handoff to Harris official — submitting an amended filing to the FEC changing its name to “Harris for President.” Several campaign finance lawyers aligned with Republicans argue that the campaign does not have legal authority to do that — and that the maneuver is all but certain to be challenged before the FEC or in a court of law.
Charlie Spies, a prominent GOP campaign finance lawyer, said that both Biden and Harris would have to have been officially nominated by the Democratic Party at its convention next month before any kind of handoff could occur. In that situation, he noted, a provision in campaign finance law allows a vice-presidential nominee to take control of the campaign’s depository if the presidential nominee withdraws.
“Biden can’t transfer his money to Harris because it was raised under his own name, and there is no legal mechanism for it to have been raised jointly with Harris before they were their party’s nominees,” said Spies[.]
The six-member FEC panel that would rule on such matters has long been evenly split between Republicans and Democrats — often preventing campaign finance rules from being enforced. Its partisan divide raises the possibility that commissioners could deadlock on the question of whether Harris can assume control of the campaign’s cash. Were that to happen, several lawyers said, the potential challenge would probably land in court.
On Monday, Harris gave her first official remarks since Biden’s historic announcement dropping his bid, speaking at the White House at an event honoring the NCAA championship teams from the 2023-2024 season.
Harris opened by saying that the president wanted to be there today and that he is feeling better following his recent COVID-19 diagnosis. Before speaking on the subject at hand, the vice president took a few moments to publicly praise Biden following his decision to pass the torch over to her.
“Joe Biden’s legacy of accomplishment over the past three years is unmatched in modern history. In one term, he has already surpassed the legacy of most presidents who have served two terms in office,” she said.
Harris said she first came to know of Biden through his late son Beau Biden, who served as Delaware’s attorney general when she held the same role for her home state of California.
“The qualities that Beau revered in his father are the same qualities that I have seen every day in our president. His honesty, his integrity, his commitment to his faith and his family, his big heart and his love — deep love of our country,” Harris said. “And I am first-hand witness that every day our President Joe Biden fights for the American people and we are deeply, deeply grateful for his service to our nation.”
To visit the staff at what is now her campaign’s headquarters. Biden campaign staffers were told Monday morning that they all still had their jobs in the Harris campaign.
The ad is from MAGA Inc:
The money has continued to roll in for the Harris campaign following yesterday’s bombshell announcement from President Biden. The campaign said Monday morning that since Biden backed her, “everyday Americans have given $49.6 million in grassroots donations.”
Per an analysis of the ticker at ActBlue’s fundraising platform, Democrats have raised more than $80 million since Biden dropped out and endorsed Harris:
Chris Korge, Biden Victory Fund finance chair, told NBC News that this level of energy from donors will only increase in the coming days and weeks. “The floodgates will open,” he said. “There’s been a lot of people holding back contributions that will now contribute because the whole thing — that whole situation was paralyzing our fundraising.”
His weird Truth Social posting continues, as I just rounded up in a new post:
On Monday at 6:05 a.m., Trump was back at it. In the quiet of the morning, he almost felt for Biden: After years of complaining that the 2020 election had been stolen, Trump wrote that the Democratic Party had stolen “the race from Biden after he won it in the primaries.” A few minutes later, he went back to a joke from the night before: “It’s a new day and Joe Biden doesn’t remember quitting the race yesterday!” So far, and without a campaign rally on the calendar until Wednesday, he has not yet unleashed his ire for the presumptive nominee, Kamala Harris. Maybe he is waiting until after lunch.
Concerned Democrats have floated a lot of possible candidates (other than Harris) to replace Biden over the past few weeks. Many of these names are also people Harris might consider as VP picks, should she seem likely to win the nomination. Here’s what the biggest names have said since Biden dropped out:
Joe Manchin
The final-term West Virginia senator was reportedly considering running for the nomination, but then on Monday — after Harris had amassed an enormous amount of support — said he would not.
Marianne Williamson
The 2024 primary long shot says she plans to collect signatures from delegates in an attempt to vie for the nomination. So far, she is the only other declared candidate.
Josh Shapiro
The Pennsylvania governor has both praised Biden and announced that he’s backing Harris:
Gretchen Whitmer
The Michigan governor released a statement praising Biden on Sunday and officially endorsed Harris on Monday:
Gavin Newsom
The California governor has been a staunch supporter of Biden since the debate and has repeatedly said he wouldn’t run in 2024. On Sunday, he released a statement praising Biden and another backing Harris:
Wes Moore
The Maryland governor endorsed Harris on Monday morning:
Roy Cooper
The North Carolina governor has released a statement praising Biden and another endorsing (his longtime friend) Harris:
Andy Beshear
The Kentucky governor put out a statement praising Biden on Sunday, then endorsed Harris on Monday:
J.B. Pritzker
The Illinois governor released a statement praising Biden on Sunday, then endorsed Harris on Monday morning:
Pete Buttigieg
The Transportation secretary praised Biden as one of “the best and most consequential presidents in American history” and also announced his support for Harris:
Mark Kelly
The Arizona senator has released statements both praising Biden and backing Harris:
West Virginia senator Joe Manchin made the cable-TV news rounds Monday morning, saying that he will not pursue a challenge against Harris for the Democratic Party nomination after floating a bid the day prior. The newly registered independent did endorse an open nomination process and did not explicitly back the vice-president.
One possible indication of the grassroots energy behind Harris’s campaign:
If she and her campaign don’t heed this crucial warning:
Politico reports that the president, under unrelenting pressure from top Democrats, ultimately realized he couldn’t beat Trump:
It wasn’t that the president had grown tired of the drip of defections from within his own party — although he had. Rather, it was that Biden himself was finally convinced of what so many other Democrats had come to believe since his poor debate performance last month: He couldn’t win.
When the campaign commissioned new battleground polling over the last week, it was the first time they had done surveys in some key states in more than two months, according to two people familiar with the surveys. And the numbers were grim, showing Biden not just trailing in all six critical swing states but collapsing in places like Virginia and New Mexico where Democrats had not planned on needing to spend massive resources to win.
With that knowledge and the awareness that more party elders, including more of his former Senate colleagues, would pile on the public pressure campaign, a sudden exit offered the president his best chance to make it appear that the decision came on his own terms. It was a face-saving move of high importance to Jill Biden, who, according to people familiar with recent conversations, was adamant that her husband’s dignity be preserved.
The rest of Politico’s report on Biden’s final weeks is here.
As our own Gabriel Debenedetti reports:
As 2024 approached, Biden was continuously befuddled and offended by the belief that he would only serve one term, and he largely refused to seriously consider his political vulnerabilities, such as his age. He was convinced that as the only Democrat to have ever beaten Trump, he should be the one to try again. Yet Biden was visibly slowing down physically, even as those around him always insisted his mind was as sharp as ever. And as the questions persisted despite his insistence that he would run again, he began to grow feistier behind the scenes about so-called allies who weren’t defending him enough and who didn’t appreciate his long list of wins.
He proved an unconvincing campaigner at 80 and 81, and persistent high prices and surges at the border kept his approval ratings low as he struggled in a race against his resurgent predecessor. His contention that he would regain the lead once voters refocused on Trump and his unacceptable behavior proved insufficient, as much of the electorate — especially his target voters — stayed tuned out even deep into the election year. It was ultimately his own bravado that did him in politically: challenging Trump to a debate that he was sure he would win and use to expose the Republican as an extreme, incoherent, and unfit convicted felon. Biden thought he was setting himself on a clear path to a second term. Instead, the furious national focus swung to an enfeebled president who struggled to get through sentences.
Read the rest of Gabe’s look back at Biden’s presidency and political downfall here.
In Trump’s Truth Social posts, he’s mostly been attacking (and spreading conspiracy theories about) his now former rival:
Soon after Harris announced she was running, the meme-inspiring “album of the summer” artist Charli XCX posted:
For the uninitiated, the pop artist has defined brat — which is also the name of the aforementioned album — as:
You are just that girl who is a little messy and maybe says dumb things sometimes, who feels herself but then also maybe has a breakdown but parties through it. It is honest, blunt and a little bit volatile. That’s Brat.
Brat and Harris fandom have intermingled before, as the Atlantic’s Charlie Warzel explains:
Around the July 4 holiday, as speculation increased that Biden could drop out of the race, progressives started entertaining a Harris candidacy with an ironic zeal that transformed into something genuine. On TikTok and X, people began posting videos of goofy or awkward moments from past Harris speeches—videos of her singing “Wheels on the Bus” or uttering “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree,” followed by a peculiar, tense string of laughter. (That second one has been viewed 14 million times on X alone.) This being the internet, the videos were immediately remixed into other memes, each iteration getting more absurd. In one, those previous two clips are set to the Joker’s theme from The Dark Knight; in another, Harris’s campaign exploits are remixed in a frenetic supercut set to music from Charlie XCX’s popular album Brat.
On Sunday night, the KamalaHQ X account — which is actually the Biden campaign’s rebranded meme-happy BidenHQ rapid-response operation — deployed some brat green (in what may also be a brief attempt to generate more fundraising buzz):
Semafor also points out that the new Harris campaign will be a better fit for newer media:
[The Charli tweet] also highlights how Harris could be a more digitally potent and savvy candidate.
Over the course of his presidency, Biden’s White House and his campaign have attempted to implement digital media strategies aimed at breaking through in an increasingly fragmented and partisan media landscape. But those tactics often ran up against a candidate more comfortable with a media strategy built around legacy news outlets.
For all of her flaws and mistakes during her 2020 campaign, Harris had a formidable presence online, running a digital-first media strategy that leaned on a vocal “K-Hive” fanbase.
As a colleague quipped, “This is going to be by far the most watched incredibly boring White House event in a long time”:
Per Reuters, the chairs of every state’s Democratic Party held a conference call on Sunday and united behind Harris. Numerous state Democratic parties have announced pledges to support her as well.
SEIU, the nation’s largest private-sector union, has endorsed Harris. So has United Farm Workers, the California-based National Union of Healthcare Workers, and the executive council of AFT, the country’s second largest teachers union. Other large unions, like AFSCME, UFCW, and CWA, didn’t offer endorsements as of Sunday, though a few others mentioned Harris in statements following Biden’s announcement:
ActBlue has reportedly processed more than $52 million in donations to Democratic candidates since Sunday’s big news:
The previous single-day record for ActBlue donations ($73.5 million) came after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Trump raised $52.8 million in donations in the 24 hours after he was convicted in New York. It seems likely that the 24 hour period after Biden’s exit will raise far more.
One reporter’s overview of the sudden outburst of excitement among Democrats tonight:
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports:
Pennsylvania’s state Democratic Party chair said Sunday that a state party vote to formally endorse Vice President Kamala Harris as the presidential nominee could come within a day or two.
“As soon as we logistically can,” State Sen. Sharif Street, who leads the state Democratic Party, said at a press conference in Philadelphia on Sunday night. “I imagine in the next day or two.”
The state party endorsement is a move that is entirely separate from the process in which Pennsylvania’s 159 Democratic delegates will vote to nominate a presidential candidate. Delegates will cast their votes individually, as per the rules of the Democratic National Committee, Street said. …
Street said he was fully behind Harris, and though he had not spoken to every delegate from Pennsylvania he indicated there is widespread support for her among delegates here as well. “I have not heard from one delegate who said that he or she would not be supporting Vice President Harris,” he said.
According to the chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party, its delegates are pledged as well:
Chaos is an exciting ladder, apparently:
The Hawaii senator has offered the most creative Harris endorsement yet (inspired by Harris’s famous coconut-tree line):
She’d been one of the most prominent congressional Democrats sticking with Biden and had criticized colleagues working against him behind the scenes. On Sunday night, she pledged her support for Harris:
The view from backstage as the cast of the suffragist-history musical waited for the chanting to stop:
The GOP nominee has been posting through it:
So, we are forced to spend time and money on fighting Crooked Joe Biden, he polls badly after having a terrible debate, and quits the race. Now we have to start all over again. Shouldn’t the Republican Party be reimbursed for fraud in that everybody around Joe, including his doctors and the Fake News Media, knew he was not capable of running for, or being, President? Just askin’?
On Sunday morning, he called for Biden to drop out and “pass the torch” to a new generation via an “open process.” Now he is reportedly considering reaching for that torch himself:
Asked by CBS News on Sunday, Trump said, “I don’t know who I’m going to debate. So far, we haven’t determined who is going to be on that side. But I think whoever it is, I’d like to debate. Yeah, sure.”
But he’s also making noises about a change of venue:
The Biden campaign chair held an all-hands call following the president’s announcement:
It’s of course not yet clear how many of the Biden campaign’s leaders and staffers will join Harris’s team, but as my colleague Ed Kilgore has previously pointed out, it would be a mistake for Harris to try to start from scratch.
He also said he believes it’s now a “two-person race”:
As I write in my new post, she’s off to a good start, and there’s still lot of work to do:
You can expect Harris’s backers to put steady pressure on potential rivals to take themselves out of the running by endorsing Biden’s choice. Under the convention rules, there can be no true “draft”: To be placed into nomination, a candidate must announce willingness to compete and obtain pledges of support from at least 300 delegates. So the Whitmers and the Newsoms and the Shapiros and so forth will have to make a reasonably quick decision given the DNC plan to hold a “virtual roll call” the week after August 1. The fact that some of these same names are circulating as potential Harris running mates could oil the engines of a partywide consensus behind the heir apparent, as will the likely inheritance of support from the Biden-Harris organization (not to mention donors!) that’s been built up all year.
But while she needs to carefully consolidate Democratic support, Harris also needs to manage her overall national profile and strike while the iron is hot. She will likely get a short-term polling bounce fed by Democrats relieved over the merciful end of the Biden post-debate saga and swing voters surprisingly given a respite from the much-dreaded Biden-Trump rematch. Soon enough, though, the GOP and MAGA movement will be training every weapon that have against her, and any honeymoon phase in the polls won’t last long. She will also have to plan a convention that is very likely to have a different tone from the one planned for months now.
Read the rest here.
The New York Times reports that Biden began writing his announcement on Saturday:
“I need you and Mike at the house,” President Biden said late Saturday afternoon. Mr. Biden was on the phone from his vacation home in Rehoboth, Del., with Steve Ricchetti, one of his closest advisers. The president was referring to Mike Donilon, his chief strategist. Soon, both men were in Rehoboth, socially distanced from the president, who was recovering from Covid.
From that afternoon and far into the night, the three worked on one of the most important and historic letters of Mr. Biden’s presidency — his decision to withdraw from his re-election campaign after top Democrats, donors, close allies and friends had pressured him relentlessly to get out.
He would not tell most of his staff until a minute before making his announcement to the world on Twitter on Sunday. …
Mr. Biden made his decision, a senior administration official familiar with his thinking said, in part because he had tried for weeks to flip the attention from his listless and at times incoherent debate performance last month back to his Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump. But in the end, the official said, the president “couldn’t get there.”
Semafor obtained it:
“We are well aware of the historical significance of this moment. We respect, appreciate, and are grateful to President Biden for all that he has done and continues to do for our country and the world. We respectfully urge delegates to the 2024 Democratic National Convention, and all voters in November to support Kamala Harris for President of the United States,” the letter reads.
Organizers are still gathering signatures, but it has already been signed by at least 60 current and former DNC members throughout the country and describes Harris as the “strongest candidate for President” who can “best offer a clear, unifying vision for the future”
“DNC is basically coronating Harris,” one source familiar with the planning around the letter told Semafor.
The Biden campaign is becoming the Harris campaign (at the FEC, which means the money can transfer over)
And yes, they can do that, per the Associated Press:
Since their campaign account was registered with the Federal Election Commission in the name of both candidates, Harris could use those funds for her own presidential effort if Biden were to drop out, according to Kenneth Gross, senior political law counsel at Akin Gump and former associate general counsel for the Federal Election Commission.
The two-time primary candidate had already been saying she expected to be included in an open process to select a new nominee. She reiterated that after Biden’s announcement:
The nomination of a new Democratic candidate must be opened to a genuinely democratic process at an open convention. No one should simply be anointed to the position of nominee; all candidates must be heard and their agendas explored. Our party’s basic first principle is democracy. We cannot save our democracy without practicing it ourselves.I look forward to taking my message to the American people, and convincing Democratic delegates, that I am the best candidate to take us to victory in November.
The Democrat who is arguably Joe Biden’s most important ally in Congress has released a statement lauding Biden and expressing his support for Harris:
From my new roundup of the Trump-Harris polling so far:
According to recent polls, Harris begins with about the same level of popularity as Biden, not taking into account the surge she is likely to get from this latest boost and the cascade of endorsements that are sure to follow. As I noted in an earlier Poll Position item on July 9, Harris’s job-approval rating has recently converged with Biden’s; as of July 18, hers was at 38.6 percent in the FiveThirtyEight averages compared to Biden’s 38.5, while her disapproval number (50.4 percent) was a notably lower than Biden’s (56.2 percent). Similarly, her favorability ratio at RealClearPolitics (38.2–52.3 percent) is slightly better than Biden’s 39.1–56.6 percent).
In head-to-head trial heats against Trump, Harris has also been running at or slightly above Biden in most national surveys. RealClearPolitics shows Trump with a 1.9 percent margin (48.2–46.3 percent) over Harris, as compared to a 3.0 margin (47.7–44.7 percent) over Biden. There really isn’t enough polling of Harris in a race that include non-major-party candidates to indicate how she’s doing in that context.
Read the rest here.
The vice-president has made it official.
“I am honored to have the President’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination,” she said in a statement, which also celebrated Biden’s “extraordinary leadership.”
“I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic Party — and unite our nation — to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda.”
Here’s her statement in full:
On behalf of the American people, I thank Joe Biden for his extraordinary leadership as President of the United States and for his decades of service to our country. His remarkable legacy of accomplishment is unmatched in modern American history, surpassing the legacy of many Presidents who have served two terms in office.
It is a profound honor to serve as his Vice President, and I am deeply grateful to the President, Dr. Biden, and the entire Biden family. I first came to know President Biden through his son Beau. We were friends from our days working together as Attorneys General of our home states. As we worked together, Beau would tell me stories about his Dad. The kind of father—and the kind of man—he was. And the qualities Beau revered in his father are the same qualities, the same values, I have seen every single day in Joe’s leadership as President: His honesty and integrity. His big heart and commitment to his faith and his family. And his love of our country and the American people.
With this selfless and patriotic act, President Biden is doing what he has done throughout his life of service: putting the American people and our country above everything else.
I am honored to have the President’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination. Over the past year, I have traveled across the country, talking with Americans about the clear choice in this momentous election. And that is what I will continue to do in the days and weeks ahead. I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic Party—and unite our nation—to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda.
We have 107 days until Election Day. Together, we will fight. And together, we will win.
From my new post responding to Biden’s exit:
All at once, the Democratic Party has roused itself from the torpor that has defined its mood for the last year and risen to the task before it. The members of the party will not just surrender to the inevitability of a mentally disordered aspiring caudillo getting his hands on the world’s most powerful democratic government. They did not go gently into that good night.
Two years of drift and decay has disappeared instantly into a blinding light of hope.
The cop against the criminal. Let’s do this.
Read the rest here.
The former president has released a long statement praising his former VP’s decision, his accomplishments in office, and his “remarkable career in public service.” Obama does not endorse a successor in the statement but writes that he has “extraordinary confidence that the leaders of our party will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges.” An excerpt:
I also know Joe has never backed down from a fight. For him to look at the political landscape and decide that he should pass the torch to a new nominee is surely one of the toughest in his life. But I know he wouldn’t make this decision unless he believed it was right for America. It’s a testament to Joe Biden’s love of country — and a historic example of a genuine public servant once again putting the interests of the American people ahead of his own that future generations of leaders will do well to follow.
We will be navigating uncharted waters in the days ahead. But I have extraordinary confidence that the leaders of our party will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges. I believe that Joe Biden’s vision of a generous, prosperous, and united America that provides opportunity for everyone will be on full display at the Democratic Convention in August. And I expect that every single one of us are prepared to carry that message of hope and progress forward into November and beyond.
For now, Michelle and I just want to express our love and gratitude to Joe and Jill for leading us so ably and courageously during these perilous times — and for their commitment to the ideals of freedom and equality that this country was founded on.
His Sunday-afternoon statement:
I commend President Biden for stepping down. His infirmities were evident to any unbiased observer from the beginning. It was this progressive deterioration — and his abandonment of Democratic Party principles — that prompted me to enter the race and ensure American voters had a viable, vigorous alternative to Donald Trump. Yet the response of the DNC was to try and hide President Biden’s degeneration from the American public and disable democracy to ram him through to his party’s nomination. Many Americans fear that the same DNC elites are about to rig the nominating process again to get a monumentally unpopular vice president to step into President Biden’s shoes.
I call on the Democratic Party to return to its traditional commitment to democracy and exemplify it with an open process. Instead of anointing a candidate hand-picked by DNC elites, the party should use neutral polling to identify the candidate who can best beat Donald Trump. The delegates should then select a nominee based on this information. If they had done this to begin with, I would not have had to leave the Democratic Party.
The GOP is already making a big deal out of Biden not immediately resigning as well. New York Times writer Zeynep Tufekci says, “People aren’t that stupid”:
Whatever the process for nominating Biden’s successor, there are already plenty of signs of that Harris will be the clear consensus choice.
Welcome to the internet:
He was one of the most prominent donors who had called on Biden to step aside after the debate:
In an interview with ABC News on Sunday morning, House Speaker Mike Johnson said that his party would not simply let Joe Biden step aside for another nominee. “Every state has its own system, and in some of these, it’s not possible to simply just switch out a candidate,” he said. Johnson made similar comments in his brief RNC speech, previewing a strategy to sue to block Democrats from switching out their nominee.
A senior White House official says Biden informed members of his senior campaign and White House team shortly before the letter was released. Biden told the officials that he had been reflecting on it in the past few days.
Also:
The former Speaker of the House, who reportedly helped orchestrate the pressure campaign to get Biden to drop his reelection bid, released a statement offering nothing but praise for the president:
They have quickly released a statement praising Biden — and affirming his endorsement:
In a lengthy prepared statement published on Sunday, House Speaker Mike Johnson wrote that the “Democrat Party forced the Democrat nominee off the ballot” just over 100 days before the election. “Having invalidated the votes of more than 14 million Americans who selected Joe Biden to be the Democrat nominee for president, the self-proclaimed ‘party of democracy’ has proven exactly the opposite,” he wrote. Johnson also called Kamala Harris “inept” and called for Joe Biden to step down: “If Joe Biden is not fit to run for President, he is not fit to serve as President.”
And the anti-Harris ads will start soon. A super-PAC supporting Donald Trump for president announced on X that it would begin spending millions on TV ads in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona with the spin that Kamala Harris is worse than Joe Biden.
Said Trump: “Crooked Joe Biden was not fit to run for President, and is certainly not fit to serve — And never was!”
Pollsters began asking voters in earnest in the past week about a potential matchup between Trump and Harris, which generally speaking shows her doing better than Biden. In the RealClearPolitics average, she gets 46 percent in a head-to-head matchup to Trump’s 48 percent. Polling of the race with third-party candidates is scant, but last week YouGov reported Trump 44, Harris 39, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr at 5.
Expect to hear a lot more of this:
Making his first appearance at a Trump rally since getting picked as VP, Trump’s running mate said of the vice-president: “What they hell have you done, other than collect the check?” Then, after a lengthy break for applause, he repeated the remark but added “from her political offices.”
As is usual these days, Senator John Fetterman bucked the general trend of the Democratic Party on Sunday. In a statement, Fetterman said that “people pushed out an honorable man, loving father and a great president before an absolute sleazeball like [Robert] Menendez. Congratulations.”
All anyone could talk about at the RNC last week was what would happen to Biden and whether Kamala Harris would replace him, as we reported earlier this week:
“They elevated Joe Biden, for crying out loud, for the presidency, and they hid him in a basement for the last election, and what worked once will never work again. And now, everybody gets to see in full view what they’ve elected,” said Senator Kevin Cramer of North Dakota. “And granted, he’s certainly declined since his first day in the White House, but he’s not a lot different than he was his first day.”
Cramer, who served as a state party chair before being elected to Congress, said Democrats “have to determine what’s the least-bad option in front of them.” He added, “I have been saying up until probably a week ago that their least-bad option is to try to lift Joe Biden up and try to pitch and sell him. Yeah, I mean, he’s won an election for president before. But he’s certainly diminished, to say the least … Now I don’t think they have any option other than to try to make Kamala Harris better than she is.”
The Trump campaign, anticipating Biden would drop out against its wishes, had already begun calibrating attacks on Harris, first and foremost over the southern border:
“I think it really doesn’t matter who the Democratic candidate is,” said Nicole Malliotakis, a member of Congress from New York who sat in the president’s booth on the third night of the Republican National Convention. “It’s the Biden-Harris administration. She’s the border czar. In fact, I think it’s almost better to run against Kamala Harris because the one thing she was supposed to do is secure the border, and she’s been a complete disaster on that issue.”
The Trump campaign also plans to turn the charge that they are anti-democracy against the Democrats if Harris replaces Biden, pushing the notion that Harris was chosen by party bosses and not by the voters. On Thursday morning, at an event sponsored by Politico, Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita called any effort to replace Biden with Harris “an attempted coup.”
“You can’t step down as a candidate for president because you’re cognitively impaired while still being president,” he added.
As our own Ed Kilgore explained earlier today:
what observers often miss is that under the existing convention rules the convention will already be “open.” Any candidate willing to run who can identify 300 delegates (no more than 50 from any one state) supporting them can have her or his name placed in nomination. This would be true for either a “virtual roll call” (what the DNC is currently planning for the week after August 1) or for a traditional convention roll call.
The flip side of this open process is important, too: Biden stepping aside means there is no mechanism for him to transfer support to Kamala Harris or anyone else. If Democrats think his endorsement of Harris as the nominee is a bad idea and someone’s willing to go public with a challenge and can amass 300 delegates, the nomination could go elsewhere. So you don’t really have to invent some elaborate new process to hold an “open convention;” the 300-delegate requirement operates as both a window for competition and a limitation on chaos.
Biden’s very online longtime aide published an X post that starts, “Now that the donors and electeds have pushed out the only candidate who has ever beaten Trump”:
Leaders of the Democratic Party began lauding President Biden and his administration immediately after the announcement. California governor Gavin Newsom tweeted that Biden will “go down in history as one of the most impactful and selfless presidents.” Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer tweeted that Biden is a “great public servant who knows better than anyone what it takes to defeat Donald Trump” and that she will continue to do “everything I can to elect Democrats and stop” a second Trump term. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote that Biden’s decision “was not easy, but he once again put his country, his party, and our future first.”
What he didn’t say in his announcement letter, he now has said in a follow-up statement:
In a phone call with CNN minutes after Biden’s letter was published, Donald Trump said that Biden “is the worst president in the history of our country. He goes down as the single worst president by far in the history of our country.” He added that he believed beating Vice-President Kamala Harris would be an easier path than defeating Biden. It is, of course, not much of a surprise that Trump wouldn’t say anything compassionate or respectful to Biden in response to the news.
While Biden thanks his vice-president in his announcement letter, he doesn’t say anything about supporting her in whatever process is to come:
For now, let me express my deepest gratitude to all those who have worked so hard to see my reelected. I want to thank Vice President Kamal Harris for being an extraordinary partner in all this work. And let me express my heartfelt appreciation to the American people for the faith and trust you have placed in me.
He released a statement on Sunday afternoon, shocking pretty much everyone:
This post has been updated.
More politics
- Trump Doesn’t Just Like Putin — He’s Like Putin
- Trump to Personally Investigate ‘Stolen’ Fort Knox Gold Theory
- HUD TVs Hacked to Play Video of Trump Kissing Musk’s Feet
