US president drops reelection bid; VP appears to secure Democratic nomination amid record fundraising
After nearly a month of mounting pressure from his own party, United States President Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid on July 21 and endorsed Vice-President Kamala Harris to head the Democratic ticket in November.
“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your president,” he wrote in a letter posted on social media. “And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, 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.”
Biden’s endorsement of Harris came in a subsequent post on social media platform X.
“Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year,” Biden wrote. “Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump.”
Harris said, “I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic Party — and our nation — to defeat Donald Trump.” She added that she was honored to have Biden’s endorsement, and wrote on X that “my intention is to earn and win this nomination”.
Harris quickly appeared poised to clinch her party’s presidential nomination after receiving support from enough Democratic delegates on July 22, as she launched a campaign against Donald Trump.
The Democratic candidate, to be nominated at the Democratic National Convention, which starts on Aug 19 in Chicago, Illinois, will face former president Trump, 78, the Republican nominee.
While Trump said on July 21 that Harris would be easier to defeat than Biden, he continued to criticize Biden, telling NBC News, “There has never been a president who has done such damage to our country, from energy independence to letting in millions and millions of illegal immigrants.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, wrote in a post on X: “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.”
Debbie Walsh, director at the Center for American Women and Politics, said of Harris, 59, who is of Jamaican and Asian Indian descent, “Should she win the nomination, the nation will watch a multiracial woman compete in a presidential general election for the first time in history.”
With the support of a slew of Democratic heavyweights, including Biden, and massive voter donations, Harris quickly closed in as the Democratic Party’s heir apparent and delegates began falling in line to pledge their support.
“Tonight, I am proud to have secured the broad support needed to become our party’s nominee,” Harris wrote in a statement after US media reported she had sailed past the number of delegates needed — 1,976 out of nearly 4,000 — to secure the Democratic presidential nomination during voting in the coming weeks.
At the campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, on July 22, she offered a sense of how she plans to take on Trump, referring to her past of pursuing “predators” and “fraudsters” as San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general.
“So, hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type,” she said of her rival, a convicted felon.
“We are going to win in November,” Harris told the workers.
Among the other names mentioned as potential Democratic presidential candidates are governors Gavin Newsom of California, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, and Andy Beshear of Kentucky. They could also be considered as potential vice-presidential running mates for Harris.
Donors have also rallied behind Harris, pouring a record $81 million into her campaign in the 24 hours after Biden stood aside. The campaign claimed the haul was the largest one-day sum in presidential history.
Media reports had circulated that Biden, 81, would officially step down on July 21 but the stories lost steam after Biden angrily dismissed them.
The president’s political fortunes began to crumble after his dismal performance in a debate with Trump on June 27.
Former president Barack Obama praised Biden, his former vice-president, in a statement on the Medium.com website on July 21, saying that Biden “wouldn’t make this decision unless he believed it was right for America”.
Obama said Biden “pointed us away from the four years of chaos, falsehood, and division that had characterized Donald Trump’s administration”.
Biden, 81, meanwhile made his first public remarks in nearly a week as he recovered from COVID-19.
He called in to the campaign meeting to say that dropping out had been the “right thing to do” and he praised Harris as “the best”.
Agencies contributed to this story.
