With Joe Biden's announcement that he's not running for re-election, it's time to unite behind Kamala Harris as our nominee to defeat Donald Trump and make herstory happen
If Kamala Harris beats Donald Trump this fall, she would be our 47th President and the 1st woman to occupy the office.
On Sunday afternoon at just before 2PM EDT/1PM CDT (1:46PM EDT/12:46PM CDT to be precise), President Joe Biden (D) announced that he wasn’t running for re-election. Biden then endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris (D) for the nomination.
Harris has a VP pick to make to complete the ticket, and there are several good choices: Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, or Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear. I will explain more on that issue in a separate post.
If elected, Harris would be the first woman to become President. She would also be the second person of color and the first Asian-American to become President if she is elected. Harris already made herstory by being elected the first woman Vice President on a ticket with President Biden in 2020.
Last week, I had suggested that if Biden was stepping down, then Harris would be the best successor. In that piece, I endorsed keeping Biden in the race. Nearly a week later, Biden drops out and passes the torch by endorsing Harris.
Sam Levine and Lauren Gambino at The Guardian on the Biden dropping out news:
Joe Biden has withdrawn from his presidential re-election race and endorsed Vice-President Kamala Harris to take his place at the top of their party’s ticket, an extraordinary decision upending American politics that plunges the Democratic nomination into uncertainty just months before the November election against Donald Trump – a candidate Biden has warned is an existential threat to US democracy.
“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 solely on fulfilling my duties as president for the remainder of my term,” Biden said in a letter announcing his decision.
Biden thanked Harris in his letter and later endorsed her as the Democratic nominee for president in a tweet. He said he planned to speak to the nation in more detail later this week.
The outcome may not have surprised White House and campaign officials, but the timing did. Most found out, along with the rest of the world, when Biden published his post on X. The same was true for Democratic National Committee officials and state party chairs. Senior Biden aides scrambled to set up separate meetings to talk to staff members for the White House and the campaign, reassuring the political aides that their jobs were safe.
As it always is, the end was abrupt. But it came after a hellish 25-day stretch sparked by the most disastrous debate performance in modern American political history on June 27. Biden failed to reassure fellow Democrats — or enough of them — in follow-up public appearances. Major donors cut off money to his campaign and the party. In drip-drip-drip fashion, elected officials started to call for him to drop his bid. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, the godmother of the Democratic Party, said he still had a decision to make — after he insisted he had chosen to stay in the race.
[…]
By the time Biden convened a call with his full complement of senior advisers at 1:45 p.m. Sunday, an official statement announcing his decision had already been written. One minute later, his X account posted that statement, telling the public that he would remain in office but cede his party’s nomination — making him the first eligible incumbent president to do that since Lyndon Johnson in 1968. Less than 30 minutes after that, he endorsed Harris, blessing her as the best choice to beat Trump in a four-month sprint to Election Day.
After his announcement, Biden made 40 to 50 phone calls about his decision Sunday night, according to sources.
In recent days, as calls for him to step down mounted, Biden asked to see polling his campaign had solicited on how Harris would fare in a hypothetical matchup against Trump, according to two people familiar with the matter. They said he also reviewed public polling as he wanted to know more about her standing against Trump. The Harris polling was very tightly held, and it circulated to only a handful of top campaign aides, including Donilon and O’Malley Dillon, the two people familiar with the matter said.
Biden’s call appeared to hinge entirely on political factors, rather than concerns about his health or his ability to do his job. A senior administration official said that there was no new medical information informing Biden’s decision, though he had said himself recently that he might reconsider his candidacy if “some medical condition” emerged.
Vice President Kamala Harris said Sunday she would work to win the Democratic presidential nomination in the wake of President Joe Biden’s shock decision to drop out of the race.
“I am honored to have the President’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination,” Harris said in a statement.
“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.”
She is now the frontrunner to replace Biden at the top of the ticket and the only person to get his support. In her statement, Harris also thanked Biden, who picked the former California senator and state attorney general to be his running mate after she did poorly in the 2020 Democratic primary contest.
Don Moynihan writes in Can We Still Govern? on why Harris must be our nominee:
We are living in an extraordinary political times. In just over a week, we saw an assassination attempt of Trump, the unveiling of his VP pick, the GOP convention, and Biden withdrawing from the race. In some ways, this was a reminder of the endless politics of the Trump administration. Every day it felt like history was happening. And it turns out this is both an exhausting and disorienting feeling.[…]
1. An Act of Extraordinary Political Selflessness
The first thing we should acknowledge is the extraordinary selflessness of Biden’s decision. Yes, everyone thanking Biden is saying this, but take a moment to think about it. People who become President are people who have looked at themselves in the mirror for much of their lives and decided “I should be President.” They are naturally ambitious people. Joe Biden is one such person. He ran for President early and often in his career, with little success. But twice in his career when he was in a strong position to take the Presidency, he chose not to.
Christian Paz at Vox on the risks and rewards of nominating Kamala Harris:
Coconut-pilled backers of a Kamala Harris presidential campaign argue that Harris runs about even or even better than Biden does against former President Donald Trump in polling; they point to Harris’s performance on the campaign trail so far, making the case against Trump and the American right’s plans in Project 2025; and at a base level, they argue that she has been tested on the national stage, while other alternative candidates have not.
Critics of the KHive — as the online superfans of the vice president call themselves — and the VP argue that Harris is still really unpopular with the American public. They argue that the polls don’t actually show that much of an advantage for Harris in battleground states or with the popular vote; they point to her failed 2019 presidential campaign and her tepid vice presidential tenure as proof she’s not a particularly good candidate or politician and would likely run an uneven campaign.
They also argue that Biden’s flaws and foibles are already built into the electorate’s mind, while the chaos and uncertainty of swapping in Harris would expose the Democrats to even more risks (like how voters react to a woman of color as a nominee).
The debate was the roiling undercurrent of the will-he-or-won’t-he drama over Biden these last few weeks. How it resolves now that he is off the ticket could have enduring ramifications for both the Democratic Party and the country.
Zack Beauchamp at Vox on this history-shaping moment:
By dropping out of the 2024 race, President Joe Biden did what we all want our politicians to do: He put his country over his career. Knowing that his party had lost faith in his capacity to beat Donald Trump and that a second Trump term would threaten democracy itself, he chose to do the right thing and step aside.
Of course, it took him a long time to get here. While it’s only been 24 days since the disastrous debate with Trump, we don’t know how long Biden had been in decline prior to that. The earlier that clock starts, the worse it reflects on Biden and his team.
But ultimately, the story isn’t really about Joe Biden as a person. It’s about what he and his party did — and what their actions tell us about the state of American democracy.
And what they say is surprisingly hopeful.
In a country where many think politicians won’t do the right thing, Biden did (even if he exhausted all other options first). In a country where political parties seem to cower in the face of their own leaders, one party managed to challenge and push out a candidate whose campaign served neither party nor country. And in a country where polarization seemingly ground everything to a standstill, democracy showed it’s still capable of surprising us.
Michael Bartiromo at Nexstar, via NewsNation on the campaign finance impacts of Biden’s withdrawal:
(NEXSTAR) – President Joe Biden, after ending his campaign for a second term, is now giving his “full support and endorsement” to Vice President Kamala Harris.
But what about his campaign cash?
Biden’s campaign recently reported just over $91 million on hand, but allied Democratic campaign committees brought the total at his disposal to more than $240 million. Now that Biden is out, however, campaign finance experts have said that Harris could tap into some of that cash without too many hurdles — but it would be tougher for any other Democratic nominee to do the same.
The campaign was set up in both Biden and Harris’ names, meaning Harris also has access to the $91 million that was collected for their ticket’s reelection effort, Kenneth Gross, a senior political law counsel, and a former associate general counsel for the Federal Election Commission, told the Associated Press earlier this month.
[…]
If anyone other than Harris were to become that official nominee, the money might have to be offered back to its donors.
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With this news, it’s time to unite as a party to vote Kamala Harris for President, and for Democrats up and down the ticket! We want to make herstory by voting in Harris to be first ever woman to lead the nation in 2024 be defeating Donald Trump! The fascistic anti-American and evil Donald Trump/J.D. Vance ticket must be defeated at all costs! Vote Harris and vote Blue!
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