Joe Biden bowed out of the presidential race on Sunday after a campaign by Democratic donors and donors to oust him in an email to the Nation
President Joe Biden bowed out of the presidential race on Sunday, following a campaign by Democratic leaders and donors to oust him.
“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President,” Biden wrote in a letter posted to X on Sunday. “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 to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.”
The letter did not provide additional detail on how the Democratic Party might decide its next ticket, but Biden wrote that he would “speak to the Nation later this week in more detail about my decision.”
She has tremendous strengths and weaknesses. She’ll have to show the public that she can prosecute the case better than Biden because they’re not going to like it. Black voters and younger voters are two groups that Biden was trying to win over, and with Harris’s help, he could do it. She seems to find her voice when she talks about abortion rights.
Joe Biden: The First Time Lyndon B. Johnson Has Done What he Means to Donate More, and Why he Can’t Become President
Trump posted on Truth Social that Joe Biden is not fit to serve in the President’s office. After stating that if Joe Biden ends his reelection bid, how can he justify remaining President?
Democratic megadonors Laurene Powell Jobs and Ron Conway, among others, began discussing how Biden could be replaced before or during the Democratic National Convention, the New York Times reported.
“I have seen some emails from people in Silicon Valley who said, ‘I’m not going to donate more until I have more confidence,’” Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn founder and Biden donor, told WIRED earlier this month.
An assassination attempt made against Trump briefly seemed to quell the revolt, but reports that Pelosi and Schumer had directly told Biden they did not believe he had a viable path to reelection showed that Biden’s political support had collapsed, and seemed to mark the end. Pelosi also privately told Biden that polling showed an increasingly dire forecast for Democrats with Biden on top of the ticket, according to CNN.
The Republican Party has been turned on its back by a populist wing as well as an alliance with powerful Silicon Valley investors like Musk, and will face a Democratic candidate in the general election.
“As a historical matter, very, very few people do this,” historian Jon Meacham, who has helped in writing speeches for Biden, including his 2023 State of the Union address, told NBC News on Sunday, “and in an era where so many of us privilege power over principle, where a lot of us would rather take than give, I think it’s a moment for the country to consider that the president has given us a lesson: that our own wishes, our own immediate desires, should not always be controlling.”
This is the first time something has happened like this since Lyndon B. Johnson did not run for reelection in 1968. Even then, LBJ made the announcement in March, not July. The writing was on the wall, like Biden. He had health concerns, and he was unpopular because of the Vietnam War.
Politicians want to be the best, but the numbers can change things. Both exert a lot of pressure on Biden to rethink. He had lost a lot of money after the June 27 debate and was slipping in swing states.
Biden indicated in an ABC interview that only the “Lord Almighty,” polls showing his party losing or maybe some combination of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, current House Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina could get him to step aside.
This has been among the worst three- and-a-half weeks of the campaign, from the debate to Biden contracting COVID-19.
Democrats are smiling and seem to be in good spirits after this announcement. They have been given much needed excitement and money, even though it doesn’t mean they will win the race. Democrats gave $46.8 million through ActBlue, the largest site that deals with donations, in the hours after Biden’s withdrawal. It’s the biggest single day of Democratic donations since the 2020 election.
This is going to be a closely watched and hyper-compressed campaign. It will be crucial how Harris deals with the spotlight, not just because of the shortened amount of time, but also because she has to prove she’s a better messenger than Biden and reassure Democrats they’re making the right choice before next month’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
They’ve charged that Biden was too old, might not know where he is, wasn’t qualified to run the country and he and his son are likely corrupt and have enriched themselves.
If Harris is chosen as the Democratic Party’s nominee, the Republicans will run against a much younger candidate, who will draw on her experience as a prosecutor to differentiate herself from Harris, who is a convicted felon and potentially the first woman to be president.
Democrats troll Republicans every now and then, but when Biden announced he would not run for president, many thought the country wouldn’t have a president who was older than 81 at the end of his term.
Reality TV like you didn’t see before: How big was the problem that Hillary Biden wouldn’t go? How big will she be?
If another person challenges Harris, the Democratic party could be headed for an open convention, which could go through multiple rounds of voting. Much will be dependent on the number of delegates that attend the convention. One expert told Keith, “It will be reality TV like you’ve never seen.” Here is a more in-depth look at what is happening.
Many big names, including the governors of Pennsylvania and California as well as the governor of Michigan and the Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg have thrown their support behind Harris.
How exactly voters respond to the Democratic shakeup remains to be seen. The recent NPR/PBS News/Marist Poll shows that both Biden and Harris were in a statistical tie with Trump after Biden’s poor debate performance.
But that’s when people were thinking of her as a hypothetical candidate. Now that Harris is almost certain to be the actual nominee, he will face a whole new level of scrutiny.
But on the flip side, she was not a very good candidate in 2019 when she ran for the Democratic nomination. She struggled to convey her core values, instead saying she saw herself as a problem solver. She has been caricatured by the right as a California liberal, while also facing criticism from the left as being too tough on crime as the state’s attorney general. She’s struggled with messaging at times as vice president, including on immigration, one of the areas Biden put her in charge of early on.
She has an opportunity to rejigger the electoral map. There are risks and rewards with each of these candidates, but some of the names floated include lots of white, male moderates like Pennsylvania’s Shapiro, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, as well as Whitmer, a swing-state governor.
He is well-liked, has dealt with controversial issues and is a native of Pennsylvania, making him a popular pick in Democratic circles. The state of Pennsylvania has seen more ad money than anyone else. The Trump campaign knows it has to take one of the blocks out of the Blue Wall — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. They’ve targeted Pennsylvania more than any other swing state, and, as of Sunday morning, were holding onto a narrow lead there in an average of the polls.
Beshear, 46, is a popular Democrat. He has won praise from both sides for how he worked with both parties, but he is in a Republican state.
Kelly, 60, is also from a swing state. He’s an astronaut married to former Rep. Gabby Giffords, who was shot in 2011 at a constituent event; he’s shown he can raise a lot of money for Democrats, and he could help, to a degree, blunt Republicans’ immigration attacks since he is from a border state and has separated himself some from Biden on border policy. He isn’t from a swing state with as many delegates as Pennsylvania or North Carolina, though.
Biden has been a public figure since 1972, when he was elected to the U.S. Senate. He wasn’t even old enough to serve in the Senate at the time. He turned 30 two weeks after his election.
He has always wanted to be president and has been told by plenty of people in his life that he couldn’t do a lot of things. In 2020, he defeated Trump, and Democrats credit him with saving democracy. Reality now set in that the path forward was not going to work out.
Getting the Most Out of Your Day: How to Get Better Jobs (and What You Can Don’t) After Trump’s Comeback
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It’s been a rollercoaster for U.S. politics lately. Keeping up with the news is very hard with the election just four months away. It is normal for people in a political environment to feel negative emotions, even after the attempt on Trump’s life and Biden’s exit from the race. If you are feeling sad, worried or upset for a long time, it is time for an intervention. According to psychologists, there are some strategies to help.
A potential contender, Gov. Andy Beshear, told MSNBC Monday morning he was endorsing her candidacy. “The vice president is smart and strong which will make her a good president,” he said.
While some Democrats are advocating for an “open process” in Chicago, there seems to be little appetite for a contentious battle for the nomination to take on former President Donald Trump, and any potential challenge seemed likely to be nominal.
A mini-primary would be great for many people. Joe Manchin said on CBS that it is up to the voter to find out if they have the strongest candidate.
The Democratic Party has left it’s moorings. Let’s hope she comes back. A person can be in a single position and make a change. And I would like to see that direction change,” he said.
When did Biden and the Trump Campaign Hand Over His Campaign War Chest to Kamala Harris? An Attorney General’s Comment on the NPR Correspondence
California records show that Trump contributed $5,000 in September 2011 toward Harris’ 2014 reelection campaign, and followed up with another $1,000 in February 2013. The daughter of the president gave money to the campaign.
“These are not ordinary times. Harris sent a message to supporters on Monday saying that this will not be an ordinary election.
The chair of the Federal Election Commission, Sean Cooksey, told NPR that there are valid arguments to be made that Harris is not entitled to those funds.
On Sunday, Cooksey shared on X a portion of federal campaign finance regulations, which states that if a candidate is “not a candidate in the general election,” all contributions made to that candidate for the November election “shall be either returned or refunded to the contributors or redesignated… or reattributed… as appropriate.”
But he may have to consider his interpretation if the Trump campaign files a complaint with the FEC, or a request for an advisory opinion, on Biden’s efforts to hand over his campaign war chest to Harris.
Democrats’ efforts to do could be challenged in court because their complaints are being heard just 100 days before the presidential election.
“We’re ready, and we’ve been ready,” Trump spokesman Jason Miller said on X. “Kamala Harris will not be able to outrun the Harris-Biden record or her radical leftist record from the California days.”
Specifically, Republicans are already highlighting Harris’s more liberal immigration positions and will argue that she “covered up” for Biden’s mental acuity. “You lied about it every day,” senior Trump campaign official Chris LaCivita said on X.
Source: Potential rivals to Harris for president line up to endorse her
How Do You Know I Was Running Against Them? A Comment on Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., in the Adirondacks
Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz. has won statewide races twice and could put back on the map a state that Democrats believe had largely slipped away from Biden by the time he exited the race.
With just four weeks until the convention, Democrats will have little time to vet a potential running mate and voters won’t have to wait long to find out: the running mate is historically announced in the days prior to the convention.
“I was looking at the ones I’m running against. Can you believe that I have contributed to most of them? He said that’s correct. “I contribute to everybody. I gave to the Democrats. I have given money to Hillary. I give to everyone because that was what I was paid to do.
He admitted at one rally that when he wants something, he gets it and that’s why he is giving to them. They kiss my a** when I call.
NPR has reported that most of Trump’s political donations went to Democrats until around 2010.
