President Joe Biden said in a statement posted on his social media account he is dropping out of the presidential race — a historic decision that throws the 2024 election into upheaval and marks the latest exit of a presidential incumbent in modern history.
The extraordinary move by Biden to decline the nomination will send shockwaves through the Democratic Party, triggering a frenzied effort to replace him just weeks before the party’s nominating convention. In a followup post on X, Biden endorsed Vice President Harris to be the party’s nominee.
My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best decision I’ve made,” Biden wrote. “Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.”
The president’s endorsement is likely to shut down any serious competition from other Democrats to be the nominee, clearing the path for the vice president to be the 2024 Democratic candidate.
The president’s decision is a stunning development in an election already rocked by an assassination attempt on the Republican candidate, former President Donald Trump.
Biden, 81, had come under intense and mounting pressure from fellow Democrats to step aside after a disastrous debate performance in June, when he appeared feeble and confused. Biden’s standing in battleground state polls dipped following the debate, heightening concerns about the president’s viability in the general election against Trump.
But Biden and his inner circle of trusted aides had remained confident in his path to victory, a deep-seated belief rooted in his five decades of ups and downs in politics and the conviction that he has repeatedly defied expectations after being counted out. As party elders and former Senate colleagues rejected his candidacy, the president grew angry, only begrudgingly coming to accept that too large a swath of his own party had irrevocably lost confidence in his bid.
Biden said he would serve out the remainder of his term, which ends in January.
No modern president has stepped back from an election this late in the race. In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson pulled out of his reelection campaign in March of that year. Then-Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who won the nomination, went on to lose to Richard Nixon that fall.
But Biden’s endorsement of Harris as his successor on the ticket will put pressure on the party to coalesce behind her and pivot to a general election less than four months away. With the primaries long since over, the nomination is no longer in the hands of voters, but instead up to about 4,000 delegates at Democrats’ national party convention next month.
