Biden Drops Out of Reelection Bid, Fully Endorses Kamala Harris

Joe Biden, in a letter to the nation (same post, on Instagram):

It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President. 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.

And in a follow-up post on X:

My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term. 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. 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.

I’ve been ambivalent about Biden dropping out since The Debate. I see clearly that he’s diminished. He’s lost his fastball. Watch Biden on 60 Minutes from just four years ago, on the cusp of the 2020 election. That’s Joe Biden. Biden today, even at his best, doesn’t have that zip. He’s no longer able to serve as a compelling communicator but a communicator is first and foremost what a candidate needs to be. I admire Biden more than ever for coming to grips with and accepting this inconvenient truth, and putting both his country and party above his own ambition. More than any other fissure in our fractious, highly-polarized politics today, the difference between Democrats and Republicans is that Democrats tend to face and address inconvenient truths, and Republicans are nothing more than a weird, gross, terrifying personality cult worshipping one old corrupt man.

Here’s how I think it will play out. This might be wishful thinking, but it’s what I’d bet on. The entire Democratic establishment will get behind Kamala Harris as the nominee. Ambitious and popular Democratic leaders like Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro, Andy Beshear, and Pete Buttigieg won’t challenge her for the nomination. They’ll compete only to be her pick for VP. (Except Newsom, who, coming from the same state as Harris, wouldn’t work). My top two picks for VP would be Buttigieg and Whitmer. Watch Buttigieg on Bill Maher’s show this weekend, talking about J.D. Vance and why Peter Thiel backs him. He’s so smart, and so good at explaining things.

The knee-jerk reaction to my suggestion of picking Buttigieg or Whitmer is obvious: isn’t a black woman at the top of the ticket already asking a lot? Why go with two women, or a black woman and a gay man? Because they’re smart and they’re sharp and they’re good on TV. If you don’t like their message or platform, don’t vote for them. But if you don’t want to vote for a ticket with two women, or a ticket with gay man as VP, just because, then fuck you. Go vote for Trump, because you’re a bigot, and he’s the candidate for you. There are too many racists and sexists in America, but they’re not a majority.

Like I wrote last weekend after the assassination attempt against Trump: this will be old news by November. The reason why U.S. presidential candidates tend to announce their campaigns two years before elections is because unlike parliamentary systems, our election dates and presidential terms are set in stone. Candidates announce early in the U.S. simply because they can. It’s a good thing, in an election where the overwhelming majority of independent voters wanted both Biden and Trump to drop out of the race, for the Democrats to start fresh, with almost four full months to run a campaign emphasizing youth, intelligence, competence, honesty, and change. New is a positive adjective in America.

November is a long way out. Buckle up.

★ Sunday, 21 July 2024