Biden withdraws from the election! And endorses Harris, revealing the infighting among the top leaders of the Democratic Party
2024-07-22
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On July 21, US time, US President Biden issued a statement announcing his withdrawal from the 2024 presidential election.
“My fellow Americans,We have made tremendous progress as a country over the past three and a half years.Today, America has the strongest economy in the world. We made historic investments to rebuild our country, lower prescription drug costs for seniors, and expand affordable care to a record number of Americans. We provided much-needed care to one million veterans exposed to toxic substances. Passed the first gun safety law in 30 years. Appointed the first African American woman to the Supreme Court. And passed the most significant climate legislation in world history. America has never been better positioned to lead.I know none of this would have been possible without you, the American people. Together, we have overcome a pandemic of unprecedented proportions and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. We have protected and preserved our democracy. We have revitalized and strengthened our alliances around the world.It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President.Although I have always wanted to run for re-election, I have decided that it is in the best interests of the Party and the country for me to step down and focus on my duties as President for the remainder of my term.Later this week, I will address the nation and explain my decision in detail.Now, I want to express my deepest gratitude to all who worked so hard to get me re-elected. I want to thank Vice President Camilla Harris, who has been a great partner in this effort. And I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to the American people for the trust you have placed in me.Today, I believe what I have always believed: that there is nothing America cannot do if we work together. We just have to remember that we are the United States of America.”Less than half an hour after announcing his withdrawal from the race, Biden endorsed Vice President Harris on his personal Twitter account."My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and will devote my full attention to the duties of my presidency for the remainder of my term. My first decision as the 2020 nominee was to choose Camilla Harris as my Vice President. It was the best decision I have ever made. Today, I am giving my full support and endorsement to Camilla as our nominee this year. Democrats - it's time to unite and defeat Trump. Let's do it together."Harris may be the Democrats' hope?After Biden withdraws from the election, the Democratic Party will have two possibilities to determine a new candidate: one is to determine the new candidate through virtual online voting in early August; the other is an "open" convention, which has never been experienced since 1968.Now that Biden has endorsed Harris after dropping out of the race, if the Democratic Party can unite to support Harris, they may vote to nominate Harris before the party convention on August 19.But Biden supporters are not actually obligated to support Harris, which creates another possibility: If Harris fails to gain clear support in the August primary, the election will enter an "open" convention mode, in which the Democratic Party will hold a small primary and various competitors will compete to convince delegates to vote for them.This will cause even greater confusion because the time left for the Democratic Party is too short. You know, the voting deadline in some states is August, and early voting in some places starts in September. Therefore, leaders within the Democratic Party hope to resolve the nomination issue before the Democratic National Convention begins on August 19.So, will we see an open convention?There is only a small probability!Biden will try to ask nearly 3,900 Democratic delegates to support Harris to tip the balance in favor of unity. Loyalists still make up the majority of the Democratic delegates today, and they are likely to vote for Harris as Biden requires.Amy K. Dacey, former chief executive of the Democratic National Committee, said that senior leaders in the Democratic Party will actively solve this problem so that the new nominee can start the campaign as soon as possible. Dacey said: "There are about 31 days left before the Democratic convention. They have already determined the nominee, and they just need to convince others."If the delegates fail to reach a consensus before Chicago, however, the Democratic Party will hold its first public and contentious convention since 1968. Predictably, the results will be so bad that the party will completely change the way it chooses its candidates.What will the public meetings look like?To get their name on the roll-call ballot, each candidate needs to get the signatures of at least 300 delegates, and no more than 50 signatures can come from the same state. This will accelerate the manipulation and deal-making as state party leaders try to gather their delegates into a voting bloc.Once Democrats gather in Chicago, candidates and their surrogates will be busy not only at the convention site, but also in hotels, bars and other hidden locations looking for votes. In the past, at public conventions, candidates would desperately fight for every vote, which would completely derail the Democratic election.At the 1976 Republican Open Convention, one of the attendees, former ambassador to Belgium,Tom Korologos recalled a Gerald Ford delegate who fell and severely injured her leg, but instead of rushing her to a hospital, fellow delegates used the convention program to immobilize her leg and kept her within voting distance because they feared her successor would vote for Ronald Reagan. Ford ultimately won the nomination but lost the presidential election to Democrat Jimmy Carter, who in turn lost to Reagan in 1980.Soon, the first roll call vote will take place. If a candidate receives the votes of a majority of delegates in the first round of voting, that candidate will become the nominee. But if no one receives a majority, a second vote will be held.At that time, the conference will be regarded as“Brokerization”, a term coined at a long-ago convention when party power brokers put all their deal-making and pressure-making muscle into getting votes. There hasn’t been anything like it since 1952.The 2024 version would be that superdelegates enter the voting pool starting with the second round of voting. Voting would continue round after round until a candidate receives a majority of delegate votes and is nominated as the party's nominee. While this might make for great television, the partisan divisions that play out on the convention floor are not ideal.In 1924, after the two top-voting candidates dropped out, the Democratic Party went to 103 rounds of ballots before finally settling on compromise candidate John Davis. The result was obvious: incumbent President Calvin Coolidge defeated Davis in a landslide.Biden furious at Democrats backstabbing himOver the past week, Biden has been sick with the coronavirus and abandoned by allies, leaving him fuming at his beach house in Delaware at what he sees as an orchestrated campaign to remove him from the race and growing resentful of those once close to him, including his onetime running mate and close friend, Barack Obama.Biden has been around politics long enough to believe the leaks that have come to light in the media in recent days were orchestrated to put pressure on him to step down, according to people close to him. He believes former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was the main instigator, but he also has a grudge against Obama, whom he sees as a master puppeteer behind the scenes.As the election approaches, the friction between the incumbent president and his own party leaders is the likes of which Washington has not seen in decades. The Democrats now working to unseat him are the allies most critical to his success over the past decade. It was Obama who promoted Biden from the presidential candidate to the vice presidential position, laying the foundation for his 2020 White House victory, while Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, Senator, pushed forward his landmark legislative achievements.But several people close to Biden said the president was in poor health and facing his presidency at its most perilous moment. He watched with irritation a barrage of news reports in which Schumer, Pelosi, Obama and House Democratic leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York warned that the party would suffer a devastating defeat in November.The friendship with Obama may endBiden certainly took notice that Obama’s former aides had publicly led calls for Biden to withdraw, while Obama himself had done nothing in recent days to support him. This was interpreted as a message from the former president’s camp. Given Obama’s eight-year partnership with Biden, Obama’s presence was clearly felt despite his absence, adding a Shakespearean touch to the drama unfolding.Biden's frustration with his former running mate Barack Obama is the latest chapter in their complicated relationship. While they were not close when they teamed up for the 2008 campaign, they became friends during their two terms in the White House, especially after the death of Biden's son Beau in 2015.But Biden has harbored a grudge since Obama gently dissuaded him from running for president in 2016, handing the Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump. So Obama’s advice may not be popular with Biden at this point, according to people close to Obama, which may be one reason the former president has not made the suggestion directly.In privately criticizing Obama and even former President Bill Clinton's aides, Biden made it clear that he found it particularly ridiculous that the same people who led the Democratic Party to historic losses in the 1994 and 2010 midterm elections were lecturing him on how to save the Democratic Party after his better-than-expected performance in the 2022 midterms. Some say Biden is not angry with Clinton personally and, in fact, is grateful that the former president has been urging donors to keep giving.Pelosi also pushes Biden to abandon shipOn Friday, more congressional Democrats publicly called on the president to hand over power to another candidate to run against former President Trump in the fall, including New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich, Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown and at least nine House members, including Pelosi's close ally Zoe Lofgren.It was considered no coincidence that Pelosi’s allies showed up at the president’s vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Earlier last week, when another Pelosi ally, Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, spoke, a Biden administration official noted thatIt was Schiff's lips moving, but it was actually Pelosi doing the talking.It's not just her allies. Representative Seth Moulton, D-Mass., a Pelosi rival, also thinks Biden should drop out. Biden was a mentor and friend to Moulton when he was elected to the House in 2014, but when they met last month at the anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, France, Moulton said Biden didn't seem to recognize him."Of course, this can happen to anyone as they age, but as I watched that disastrous debate a few weeks ago, I had to admit that what I saw in Normandy was part of a deeper problem," Moulton wrote in the Boston Globe last week.Now, Biden has given up the presidential candidate as the Democrats wished, but can the Democrats defeat Trump by giving up Biden? At least from the current polls, the Democrats still have little hope.After all, since the beginning of the 20th century, if the incumbent US president does not seek re-election, or if there is today's intra-party competition, the incumbent party that enters the White House has no chance of winning.
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