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The shoe has finally dropped.

According to Xinhua News Agency, on July 21 local time, US President Biden announced that he would no longer seek re-election as president and supported Vice President Harris as the Democratic presidential candidate in the 2024 election.

Biden announced the decision in a letter released on social media that day. He said in the letter: "I have decided not to accept the presidential nomination and will focus on fulfilling the remaining presidential term."

Biden said, "As the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, my first decision was to choose Kamala Harris as my running mate. This is the best decision I have ever made. Today, I will fully support Kamala to become the Democratic presidential candidate." Biden also said that it is "time for Democrats to unite and defeat Trump."

On July 19, Biden also issued a statement saying that he would "return to the campaign" next week. In just two days, this statement was invalidated. With Biden's withdrawal from the election, the 2024 US election has entered an unprecedented new stage, especially for the Democratic camp.

The Democratic Party is split

Since the "catastrophic failure" of the first televised debate, voices within the Democratic Party have been growing louder and louder for Biden to withdraw from the race. After Biden tested positive for the new coronavirus on July 17, behind-the-scenes activities pushing Biden to withdraw from the race have become more frequent, and the main driving force has also surfaced.

The New York Times reported on July 19 that Biden believed that former House Speaker Pelosi was the main instigator in the Democratic Party who demanded that he withdraw from the election, and that Obama was the "master puppeteer" behind the scenes. For this reason, Biden once scolded Obama in private.

In fact, there have been reports that Pelosi has been colluding behind the scenes to put pressure on Biden since the first TV debate, and Obama, who initially supported Biden, changed his mind after receiving calls from many Democrats.

At the same time, more and more Democratic lawmakers have come out to publicly call on Biden to withdraw from the race. So far, at least 36 of the 264 Democratic members of Congress have publicly called on Biden to end his campaign.

With the Democratic Party already divided, Biden has lost the appeal and authority to lead the Democratic Party to win the presidential and congressional elections.

Under such circumstances, Biden still insisted on not stepping down. The reason seems not difficult to guess. First, there are still some heavyweight Democrats who support Biden. According to NBC(NBC)As previously reported, Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton privately supported Biden's continued candidacy and encouraged donors to continue supporting him.

In addition, Biden must also show his fighting spirit to his financial backers, including Soros, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Goldman Sachs partner Eric Mindich, and Skybridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci. Of course, Biden also needs to find a decent step - a positive COVID-19 diagnosis may be this step.

Harris's promotion still has procedural issues

While Biden withdrew from the race, he announced his support for Harris as the Democratic presidential candidate. Prior to this, there was a certain consensus within the Democratic Party to replace Harris, and the Trump team also targeted Harris and began to collect negative materials about Harris. The New York Times quoted two people familiar with the matter as saying that the Trump camp wanted to pay special attention to Harris' "inappropriate behavior" during her current tenure and in California.

However, there are still procedural issues if Biden supports Harris as the new presidential candidate, because Harris has not gone through the public campaign process and it is difficult to convince the public.

According to normal procedures, after Biden withdraws from the election, the Democratic Party needs to start a new round of nominations and campaigns. Then the whole party will support the new candidates introduced in the campaign. But now there is less than a month until the Democratic National Convention, and the Democratic Party has no time for another round of primaries.

Pelosi, who has been organizing activities in California, the Democratic Party's stronghold, has advocated that the Democratic Party needs to introduce a new candidate to compete with Harris. However, this is bound to be opposed by the grassroots of the Democratic Party because it is equivalent to depriving them of their right to choose.

The bigwigs of the Democratic Party dared to publicly call for Biden to withdraw from the election, but few proposed alternative candidates, probably because they were afraid of this. Previously, the only bigwig who publicly supported Harris was Senator Elizabeth Warren, the standard-bearer of the Democratic "progressive faction". She believed that Harris, who had served as the district attorney of San Francisco and the attorney general of California, was the right person to deal with a "convicted criminal" like Trump.

In addition, who will compete with Harris is also a question. The former high-profile possible candidates, California Governor Gavin Newsom and Michigan Governor Whitmer, have both said they do not intend to challenge Harris.

As things stand, there is no other strong alternative candidate in the Democratic Party except Harris. But this does not mean that Harris has reunited the Democratic Party. Procedural issues have always been a problem that restricts Harris's representativeness, but the situation is stronger than the person.

The two parties experienced two major splits in four years.

If Harris officially becomes the Democratic presidential candidate, she will become the first female presidential candidate of African-American and Asian descent in American history. This will help Harris gain support from voters of color, including black women.

However, Harris' disadvantages are also obvious. She ran for the 2020 US presidential primary but did not get a single vote, and her foundation in the Democratic Party is still weak. In addition, Harris has been accused of making jokes more than once in international occasions.

Previous polls showed that the gap between Harris and Trump's public support was smaller than that between Biden and Trump, and the two were basically in a tie. However, polling agencies have always been participants in the election game, and it is difficult to determine whether Harris's higher support rate than Biden's was a conclusion drawn by polling agencies after setting misleading questions and choosing a specific survey method in order to put pressure on Biden.

The Republican camp does not seem to care about Harris's possible candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination. Trump said in an interview a few days ago that he believed Harris would be easier to defeat than Biden.

The Republican camp is now full of confidence, but just four years ago after the 2020 election, they had just experienced a major split. Because of the "January 6 Capitol Hill incident", many heavyweight Republicans represented by Pence publicly expressed their opposition to Trump, and Trump once became an outcast of the Republican Party.

Now history has come full circle, with the Democratic Party splitting up. Many heavyweights in the Democratic Party are pushing Biden to withdraw from the race through the media and behind-the-scenes activities.

I don't know how much of the two major splits between the Donkey and the Elephant in the past four years were due to political morality and how much was due to political calculations. But at least, these two splits have made people see the true side of the power game in Washington.

Written by Xu Lifan (columnist)

Editor/ Ma Xiaolong

Proofreading/ Chen Diyan