President Biden Drops Out, Endorses Vice President Harris

President Joe Biden will not seek re-election, a letter posted to social media on Sunday explained, and now the political world adjusts.

Washington Post:

President Biden abruptly ended his reelection campaign Sunday, sending shock waves through the political world and plunging the Democratic Party into an unprecedented scramble to choose a new nominee to face former president Donald Trump.

“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President,” Biden, 81, wrote in a letter he posted to social media Sunday afternoon. “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.”

In a separate social media post Sunday, Biden endorsed his vice president, Kamala D. Harris, to replace him as the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer ahead of its national convention Aug. 19-22.

“Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year,” Biden said in a post shared on X. “Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.”

Biden’s exit leaves his party in an almost unprecedented position just months ahead of the Nov. 5 election. In a presidential race that has already been rocked by a felony conviction and an assassination attempt, the latest plot twist added to the sense of tumult that has gripped the nation’s politics this year.

President Biden immediately endorsed Vice President Harris to replace him as the Democratic Party nominee, and Team Harris quickly moved to consolidate her position.

Punchbowl News:

Most of the Democratic Party’s key figures on the Hill are rallying around Vice President Kamala Harris. We anticipate that in the next few days, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries will follow suit. Other Democratic leaders will get on board the “Kamala Train” as early as this morning.

Harris has already filed the FEC report for her presidential campaign. A large number of governors, members and senators are endorsing her, and by Sunday night, delegates from a handful of states pledged to back Harris, with more expected to do so today. Democratic state party committees are pro-Harris too. DNC officials have promised “a transparent and orderly process” to select the new nominee.

Here’s how Hill Democrats think about Harris. Is Harris a perfect candidate? No, no one is. Is she better than Biden? Yes, according to many Democrats, at least in the sense that it gives the party a fighting chance of defeating former President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) in November. Democrats hope that Harris chooses a vice presidential candidate who energizes voters, giving the party a boost going into the final months of the campaign.

Democratic supporters donated $50 million to candidates Sunday after Biden dropped out.

The most optimistic take here is that Democrats can now refocus the debate back on Trump and his fitness to return to the Oval Office rather than fielding constant questions about their internal disarray. The less hopeful view is that neither Harris nor Biden can beat a surging Trump and this is just changing deck chairs on the Titanic.

How the leadership is handling this. Hill Democratic leaders are sensitive to the criticism that this could turn out to be a coronation of Harris by party bosses without any input from voters or other key stakeholders. While it’s clear that the party is coalescing around Harris, the leadership doesn’t want to be seen as stacking the deck for her quite yet.

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Harris was phoning senators on Sunday afternoon and evening, we’re told, including Padilla. Harris and Padilla have known each other for a long time, and Padilla is viewed as Harris’ top Senate supporter.

The whip operation. Harris spent a bunch of time Sunday talking to members of the House and Senate about her candidacy. Harris personally called CBC Chair Steven Horsford (D-Nev.), CHC Chair Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.), CAPAC Chair Judy Chu (D-Calif.) and CPC Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.). All four are backing her.

As of now, Harris hasn’t announced any plans to come to meet with House or Senate Democrats as a group. But she’ll have locked down most of the important figures in the Capitol by later today or tomorrow anyway, so it may not be necessary. As a reminder, the Senate isn’t back in town until Tuesday evening, while the House returns today.

The Trump/Vance campaign, which so far has focused on Joe Biden, now pivots to Kamala Harris

AP:

Donald Trump’s campaign has spent the last year-and-a-half viciously attacking Joe Biden, ridiculing his policies, mocking his fumbles and relishing a rematch they felt they were winning.

But they have also spent weeks preparing for the possibility that Biden might exit the race, readying a bevy of attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris that they unleashed as soon as Biden made his stunning announcement Sunday that he would step aside. Biden soon after endorsed Harris, who was quickly winning support from Democrats to be the party’s nominee.

“Rest assured, we are 100% ready,” Trump pollster and senior adviser Tony Fabrizio said at last week’s Republican National Convention. He noted speakers at the event often referred to the “Biden-Harris” administration in their speeches and said the campaign had prepared anti-Harris videos to swap in just in case Biden stepped down sooner.

Still, the shakeup less than four months before Election Day lays out new challenges for Trump’s team, which had until recently been focused on contrasting the former president’s vigor and mental acuity with Biden’s. Trump will now face a new, yet-to-be-determined opponent at a time when voters have made clear that they are frustrated by their current choices and desperate for new, younger options.

They will try to tie her to what they see as the Biden administration’s failures, saying Harris is complicit in everything that occurred under Biden’s watch. That’s particularly true when it comes to the handling of the Southern border. Harris had been tapped to lead the administration’s response to the border crisis.

In a statement Sunday responding to the news, Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita and fellow campaign chief Susie Wiles railed against Harris, insisting she “will be even WORSE for the people of our Nation than Joe Biden.”

“They own each other’s records, and there is no distance between the two,” they said.

They will also continue to accuse her of being part of a coverup of Biden’s deteriorating health, believing voters have lost trust in Democrats and the press for failing to shed light on Biden’s weaknesses sooner. And they will attack her record in California, where she served as district attorney and attorney general before being elected to the Senate.