By Peter Baker

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden on Sunday (21) abruptly abandoned his campaign for a second term under intense pressure from fellow Democrats and threw his support to Vice President Kamala Harris to lead their party in a dramatic last-minute bid to stop former President Donald Trump from returning to the White House.

“It has been the greatest honour of my life to serve as your President,” Biden said in a letter posted on social media. “And while it has been my intention to seek re-election, 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.”

Biden then posted a subsequent online message endorsing Harris. “My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President,” he wrote. “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.”

The president’s decision upended the race and set the stage for a raucous and unpredictable campaign unlike any in modern times, leaving Harris just 107 days to consolidate support from Democrats, establish herself as a credible national leader and prosecute the case against Trump. Recent polls have shown her competitive with and even slightly ahead of Trump.

Although Democratic convention delegates must ratify the choice of Harris to take over as standard-bearer next month, Biden’s endorsement meant the nomination was hers to lose and she appeared in a powerful position to claim it. While Biden, 81, remained president and still planned to finish out his term in January, the transition of the campaign to Harris, 59, amounted to a momentous generational change of leadership of the Democratic Party.

The president said he would “speak to the nation later this week in more detail about my decision,” although it was not clear when he would do that as he recovers from COVID at his vacation house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

Biden officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations, said the president began changing his mind Saturday (20) while in Rehoboth with family members and three aides: Steve Ricchetti, his counsellor and long-time aide; Annie Tomasini, his deputy chief of staff; and Anthony Bernal, the chief of staff to Jill Biden.

At some point in the day, Joe Biden also summoned Mike Donilon, one of his longest-serving advisers and closest confidants, who rushed to Rehoboth to join the conversation, one of the officials said. Still sick, the president opted against making an announcement on camera and instead crafted a letter with Donilon, author of many of his public speeches.

Biden finalized his decision Sunday morning and made separate calls to three people to reveal it: Harris; Jeffrey D. Zients, the White House chief of staff; and Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, his campaign chair. The president then held a video call with senior White House and campaign officials to tell them about his decision at 1:45 p.m., leaving some of his aides teary-eyed. The letter was posted online at 1:46 p.m. Zients then held a call with White House and campaign officials and then with the Cabinet.

The last time Biden was seen in public, he disembarked from Air Force One in Delaware looking pale and tentative, pausing on the staircase, his mouth agape, before taking another couple steps and stopping again. Asked for his reaction to Democrats pushing him to withdraw, he said only, “I am doing well,” then struggled to get into his seat in the presidential limousine.

In the following days, aides denied reports that Biden was reconsidering his decision to stay in the race. During a conference call Saturday morning, his campaign co-chairs grew testy when officials talked about door-knocking and social media without addressing the elephant in the room.

By that evening, campaign aides at social events appeared in a foul mood and clearly expected Biden to stay in the race. Some allies said they thought that he was digging in. Even minutes before the surprise announcement, campaign aides were still working the phones to push Democrats to stand with him.

No sitting president has dropped out of a race so late in the election cycle in US history, and Harris and any other contenders for the nomination will have just weeks to earn the backing of the nearly 4,000 delegates to the Democratic National Convention. While the convention is scheduled to take place in Chicago from Aug. 19 to 22, the party had already planned to conduct a virtual roll call vote before Aug. 7 to ensure access to ballots in all 50 states, leaving little time to assemble support.

Although some Democrats have called for an open competition, Harris starts the truncated process in the strongest position. An ally of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer indicated that she would not run. Another potential rival, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, had previously said he would not challenge Harris.

Many Democrats quickly endorsed Harris, including former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But former President Barack Obama and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, both of whom were privately concerned about Biden’s ability to win this fall, notably did not back Harris in statements they issued welcoming the president’s decision, raising questions about whether a serious challenge might emerge.

In her own statement, Harris praised Biden for his accomplishments and for “this selfless and patriotic act” in putting country ahead of his ambitions and implicitly addressed critics who said she should not simply be given a coronation.

“I am honoured to have the president’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination,” she said. She added: “I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic Party — and unite our nation — to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda.”

Trump responded to Biden’s announcement not with the grace typically offered in modern US politics when an opponent drops out, but with a characteristically caustic statement. “Crooked Joe Biden was not fit to run for President, and is certainly not fit to serve — And never was!” Trump wrote on his social media site.

Other Republicans, including Speaker Mike Johnson, quickly piled on and demanded that Biden resign from the presidency immediately. “If Joe Biden is not fit to run for president, he is not fit to serve as president,” Johnson said in a statement. “He must resign the office immediately. Nov. 5 cannot arrive soon enough.”

Biden’s withdrawal came 24 days after a disastrous debate performance against Trump cemented public concerns about his age and touched off widespread panic among Democrats about his ability to prevent the former president from reclaiming power. Biden, the oldest president in U.S. history, appeared frail, hesitant, confused and diminished, losing a critical opportunity to make his case against Trump, a felon who tried to overturn the last election after losing.

Democratic congressional leaders petrified by dismal poll numbers mounted a concerted effort to persuade Biden to gracefully exit as angry donors threatened to withhold their money and down-ballot candidates feared he would take down the whole ticket. Polls after the debate showed that even most Democrats preferred that Biden cede the nomination to another candidate.

Although Trump, 78, is just a few years younger than Biden, he came across as forceful at the debate even as he made repeated false and misleading statements. Questions have been raised about Trump’s own cognitive decline. He often rambles incoherently in interviews and at campaign rallies and has confused names, dates and facts just as Biden has. But Republicans have not turned against him as Democrats did against Biden.

The president’s age was a primary concern of voters long before the debate. Most Democrats told pollsters more than a year ago that they thought he was too old for the job. Born during World War II and first elected to the Senate in 1972 before two-thirds of today’s Americans were even born, Biden would have been 86 at the end of a second term.

Biden consistently maintained that his experience was an advantage, enabling him to pass landmark legislation and manage foreign policy crises. He maintained that he was the Democrat best equipped to defeat Trump given that he did so in 2020.

But his efforts to reassure Democrats that he was up to the task after the damaging debate failed to shore up support. Instead, his slowness to reach out to party leaders and some of the answers he gave in interviews only fuelled internal discontent.

Isolated at Rehoboth Beach, Biden grew increasingly hurt and upset at onetime allies deserting him. Ron Klain, his long-time adviser and former White House chief of staff, expressed the bitterness on social media, blaming “donors and electeds” for having “pushed out the only candidate who has ever beaten Trump.”

In bowing out, Biden became the first incumbent president in 56 years to give up a chance to run again. With six months remaining in his term, his decision instantly transformed him into a lame duck. But he can be expected to use his remaining time in office to try to consolidate gains on domestic policy and manage wars in Europe and the Middle East.

His announcement signalled the end of an improbable life in public office that began more than half a century ago with his first election to the New Castle County Council in Delaware in 1970. Over the course of 36 years in the Senate, eight years as vice president, four campaigns for the White House and more than three years as president, Biden has become one of the most familiar faces in American life, known for his avuncular personality, habitual gaffes and resilience in adversity.

Yet the backslapping deal-maker has struggled to translate decades of goodwill into the unifying presidency he promised. He led the country out of the deadliest pandemic in a century and the resulting economic turmoil, but his hopes of healing the rifts that widened under Trump have been dashed. American society remains deeply polarized, and his predecessor is still a potent force in stirring the forces of division and emboldening white supremacists and anti-Semites.

While he has spent most of his elective career seeking the political centre, Biden advanced an expansive progressive agenda after taking office that his allies likened to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal or Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. Working with the narrowest of partisan margins in Congress, he scored some of the most ambitious legislative victories of any modern president in his first two years.

Among other measures, he pushed through a $1.7 trillion COVID-19 relief package; a $1 trillion program to rebuild the nation’s roads, highways, airports and other infrastructure; and major investments to combat climate change, lower prescription drug costs for seniors, treat veterans exposed to toxic burn pits and build up the nation’s semiconductor industry. He also signed legislation meant to protect same-sex marriage in case the Supreme Court ever reversed its decision legalizing it.

He also appointed Ketanji Brown Jackson to become the first Black woman on the Supreme Court and installed more than 200 other judges on lower federal courts despite the razor-thin control of the Senate, more than any other president to this point of his tenure in the modern era. Roughly two-thirds of his choices were women, and roughly two-thirds were Black, Hispanic or members of other racial minorities, meaning he has done more to diversify the federal bench than any president.

Some of the major bills Biden passed drew Republican votes, but his string of legislative successes effectively ended with the 2022 midterm elections when Republicans won a narrow majority in the House, even if not scoring the “red wave” sweep that they had anticipated. Biden has been left to play defence ever since, successfully forging agreements with Republicans to avoid government shutdowns and national default but accomplishing little else more proactive.

On the international front, Biden revitalized international alliances that frayed under Trump, rallying much of the world to stand against Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Despite opposition by Trump and his allies, Biden secured tens of billions of dollars to arm Ukrainian forces and provide economic and humanitarian aid, although some critics have complained that he has been too slow to send the most sophisticated weaponry out of fear of escalation.

Biden supported Israel in its war against Hamas after the Oct. 7 terrorist attack, but he has grown frustrated with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying that Israel is not doing enough to avoid civilian casualties and guarantee humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. Biden alienated many in his own party by not doing more on behalf of Palestinians and then angered supporters of Israel by refusing to ship certain weapons if they were to be used for an all-out assault on the Gaza city of Rafah.

Biden’s decision to pull all forces out of Afghanistan after 20 years, carrying out an agreement that Trump had struck with the Taliban, led to a debacle in the summer of 2021. Taliban forces swiftly took over the country, fleeing Afghans swarmed US airplanes taking off from Kabul, and a suicide bomber killed 13 American troops and 170 Afghans during the withdrawal.

The president has also struggled to secure the southwestern US border, where illegal migration has soared, and to stabilize the post-pandemic economy, in which inflation rose to its highest level in four decades and gas prices shot up to record levels. While inflation has fallen to 3% from its peak of 9% and unemployment at 4.1% remained near a half-century low, many Americans remain unsettled by economic anxiety.

Biden’s overall approval rating remained mired at an anaemic 38.5%, according to an aggregation of polls by political analysis website fivethirtyeight.com, lower than 9 of the last 11 presidents who made it this far into their terms. His aides brushed off such data, noting that Biden surprised forecasters in the 2020 primaries, as did Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections.

Biden has noticeably slowed down in recent years. His gait has grown stiffer, his voice softer, and his energy level at times has diminished. He mangles his words, gets momentarily confused or forgets names or words that he tries to summon. He exercises most days and does not drink; doctors have pronounced him fit for duty. Aides and others who deal with him have long insisted that he remained sharp and informed in private meetings.

His decision to withdraw makes him an outlier in US history. Only three presidents have served four years or less without seeking a second term, all of them during the 19th century: James K. Polk, James Buchanan and Rutherford B. Hayes. Several others wanted another term but failed to secure their party’s nomination.

The last president who had the option to run again given the two-term limit in the 22nd Amendment but chose not to was Lyndon Johnson, who served the remainder of John F. Kennedy’s term after his 1963 assassination and then won a full term of his own the next year, only to back out of another race in 1968 amid the war in Vietnam.

-New York Times