President Joe Biden says he is not seeking reelection in a letter posted to X on his official account. Biden says he will speak to the nation later this week in more detail.
“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President,” Biden wrote. “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.”
Biden’s departure capped off weeks of concern about the 81-year-old president’s stamina and mental capabilities and skepticism of his ability to effectively campaign against Trump and govern the country for another four years. Biden’s decision is also likely to raise questions about his ability to fulfill the duties of the presidency for the remainder of his term.
It’s the first time a US president has dropped out of a reelection run in decades, recalling memories of President Lyndon Johnson deciding against seeking a second full term in 1968 – though Biden’s decision comes months later in the campaign than Johnson’s announcement. It’s also the latest shocking development in a highly charged political campaign that has included an attempt on Trump’s life.
But not even the attempted assassination and its tumultuous effect on the race could pause the loss of support Biden was facing among congressional Democrats who became increasingly convinced that a wipeout in November would also drown their down-ballot contests as well.
It sets the stage for the conclusion to a political career that has spanned a half-century, one that saw Biden enter as one of the youngest senators in US history and exit as its oldest president.
Age and questions about the president’s mental faculties had been Biden’s biggest political liability since he first ran against Trump in 2020. Biden’s disastrous performance at a June 27 CNN debate – during which the president spoke softly, carried a glazed-over look and at one point appeared to lose his train of thought mid-sentence while his opponent delivered an animated, while mainly fact-free performance – brought those concerns to the forefront of the political conversation and ultimately doomed his reelection push.
Biden’s campaign had asked for the June debate in the hopes that it would force voters to tune into the race – and what Biden has said is at stake if Trump regained the White House – earlier than usual. But that strategy appeared to backfire as the president solidified what had been the most persistent concern about his candidacy.
The president’s performance shocked his donors, closest allies and the 50 million Americans who saw Biden stumble throughout the 90-minute debate, the most extensive exposure to an unscripted Biden since the last round of general-election debates four years ago. It left the White House and Biden campaign in a frenzied scramble to explain away his condition – at first, blaming it on a cold, before days later saying the president had been jet lagged by his international travel that wrapped up about 12 days prior to the debate.
The president’s surrogates and campaign officials sought to soothe Democratic anxieties, hurriedly calling meetings with donors and top supporters to assure them that Biden’s performance was the product of one bad night and ask them to consider it in the context of his three-and-a-half-year presidency.
The president himself recognized how poorly the night had gone almost immediately; at a campaign rally the next day, he sought to promote an animated and energized image that had largely been absent from the debate stage.
“I don’t walk as easy as I used to,” Biden said. “I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to. But I know what I do know: I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong. I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done.”
But the damage had already been done.
By the Monday after the debate, murmurs about replacing Biden on the ticket had grown into a full public conversation. The mood in the White House and at Biden’s campaign headquarters in Wilmington had turned sour. Biden, seeking to assert his control over his campaign and the presidency, delivered brief remarks that evening on the Supreme Court’s immunity decision earlier that day, asking voters to “dissent” in a rare political overture from the White House.
The next day, Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas became the first member of Congress from Biden’s own party to ask him to drop out. The fractures in Biden’s support have grown steadily wider every day since. By the time Biden exited the race dozens of lawmakers had asked him to bow out.
So had major donors. Actor George Clooney, who has known Biden for years and was one of Hollywood’s biggest boosters of the president, said in a July 10 New York Times opinion piece that Democrats “are not going to win in November with this president” and called for the party to pick a new nominee.
Biden was initially defiant that he would remain in the race. But as the defections in his base of support continued, and leading Democrats in Congress continued to have difficult conversations with the president about his odds against Trump and the damaging effect he might have on down-ballot Democrats in competitive races, Biden opened himself up more to the idea of dropping out of the race.
In an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on July 5, Biden laughed off questions about his political future and said only the “Lord Almighty” could convince him to drop from the race.
Days later, Stephanopoulos candidly told a passerby that he also didn’t think Biden could serve another four years.
Biden told reporters at a NATO news conference he would drop out if polls showed he could not win. About a week later, he said he would reevaluate whether to stay in if he had “some medical condition that emerged” and doctors told him that would be an issue. The next day, the White House announced that Biden had Covid-19.
The attempt on Trump’s life July 13 briefly stemmed the flow of congressional Democrats calling for Biden to drop out and pulled the national attention away from his faltering presidential campaign. But the reprieve didn’t last long. Rep. Adam Schiff on July 17 became the first House Democrat to call on Biden to step down since the assassination attempt and more followed in the ensuing days.
Biden’s evolution on his future as the party’s nominee tracked closely with efforts among his biggest allies to convince him the path to victory was narrow. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Biden weeks after his debate that polls showed he could not win.
A senior Democratic adviser told CNN the president was becoming “receptive” to conversations about him stepping aside: “He’s gone from saying, ‘Kamala can’t win,’ to ‘Do you think Kamala can win?”