The End of the Biden Campaign: Addressing the Issues of the Voting Campaign in the House of Representatives and the Senate Majority
President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race on Sunday following a nearly monthlong pressure campaign mounted by Democratic leaders and donors to oust him.
“With this selfless and patriotic act, President Biden is doing what he has done throughout his life of service: putting the American people and our country above everything else,” Harris said in a statement Sunday. I was honored to get the president’s endorsement, and my intention was to win the nomination.
Biden said that he would speak to the Nation later this week in more detail about his decision, and that the letter did not provide additional detail on how the Democrats might decide.
Biden gave his full support and endorsement to the vice president after he was called “an extraordinary partner” in the letter. The campaign raised $240 million in the past few years and Harris is expected to control that money if she takes over. Donors and, reportedly, Nancy Pelosi have voiced support for an open nomination process of some sort.
The end of Biden’s unprecedented decision comes at the end of an unprecedented three-week period that started with a debate against Republican nominee Donald Trump. In that debate, Biden, whose age and physical condition were already major issues in the election, appeared nearly incoherent at times.
Democratic megadonors Laurene Powell Jobs and Ron Conway, among others, began discussing how Biden could be replaced before or during the Democratic National Convention, the New York Times reported.
Defending the Democratic Candidate in a Coupling Before Our Very Eyes: Biden’s Social Media Critique, Twitter Comments, and the WIRED Project
“I have seen some emails from people in Silicon Valley who said, ‘I’m not going to donate more until I have more confidence,’” Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn founder and Biden donor, told WIRED earlier this month.
There were many baseless accusations made on X. House Speaker Mike Johnson and a dozen congressional Republicans claimed that the Vice President had been ousted in a coup. Johnson said in a post that the Democrat nominee was removed just over 100 days before the election and that Biden was already the official Democratic nominee.
The Democratic candidate will be up against a Republican Party that has been awakened by its populist wing and alliances with powerful Silicon Valley investors like Musk.
David Sacks wrote that Biden was deposed in a coup. “A coup before our very eyes,” wrote right-wing commentator Mike Cernovich on X. Far-right influencer Milo Yiannopolous responded to Cernovich, writing: “When, if ever, do you think they will tell him.”
Biden withdrew from X as a way of showing that their platform was where history happened. The platform quickly became ground zero for false news and conspiracy theories, with Musk playing a central role.
“Joe Biden succumbed to a coup by Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and Hollywood donors, ignoring millions of Democratic primary votes,” Senator Tom Cotton from Arkansas wrote on X.
In the days and weeks leading up to Biden’s announcement, right-wing politicians had already started pushing the narrative that efforts being made to convince Biden to withdraw from the race were undemocratic. In the hours after Biden officially withdrew on Sunday, those accusations exploded online, according to a WIRED review and data provided by Advance Democracy, a non-profit organization that conducts public-interest research.