The First Three-and-a-half Day of Presidential Campaign: When Biden Announced his Departure from the House of Representatives to the United States
“As a historical matter, very, very few people do this,” historian Jon Meacham, who has helped in writing speeches for Biden, including his 2023 State of the Union address, told NBC News on Sunday, “and in an era where so many of us privilege power over principle, where a lot of us would rather take than give, I think it’s a moment for the country to consider that the president has given us a lesson: that our own wishes, our own immediate desires, should not always be controlling.”
Biden has been called patriotic by many Democrats as he tries to draw a contrast with Trump. It would be difficult for the president to make this decision because he or she has been with Biden a long time.
President Biden made history on Sunday by announcing that he wouldn’t be running for reelection. And he endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, instead.
All politicians want to be the top dog, but the numbers can move things — whether it’s polls or money. Both put a lot of pressure on Biden to reconsider. He was slipping in swing states after the disastrous June 27 debate and money had started to dry up.
Biden said in an ABC interview that the polls showing his party losing or some combination of them could lead to him stepping down.
Pelosi, one of the most shrewd operatives in the Democratic Party, appeared to lead the charge. She pays very close attention to the polls and she listens to the swing-state Democrats who had seen a cratering in the numbers in their states and districts. Biden got past denial to acceptance.
This has been among the worst three-and-a-half weeks of any presidential campaign — from the debate to former President Donald Trump’s convention to Biden contracting COVID-19.
Democrats are smiling and seem more rejuvenated after this announcement, which occurred before the debate. They’ve been injected with enthusiasm by the fact that they’ll win the race. In the hours after Biden’s withdrawal, Democrats gave almost 50 million dollars to ActBlue, the largest site that processes Democratic donations. Since the election, it is the biggest single day of Democratic donations.
This will be a hyper-compressed and closely watched campaign. It will be crucial how Harris deals with the spotlight, not just because of the shortened amount of time, but also because she has to prove she’s a better messenger than Biden and reassure Democrats they’re making the right choice before next month’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
They think Biden isn’t qualified to run the country because he isn’t old enough, he and his son are likely corrupt and they enriched themselves.
She has many strengths and weaknesses. She will need to prove to the public that she can prosecute the case better than he can, though she will likely be able to. Black voters and younger voters are two groups that Biden was struggling in as he looked to fire up the Democratic base. She’s also seemed to find her voice during this campaign when talking about abortion rights, in particular.
The Democratic Candidate for the Lowest Performing Democrat: Kamala Harris and the Problem of the Elections (Revisited)
It’s not often that Democrats get to troll Republicans, but soon after Biden’s announcement, many were trying to flip the script, saying the country can’t have a president who would be 83 at the end of his term.
To get on the ballot for the convention, someone will need the signatures of at least 300 delegates. Biden has 3,900 delegates. It’s certainly possible someone challenges Harris, but who?
There are many big names who have endorsed Harris, including governors from Michigan, California, and Pennsylvania.
Get rid of the polls first. We are starting from the ground up. Before Sunday, polls had shown Harris polling about the same as Biden. The latest national NPR/PBS News/Marist poll showed Biden leading Trump by 50% to 48% within the margin of error. Harris was approximately equal to Trump in terms of percentage.
She was a hypothetical candidate at that time. Now that Harris is likely to be the actual nominee, Harris is going to face a whole new level of scrutiny.
She wasn’t a very good candidate when she ran for the Democratic nomination. She struggled to convey her core values, instead saying she saw herself as a problem solver. She has had to contend with both the right and the left being against her as California’s attorney general. She’s struggled with messaging at times as vice president, including on immigration, one of the areas Biden put her in charge of early on.
“Kamala Harris will be the next president of the United States,” said Jamal Simmons, who was Harris’ communications director in the second year of the administration. “She’s a better candidate than she was, with a great position on the most important issue to the Democratic coalition and a majority of Americans who are anti-MAGA.”
She can rejigger the electoral map. There are risks and rewards with each of these candidates, but some of the names floated include lots of white, male moderates like Pennsylvania’s Shapiro, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, as well as Whitmer, a swing-state governor.
Because he’s well-liked, has handled complicated issues, and is from the state of Pennsylvania, he’s a popular pick in Democratic circles. Pennsylvania has seen more ad money than any state this election. The Trump campaign knows it has to take out one of the blocks from the Blue Wall. They are very focused on Pennsylvania and have held onto a narrow lead there in the polls.
The popular Democrat is Beshear. He’s won praise from both sides of the aisle for how he’s worked with both parties, but he’s in a Republican presidential state.
Kelly, 60, is also from a swing state. He’s an astronaut married to former Rep. Gabby Giffords, who was shot in 2011 at a constituent event; he’s shown he can raise a lot of money for Democrats, and he could help, to a degree, blunt Republicans’ immigration attacks since he is from a border state and has separated himself some from Biden on border policy. He isn’t from a swing state with as many delegates as Pennsylvania or North Carolina, though.
Biden has been in public life since 1972, when he won election to the U.S. Senate as a 29-year-old. He wasn’t even old enough to serve in the Senate at the time. His 30th birthday was two weeks after his election.
He wanted to be president and has been told lots of times he couldn’t do it. Democrats credited him with saving democracy after he defeated Trump. Now, reality set in that the path forward was narrowing.
Ms. Harris was in a competition with people who had progressive credentials. She was running at a time when progressive voters were uniquely focused on criminal-justice reform and suspicious of law enforcement, which was a problem for Ms. Harris, who had built her political career as a prosecutor. The dynamics of Ms. Harris made it difficult to define her brand.
Ms. Harris spent most of her career as a state and local prosecutor before she ran for senator. While this background had traditionally been a reliable path to political office on the right and the left, the politics changed during Ms. Harris’s career. By the time she was packaging herself for a national audience, so-called progressive prosecutors had been elected in cities across the country. These prosecutors promised to divert or decriminalize drug-related offenses, reform cash bail, decline to prosecute cases involving police misconduct and otherwise minimize the prosecutorial role.