WSJ What’s News - President Biden Drops Out of 2024 Race

Episode Date: July 21, 2024

Special Edition for July 21. President Biden has ended his 2024 re-election campaign after failing to quell a Democratic rebellion against his candidacy. Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to take over at the top of the ticket. Harris said she will fight to earn the nomination. We discuss where this extraordinary moment leaves the race with WSJ’s Molly Ball and Ken Thomas. Sabrina Siddiqui hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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That's BetterHelp.com. President Biden says he is ending his re-election campaign, catapulting the 2024 race into uncharted territory. Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him at the top of the ticket. Harris accepted his support and vowed to earn the nomination. It's Sunday, July 21st. I'm Sabrina Siddiqui for The Wall Street Journal. This is a special edition of What's News. We'll look at the day's events and discuss the president's political legacy.

In a one-page letter, President Joe Biden said he believed it was in the best interest of his party and the country for him to stand down and focus solely on fulfilling his duties as president for the remainder of his term. He followed the announcement with a tweet endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him at the top of the ticket, telling Democrats, It's time to come together and beat Trump. telling Democrats, it's time to come together and beat Trump. Biden said he would address the nation later this week about his decision, which came after a cascade of Democrats urged the president in both public and private to withdraw from the race. The 81-year-old incumbent president's decision caps a five-decade political career and marks one of the most monumental political collapses in American history. In a written statement, Harris acknowledged Biden's endorsement and said it is her intention to earn and win this nomination.

While it remains to be seen if Democrats rally behind her, Harris said she will do everything in her power to unite the party and the country to defeat Trump in November. It didn't take long for some Democrats in Congress, along with former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and powerful fundraising groups to rally behind Kamala Harris. But other powerful figures, like former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and former President Barack Obama, held off. Although Biden's decision seemed inevitable to some in Washington, the timing, with just over three months to go until the November election still stunned many of the president's donors and advisors. Joining me now to unpack this extraordinary moment in American politics is The Wall Street Journal senior political

correspondent Molly Ball. Molly, we've talked a lot in recent weeks about how the calls from Democrats for Biden to step aside were growing, but this is still a seismic shift with just over three months until the election. How did we get here? Well, it seems like a lifetime, but that disastrous first presidential debate was just three and a half weeks ago. And it has really been a gradual and then sudden shift since then. Democrats were so shocked by what they saw in that debate that they quickly began talking in private and public about whether Joe Biden should leave the race. At first, there was a feeling that he might himself have seen that and maybe he would be moved to, of his own accord, drop off the ticket. That didn't happen. And so there was this prolonged standoff where more and more top Democrats were publicly pressuring him to get out of the ticket. That didn't happen. And so there was this prolonged standoff where more and more top Democrats were publicly pressuring him to get out of the race. He stubbornly dug in for a while.

He then came down with COVID this week and retreated to his beach house in Delaware to cough and mull things over. And he seems to have finally reached the conclusion that the campaign was untenable. What do you think was the tipping point? We don't really know at this point, but it is clear that the pressure had become very, very intense since Friday. The Republican convention ended on Thursday night, and it was a great show of unity behind Donald Trump. It was clear that the Republicans were not necessarily on a complete glide path to victory, but feeling very good about their polling and how unified they were behind their nominee. The Democrats, by contrast, were really falling apart. And on Friday, we saw an absolute flood, dozens of sitting lawmakers calling on Biden to

leave the race. And it was clear that this pressure was not going to stop, that they were in a panic, believed that he could only lose, and he was going to have to get out sooner or later. President Biden, in making this announcement, endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, which was widely expected. But is she a certainty to replace him at the top of the ticket? Harris, which was widely expected. But is she a certainty to replace him at the top of the ticket? Nothing is certain until the delegates vote. And that hasn't happened yet and probably won't happen until August, if not at the convention. That being said, what we are seeing right now is, it's fair to say, a huge collective sigh of relief on the part of the Democratic Party. They are so glad to have someone to rally around and unify behind that we are seeing en masse top official after top official endorse, a lot of activist

groups also endorsing. So it looks as though there is going to be an overwhelming show of force behind Vice President Harris that makes her appear all but inevitable. There have been so many surprises this election season that I don't want to make any predictions and something could always throw it off course. But certainly where it stands right now, it looks like she is on her way to, and out of respect for President Biden as well, him having made clear that this is what he wants to happen. He was the nominee. He was the one the delegates voted for. So for him to throw his weight behind a successor, I think, has a lot of weight in the party. Who are some of the other potential contenders if there is to be an open primary?

Yeah, and I think these are also a lot of the people who will be in the conversation for a potential running mate for Vice President Harris if she becomes the nominee. People like a lot of the very popular Democratic governors across the country, Andy Beshear, Gavin Newsom, Roy Cooper, Josh Shapiro, Wes Moore of Maryland. Democrats actually have a quite deep bench of younger generation popular elected officials. We're also hearing talk about some members of Congress. The one I'm hearing about the most is the Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, who, of course, comes from a swing state, has national security foreign policy experience. Some Republicans are already seizing on this moment to suggest that Biden should resign if he isn't capable of seeking reelection.

They've also been escalating their attacks on Harris even before today, probably looking at the likelihood of her taking his place. What does this mean for the Democratic Party's chances in November? We really don't know. And I think that's going to be a huge point of conversation over the next few weeks. Up to now, Vice President Harris has been about as unpopular as President Biden, and she has polled about as poorly as President Biden. In recent weeks, as Biden has weakened and looked more frail, she has started to edge above him in some polls, but it's very, very, very, very close. Because they have both been in the White House these last three and a half years, they both own the policy failures

and successes of this administration, which has generally not been popular. There's some doubts about her abilities as a campaigner based on the fact that her 2020 presidential campaign was not very good. These next few weeks are going to be America getting to know her in a new way. And we will see if there is an openness on the part of this very polarized electorate to look at her and see her as a contender. One thing I've heard from a lot of Democrats in recent weeks is they feel like she has a lot of upside just because of her ability to go out and

make the argument. She's young and fluent and good at speaking in public. She's been out there on the campaign trail, particularly talking about reproductive rights. It's an extraordinarily strong issue for Democrats. So there's a lot of hope that she can inspire voters who had been turned off and disenchanted by this rematch election to breathe a sigh of relief that they have another choice and give the ticket another look. That was The Wall Street Journal's Molly Ball. President Biden's political career began in 1972 and has spanned more than a half century. Wall Street Journal White House reporter Ken Thomas, who has covered Biden for years, joins us now to discuss his legacy and record. Ken, President Biden has been a central figure in American politics for more than 50 years.

That journey is now coming to a close in dramatic fashion. Where does this leave his legacy? You can really trace the Democratic Party's history over the last half century through Joe Biden in many ways. I think his legacy is still undetermined. I think the outcome of this election will have a lot to say about how people remember Joe Biden, but he certainly has a lengthy track record going back to his first election to the Senate in 1972 at the age of 29. He wasn't even old enough to be sworn in. He turned 30 in the aftermath of that election. But, you know, if you look back over his career, it starts in an era that saw Richard Nixon resign from the White House, the end of the Vietnam War, into events like the collapse of the Soviet Union,

the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then finally his role as the running mate to Barack Obama as the nation's first Black president. What are some of the highs and lows of his overall record? Well, I think before he served in national office, he was known as a leading senator, He was known as a leading senator, certainly in the foreign policy and judicial spaces. Biden was someone who often supported interventions by the U.S. He voted for the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. Iraq. And then later, he felt strongly that the war was mishandled and that there needed to be a way out for the U.S. He was certainly heavily involved also with the war in Afghanistan. And one of the hallmarks of his presidency will be the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan during his first

year as president. In the past year, President Biden has really struggled with the war in Gaza in trying to put together some way of getting hostages home to move the parties together in a way that might bring peace to the war in Israel. And it has been something that he's struggled with at home as well. Another key part of the Biden foreign policy agenda has been the response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. invasion of Ukraine. Biden has spent months rallying members of NATO in defense of President Zelensky of Ukraine. Biden famously made a secretive trip to Ukraine to meet with Zelensky in Kiev. And he really sees this as a big part of his legacy, you know, maintaining the ties between the U.S. and European leaders in support of countries like Ukraine in opposition to Russia's aggression. Ken, you noted that some of President Biden's legacy may be contingent on the outcome of this election. But just looking at his presidency so far, you've covered it from day one. What are some of the moments, achievements,

missteps that will stand out in the long run? In many cases, President Biden's victory in November 2020 is a big part of his legacy. He had not really intended to return to politics after he left the vice presidency, but he said he was drawn to the race when he saw what happened in Charlottesville, the neo-Nazi marches that took place during Trump's presidency, he decided that he felt strongly that Trump needed to be defeated. And the party rallied around him during the pandemic. And so as President Biden took office, one of the first orders of business was to fight the pandemic. He instituted a massive response from the government to not only help provide testing, but also to get people vaccinated. He also is known for his work to try to get the economy back on track. One of his first key pieces of legislation was a nearly $2 trillion COVID relief bill that included direct payments to Americans and enhanced unemployment and child tax credits. That was a big driver of the early days of his presidency.

Biden's struggles, though, has been to show that these laws that he got into place are helping people in their everyday life. There was this view that many people didn't see the signs of this progress in their communities. And then certainly they were frustrated by inflation and some of the struggles that that created. That was The Wall Street Journal's Ken Thomas. And that's What's News. Today's show was produced by Pierre Bien-Aimé with supervising producer Michael Cosmitas and deputy editor Scott Salloway. I'm Sabrina Siddiqui for The Wall Street Journal.