The pressure got the better of his stubbornness. Joe Biden announced this Sunday, July 21, his withdrawal from the race for the White House after weeks of speculation about his physical and mental abilities, plunging his camp – and the campaign – into the unknown. The 81-year-old Democrat thus joins the very small club of outgoing American presidents who have thrown in the towel while running for a second term. But he is the first to do so so late in the campaign. The only one, also, to have to drop out due to questions about his mental acuity. In the wake of his announcement, he said he supported the candidacy of his vice-president Kamala Harris.
“I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country that I step aside and focus solely on serving as president for the remainder of my term,” he said in a statement, announcing that he would address the nation “later this week.” This shock announcement, even if it was expected despite repeated denials from the main person concerned, disrupts a campaign that has already experienced many twists and turns, first and foremost the assassination attempt against Donald Trump on July 13.
Now we need to find a replacement for Joe Biden, who was supposed to be inaugurated at his party’s convention in mid-August in Chicago. His vice-president Kamala Harris would be a natural choice, but not an automatic one, to become the Democrats’ candidate. The final say goes to the Democratic Party delegates, 3,900 people with a wide variety of backgrounds and most of them completely unknown to the general public.
Painful spectacle
It was Joe Biden’s disastrous performance in his debate with Donald Trump on June 27 that precipitated events. That day, from the first seconds of the verbal joust that he himself had called for, it was a very weakened Biden who appeared in front of the screens of his dismayed supporters. With a cat in his throat forcing him to cough often, he got tangled up more than once, sometimes unable to finish his sentences. A painful spectacle that brought to light the doubts about his age, on which his relatives had tried to keep a lid.
Who was going to be the first to draw his gun and ask him to stop there? The little music quickly rose, starting from relatively unknown Democratic elected officials to reach heavyweights of the party. One after the other, big names, frightened by the polls showing him as the loser and fearing a crushing victory for Donald Trump, dropped him, most of them at first in private. The American media, citing anonymous sources, thus claimed that former President Barack Obama, former Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Democratic leaders in Congress Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries had expressed their concern.
And the images of Joe Biden, who tested positive for Covid-19 and struggled to get down the gangway of his plane, only served to amplify the nervousness of his camp. Meanwhile, Donald Trump, who miraculously escaped gunfire during a campaign rally, seemed to be living a state of grace, with legal victories and a consecration at the Republican Party convention in Milwaukee.