Politics @beehaw.org memfree @beehaw.org 6 days ago

Biden, 81, pulls out of presidential race, will serve out term

www.reuters.com /world/us/biden-81-pulls-out-presidential-race-2024-07-21/

"It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President. 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 wrote.

Edit: He's endorsing Harris. all the news sites have live feeds.

14 comments

I hope that this ends up being the right decision. The Dems must really, truly think they can't win with Joe Biden. Kudos to Joe for setting his ego aside, I know that can't have been easy. Let's unite behind whoever gets picked and beat Trump.
- This was the right decision in 2023. Making it now, a month before the DNC, means they have completely circumvented the primary elections and robbed voters of their chance to select the nominee. We've gone from millions of people having a voice in the nomination process, to a group of less than ten thousand, and that is disenfranchisement on a massive scale.
  
  Don't get me wrong, I would vote for a dead raccoon before I'd vote for Trump. But we deserve better than to have Trump's opponent hand-picked on our behalf like this. I'll vote for whoever that is, but we should absolutely give the Democrats hell once this is all over. The duopoly in our elections needs to end, if they can't be trusted to honor the basic fundamentals of the system.
  
  As a non American I've never understood the primaries concept either. I get how it works but I've never seen it anywhere else in the world. So I don't think it's that big of a deal having the party leadership decide their candidate.
- Absolutely correct. And Trump is very beatable. The Democrats have loads of candidates who could beat him (including, IMO, Biden, but that's in the past, now).
  
  Whatever the outcome will be, I am sure the campaign will become hotter. I think the Dems will bring someone with a more radical speech than Trump, and they better do - Trump has shown what he can do during his 2016 campaign.
  
  And the age is not doing a service to Trump either.
This is a risky strategy. I'm hope this pans out.
- The Dems must know that they can beat Trump with another nominee. Otherwise, they would not have been pressuring him to step down over the last several weeks.
  
  This summarily erases two of Trump's ongoing arguments: age and his whole "Biden crime family" schtick. Dems need to go much younger here to present a stark contrast and finally have someone not old enough to be a great-grandparent to Gen Z.
Donald Trump Jr. attacks Harris as "even more liberal (sic) and less competent" than Biden [...] "Kamala Harris owns the entire leftwing policy record of Joe Biden. The only difference is that she is even more liberal and less competent than Joe, which is really saying something."

The only thing that's saying is that the old man now seems even more scared of any potential countercandidate.

If I was Dems rn, whether it would be Kamala or not, I would just leave the GOP boil for a little (only a little), bring a bit of uncertainty to the table, and then announce the candidate. Not too much, as it would make them seem weak, but just enough to let the GOP consume themselves. That would be quite a move.

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