Biden stepping aside as Democratic presidential candidate, throws support to Harris

U.S. President Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign and threw his support behind Vice-President Kamala Harris on Sunday after fellow Democrats lost faith in his mental acuity and ability to beat Donald Trump.

Biden, in a pair of posts on X, said he will remain in his role as president and commander-in-chief until his term ends in January 2025 and will address the nation this week.

"My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term," Biden said in one post. "Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year."

In another, he wrote: "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."

Harris, 59, would become the first Black woman to run at the top of a major-party ticket in the country's history. It was unclear whether other senior Democrats would challenge Harris for the party's nomination, who was widely seen as the pick for many party officials — or whether the party itself would choose to open the field for nominations.

Biden's announcement follows a wave of public and private pressure from Democratic lawmakers and party officials to quit the race after his shockingly poor performance in a televised debate last month against Republican rival Donald Trump.

Biden's failure at times to complete clear sentences took the public spotlight away from Trump's performance, in which he made a string of false statements, and trained it instead on questions surrounding Biden's fitness for another four-year term. 

Days later he raised fresh concerns in an interview, shrugging off Democrats' worries and a widening gap in opinion polls, and saying he would be fine losing to Trump if he knew he'd "gave it my all."

His gaffes at a NATO summit — invoking Russian President Vladimir Putin's name when he meant Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and calling Harris "Vice-President Trump"  — further stoked anxieties.

Only four days before Sunday's announcement, Biden was diagnosed with COVID-19 for a third time, forcing him to cut short a campaign trip to Las Vegas. More than one in 10 congressional Democrats had called publicly for him to quit the race.

Biden's historic move — the first sitting president to give up his party's nomination for re-election since President Lyndon Johnson in March 1968 — leaves his replacement with less than four months to wage a campaign.

If Harris emerges as the nominee, the move would represent an unprecedented gamble by the Democratic Party: its first Black and Asian American woman to run for the White House in a country that has elected one Black president and never a woman president in more than two centuries of democracy.

Biden was the oldest U.S. president ever elected when he beat Trump in 2020. During that campaign, Biden described himself as a bridge to the next generation of Democratic leaders. Some interpreted that to mean he would serve one term, a transitional figure who beat Trump and brought his party back to power.

But he set his sights on a second term in the belief that he was the only Democrat who could beat Trump again amid questions about Harris's experience and popularity. In recent times, though, his advanced age began to show through more. His gait became stilted and his childhood stutter occasionally returned.