After a 50-year political career, President Joe Biden announced yesterday that he’s ending his 2024 re-election campaign. The decision comes after many weeks of him and his team telling the public that he plans to stay in the race.
Even within his party, President Biden’s ability to serve as his country’s leader for another term was being questioned. NBC News states that the common belief is that the current president is “too frail…destined to lose to Donald Trump”.
Without even going into the shockingly low poll numbers, concerns only increased after Biden’s poor performance in the first presidential debate against Republican nominee Donald Trump.
During the debate, NBC News says, “Biden spoke in a raspy voice…failed to complete thoughts or deliver a cogent explanation of why voters should choose him over Trump”.
Quickly following that night, Democratic lawmakers began pushing Biden to step down. NBC News states that 37 congressional Democrats, including Sen. Joe Manchin, had called for Biden to drop out.
The final nail in the coffin was, most likely, the AP-NORC survey released on July 17. The survey showed that 65% of Democrats believed Biden should exit the race.
With the Democratic Party’s convention less than a month away and Election Day less than four months away, this sudden decision has thrown the Democratic Party for a loop.
According to NBC News, President Joe Biden already has a replacement in mine. Following his resignation, he posted on X that he would give his full support and endorsement to Vice President Kamala Harris.
Selecting a new candidate is not simple, though. As Barbara Perry, a presidential studies professor at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, said, “There’s no one…who is an obvious substitute”.
The Democratic Party is currently in step two of choosing a new candidate, Biden stepping aside. The next step is for the 3,900 pledged delegates to participate in a ballot for the party’s nominee.
From here, one of two things can happen: one candidate wins the majority or there is no winner. If there is no winner, over 700 “superdelegates” are added, bringing the number to at least 4,600.
Voting will continue until one candidate comes out on top.
Another first for America, a nominee dropping out of the Presidential Election is only making the 2024 Election Year the wildest the country has seen thus far.
