• Republicans want Biden to ‘resign' immediately as president
'Seun Ibukun-Oni, Abuja
DAILY COURIER - After weeks of mounting pressure, United States President Joe Biden on Sunday dropped out of the November presidential election.
Biden’s withdrawal from the race opens up questions about who might replace him on the Democrat ticket less than four months before the vote. Biden himself endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the party’s nomination, but the Democratic National Convention, scheduled for August, is where Biden’s successor as standard bearer might well be decided.
The pressure on the president to pull out started building up from within his party following a disastrous performance in the presidential debate on June 27, when he mumbled his answers and appeared to lose his train of thought at times. In recent days, a flood of Democratic leaders, including members of Congress and influential supporters of the party, have called on him to step aside from the race. On Thursday, it was announced that he was suffering from COVID-19.
Yet, Biden had the delegates needed to secure his nomination at the party’s August convention.
Vice President Kamala Harris is an early favourite to replace Biden, especially after she received the president’s endorsement. Biden also encouraged donors to contribute to Harris for her campaign.
Still, Biden’s decision to withdraw is not merely unusual — it is unprecedented in modern US politics. “We’re in uncharted territory here,” said Kyle Kondik, the managing editor for the Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a newsletter about elections published by the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
And Harris could face challengers seeking the Democratic nomination in the coming days.
The new nominee will be chosen at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month, when more than 4,000 party officials and activists, known as delegates, gather to vote.
There have been instances where parties have chosen their candidates in competitive conventions after the primaries. In fact, that happened frequently before the modern primary system was put in place in 1972, granting voters a greater say in the process.
But the Democrats’ current situation is different.
Having won nearly all pledged delegates, Biden is now the first presumptive nominee of a major party to quit the race after the primaries have concluded.
The president ran in the primaries without any serious challengers and Democratic officials stressed early on that Biden – as the incumbent – will be the likely nominee.
“I don’t really think there’s any good recent precedent for it. Half a century or more ago, it wasn’t uncommon to go into the convention not necessarily knowing for sure who the nominee was going to be,” Kondik, who spoke to Al Jazeera earlier this week, said.
“But since then, we haven’t had this sort of situation where somebody dominates the primary season – but then steps aside later, in advance of the convention.”
With no historical precedent to follow, Democrats will have to improvise within their guidelines on how to choose their new nominee, analysts say.
While the change comes with risks, a new candidate could galvanise Democratic voters who had previously resigned themselves to the uphill battle of taking on Trump at a time when his lead over Biden had widened across battleground states.
Before dropping out, Biden was set to face Republican nominee Trump for the second presidential election in a row.
Meena Bose, a professor of political science at Hofstra University, said that while it is risky to change candidates so close to the elections, a shake-up at the top of the Democratic ticket could boost the party’s chances.
“A late change is not ideal but may bring more optimism than no change at all or, at the very least, might potentially be helpful down the ballot, if not in the presidential race,” Bose said.
Presidential endorsement
Soon after Biden announced his departure from the race, he endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him at the top of the Democratic Party ticket.
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Kondik said Biden’s endorsement makes a big difference. The president has the support of the overwhelming majority of delegates. And while they are not bound to back Harris, Biden’s backing could tip the scales in her favour. In the hours that followed Biden’s announcement, a flood of leading Democrats publicly endorsed Harris – from Senator Elizabeth Warren and state leaders of the Democratic Party to governors who were seen as potential rivals for the nomination, such as California’s Gavin Newsom and Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro.
The vice president also has national name recognition and can inherit the Biden-Harris campaign infrastructure.
Kondik said that nominating Harris was the “path of least resistance” for Democrats. Bose echoed that assessment, saying that Harris was the most “logical choice” to ensure a “seamless transition”.
“There is not a lot of time for an open competition for delegate support,” she told Al Jazeera.
Republicans want Biden to ‘resign immediately’ after election withdrawal
As US President Joe Biden announces his decision to drop out of the November election, top leaders from the Republican Party say he must resign as president “immediately”.
“If Joe Biden is not fit to run for President, he is not fit to serve as President. He must resign the office immediately. November 5 cannot arrive soon enough,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, the top Republican in the US Congress, said in a statement on Sunday.
Johnson characterised Biden’s withdrawal as an “unprecedented” moment in United States history.
“We must be clear about what just happened. The Democrat Party forced the Democrat nominee off the ballot, just over 100 days before the election,” he wrote.
“Having invalidated the votes of more than 14 million Americans who selected Joe Biden to be the Democrat nominee for president, the self-proclaimed ‘party of democracy’ has proven exactly the opposite.”
Biden said he intends to serve out the remainder of his term, which ends on January 20, 2025. But Biden’s Republican opponents, including Donald Trump, slammed his presidency and called for the 81-year-old to resign before the end of his term.
“Crooked Joe Biden was not fit to run for President, and is certainly not fit to serve – And never was!” Trump posted on his Truth Social network.
The Republicans have seized on Biden’s poor debate performance last month to batter him as incapable of serving four more years. Now that he is out of the presidential election, many are saying he should resign from his office, too.
Johnson, in a separate interview with the network ABC, hinted that the Republicans may mount legal challenges to the Democrats’ move to replace Biden on the ballot.
Johnson also used his post for an attack on Vice President Kamala Harris, who Biden has proposed as his replacement candidate. Johnson described Harris as “a gleeful accomplice” who “co-owns the disastrous policy failures of the Biden Administration”.
“Regardless of the chaos in the current White House, our adversaries around the globe should be reminded that the US Congress, the US military, and the American people are fully prepared and committed to defend our interests both at home and abroad,” Johnson wrote.
Senator JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, said on X that not running for re-election would be a “clear admission” that Trump was right all along about Biden “not being mentally fit enough to serve as Commander-in-Chief”.
“There is no middle ground,” he added.
Elise Stefanik, House Republican Conference chairperson, shared a similar sentiment, saying in a statement that if Biden can’t run for re-election, he is “unable and unfit to serve” as the US president.
Meanwhile, the Democrats have defended Biden’s decision, calling it a “patriotic” and “selfless” move.
In a joint statement, former President Bill Clinton and ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said they “join millions of Americans in thanking President Biden for all that he accomplished”. They also threw their weight behind Harris to be the Democratic nominee to face Trump in November.
“Now is the time to support Kamala Harris and fight with everything we’ve got to elect her. America’s future depends on it,” the Clintons said.
Former President Barack Obama, who picked then-Senator Biden as his running mate in 2008, called him a “patriot of the highest order”, but warned of “uncharted waters in the days ahead” – and stopped short of endorsing Harris.
“I have extraordinary confidence that the leaders of our party will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges,” the former US leader and Democratic Party member said in a statement.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement that Biden has not only been a “great president and a great legislative leader but he is a truly amazing human being”. “His decision of course was not easy, but he once again put his country, his party, and our future first,” he said.
Schumer and Senator Dick Durbin, the top two Senate Democrats, however, did not offer support for Biden’s proposed replacement, Harris.
“Now the Democratic Party must unite behind a candidate who can defeat Donald Trump and keep America moving in the right direction. I will do everything
in my power to help that effort,” Durbin said.
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES, NEWS AGENCIES