Biden’s out. What now?

Analyzing the early contours of the Trump-Harris campaign.

Photo by the White House

Good morning! As you all know, we have a lot to get to in this morning’s newsletter. Lower down, I’ll be answering some questions that I suspect a lot of readers might be wondering — but I also want to hear what questions you have.

I’ve set up a WUTP live chat — open to all subscribers, free or paid — where I’ll be dropping in throughout the day. Leave any questions you have on what just happened (and what comes next) and I’ll answer some in the chat and others in the newsletter later this week. Access the live chat here. OK, onto the newsletter:

Sometimes, historic announcements are made in big, dramatic speeches. And sometimes, they are made more quietly.

President Joe Biden’s announcement on Sunday that he will not seek a second term was made with two pieces of paperwork: a note on his personal letterhead, and an official FEC filing transferring his campaign organization — and its $96 million war chest — to a new entity, “Harris for President.”

And, with that, Biden’s 53-year career of seeking elected office came to a sudden end, and a new phase of the 2024 presidential campaign began.

“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President,” Biden wrote in his letter to the country. “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’s missive capped off an extraordinary 25-day period in presidential politics, in which his long-held dreams of securing a second term collapsed on national television, as his halting June 27 debate performance spooked his fellow Democrats. Over the subsequent weeks, more and more Democratic officials began going public with their worries, calling on the 81-year-old president to cede the stage to a new generation.

In the interim, the Supreme Court issued a historic decision on presidential immunity, former President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt, a federal judge dismissed one of Trump’s indictments, Republicans formalized Trump’s nomination and that of his new running mate’s, and Biden was diagnosed with Covid-19.

It was during his Covid-induced self-isolation that Biden — who had initially refused to drop out — decided to end his campaign, reportedly arriving at the realization that he would never be able to overcome the damage he inflicted on his campaign at the debate.

According to The New York Times, Biden summoned Mike Donilon and Steve Ricchetti, two of his longest-serving advisers, to his vacation house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, on Saturday to begin work on the withdrawal letter. On Sunday, he spoke on the phone with his vice president Kamala Harris, his chief of staff Jeff Zients, and his campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon to inform them of his decision.¹ He then convened a Zoom call with other top advisers — and minutes later, the letter was released into the world.

Biden soon followed it with an X post offering his “full support and endorsement” to Harris, who is now hurriedly spinning up a campaign operation in his stead.

I’ll have some more thoughts I want to share below —but, first, to make sure we’re all on the same page, let’s answer some questions that might be on your mind:

How will the Democratic nominee be chosen? The exact process will be formalized at a meeting of the Democratic National Committee’s rules panel on Wednesday — but a 2022 document published by the DNC gives a rough overview of the general parameters.

Anyone who wants to seek the Democratic nomination will need to submit a petition signed by at least 300 Democratic delegates. Then, to win the nomination, a candidate will need support from at least 1,975 delegates — a majority of the 3,949 in attendance. If no candidate reaches that threshold on the first ballot, the approximately 750 superdelegates (a group composed of Democratic governors, members of Congress, and other party leaders) will added into the mix and able to vote as well. Balloting will continue until someone receives a majority.

Will anyone run against Harris? Other than Marianne Williamson, it doesn’t seem like it. Harris quickly locked up the support of almost 70% of Democratic members of Congress and all 50 state Democratic Party chairs. Party elders like Bill and Hillary Clinton also rushed to back the vice president, as did groups representing most major Democratic Party constituencies, including EMILY’s List, the Human Rights Campaign, Young Democrats of America, the political arm of the Congressional Black Caucus, and several leading unions.

Nearly every Democrat considered a possible rival of Harris’ was quick to line up behind her as well, including Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL), Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI), and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Sen. Joe Manchin (I-WV) briefly considered rejoining the Democratic Party to mount a run for the nomination, but announced this morning that he would not enter the contest.

With those names off the board, it looks like the nomination is Harris’ for the taking.

Will Biden stay in office? Congressional Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), quickly responded to Biden’s announcement by calling on him to resign from office. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) even said that she would introduce a resolution today calling on Harris to begin the process of invoking the 25th Amendment, which allows a president to be removed from office if the VP and a majority of Cabinet secretaries declare him incapacitated.

Although we have yet to hear from the president himself since his announcement — he is still in self-isolation, creating an odd situation where a president who just made a history-altering decision has yet to be seen on camera — there is no indication that Biden plans to resign before his term expires on January 20, 2025.

Who might Harris choose as her running mate? Speculation has largely centered around four politicians, all of them white men from purple or red states: Gov. Roy Cooper (D-NC), Gov. Andy Beshear (D-KY), Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), and Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA).

All four men have endorsed Harris’ campaign in the last 24 hours.

What will a Trump-Harris campaign look like? Nikki Haley said back in January that “the first party to retire its 80-year-old candidate is going to be the one who wins this election.”

That’s an overstatement, of course — it’s not as if Kamala Harris is suddenly the frontrunner in this campaign; if anything, she is a slight underdog. But, I do think Haley’s comment captures something real about the events of the last 24 hours.

For months now, poll after poll has told us that Americans have been dreading the Trump-Biden campaign — frustrated and dispirited that these two old, unpopular men were their presidential choices. Even in an election cycle that has already featured a conviction and an assassination attempt, Biden’s exit from the race is the first real move that promises to fully transform the dynamics of the campaign.

The jolt of enthusiasm — and relief — on the Democratic side is easily quantifiable. Sunday appears to have been the best performing day for ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising platform, in its history, with nearly $67 million raised for Democratic candidates. As of early this morning, the Harris campaign alone had raised almost $50 million in less than 24 hours after Biden’s announcement.

Republicans, meanwhile, appear to be scrambling. The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta recently spent months embedded on the Trump campaign and came away with a striking conclusion: Trump’s operation was “engineered in every way — from the voters they target to the viral memes they create — to defeat Biden.” Privately, he reported, Trump’s top aides were “all but praying that he remains their opponent.”

That finding was pretty clearly confirmed over the last 24 hours by former President Trump’s Truth Social feed, which is usually the best way to peer into his unfiltered id. In his 11 posts since Biden dropped out, Trump has mentioned Biden each time and Harris — his new opponent — only once.

At one point, he seemed to be openly wishing that Biden would simply change his mind: “It’s not over!” Trump insisted. “Tomorrow Crooked Joe Biden’s going to wake up and forget that he dropped out of the race today!” At another, Trump asked the Democrats for a refund: “Shouldn’t the Republican Party be reimbursed for fraud” after having to spend so much money against Biden, who was no longer their opponent, he asked.

As he continued to rail against Biden and his mental acuity, Trump never debuted a single attack line against Harris — a revealing sign of how prepared he was to fight a campaign against Biden, and how unprepared he was for this sudden shift (even though it was one had had long forecasted).

Of course, that doesn’t mean Republicans won’t settle on attacks against Harris soon. Expect the GOP to try to saddle Harris with Biden’s largely unpopular record, especially his handling of the southern border — tagging her as the “border czar,” responsible for record migrant crossings, since Biden put her in charge of handling the root causes of migration. Watch also for attacks accusing her of being aware of Biden’s infirmity but hiding it from the public, as well as ads highlighting her past support for left-wing positions, including Medicare for All and the Green New Deal.

In turn, watch for Democrats to now brand Trump as the elderly candidate — gingerly, of course, as not to upset the still-serving 81-year-old president — and to frequently repeat the “prosecutor vs. felon” message: highlighting the matchup between Harris, a career prosecutor, and Trump, a convicted felon. A fresh face in a campaign that had been dominated by elderly men, watch for Harris to try to claim the mantle as the “change” candidate, even though it is her party in the White House.

Harris’ trajectory here is pretty breathtaking: just a few months ago, Democrats were privately mumbling about Biden replacing her on the ticket with a new VP. Instead, it is Harris who’s replacing Biden — with the full support of many of the mumblers. Having stumbled in her previous presidential campaign — and in her early years on the job as vice president — all eyes will be on Harris in her initial campaign rallies to see whether she has transformed into a steadier performer.

We don’t have much polling evidence yet, but the surveys we do have suggest Trump will maintain a slight edge against Harris, at least at the beginning of the campaign. According to the RealClearPolitics average, Trump boasts a 1.7-point advantage in polls against Harris (compared to his 3-point advantage against Biden). Polls generally show Harris outperforming Biden among young and Black voters, while losing some ground among older voters and white voters without college degrees.

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Three more thoughts

1. The party decided. Over the last few months, a common refrain has been people complaining that “the Democrats” should push Biden out — and pundits (myself included) responding that there’s no such group of people as “the Democrats” who could just push out a sitting president. As political scientists often say, in the U.S., we have strong partisanship but weak parties.

After the last 24 hours, I’m revisiting that thesis. If Harris becomes the nominee (as it appears she will) that will mean that in two consecutive election cycles, the same select group of Democratic party elders essentially organized over a matter of hours to coronate their party’s presidential candidate — and it worked both times.

I’m referring, of course, to the brief period in March 2020 when leaders like Barack Obama successfully worked the phones to encourage top Democrats to coalesce behind Biden — and then to yesterday, when all the same Democrats once again fell in line behind Harris. And, of course, that quick Harris coronation only came after the same group of party leaders (Obama, Pelosi, etc.) privately pushed Biden to step aside over the last few weeks.

According to reports, Biden’s exit was partially forced out of fear that Pelosi would come out publicly against him this week, after privately backchanneling her dissatisfaction. We often act as though we live in an era of weak parties, far removed from the old-school machines where bosses got their way — and yet, fear of Nancy Pelosi practically just ended a presidency.

Of course, the same is not true on the Republican side, where Donald Trump has little to fear if Mitch McConnell were to suddenly come out against him. The two parties operate differently. But, on the Democratic side at least, traces of old machine politics were visible this weekend. Of course, Biden was ultimately the one to make the decision — but he only did so under intense pressure from Pelosi and a few others. The party bosses wanted him out, and their got their way, just like they did in 2020.

2. The video that changed everything. Want to travel back in a time machine? Watch this video from a little more than two months ago, when Biden challenged Trump to two debates. “Make my day, pal,” he goaded the ex-president.

Well, that backfired. Biden’s decision to hold an early June debate will go down as one of the worst strategic decisions for a presidential campaign in history — and, if Harris manages to win in November, as one of the best for a political party. Typically, presidential debates aren’t held until September or October, once it is too late for the parties to nominate new candidates. If Biden had simply held to that schedule, the Democratic outcry for him to step down likely wouldn’t have happened, and he’d still be running for president today.

Instead, intent on changing the dynamics of a race he was losing, Biden made the gamble to call for an early debate — and the rest will go down in history. There goes another tenet of political punditry: that debates are rarely able to impact a campaign.

3. The Gen Z angle. I’ll be doing more reporting on this in the next few days, but anecdotally, I’ve been very interested to see the surge of Gen Z enthusiasm for Harris both online and in-person among young Democrats I know.

While Biden’s image on TikTok, such as it existed, was largely confined to videos of him falling or garbling his words — Harris has been fully memed. The Biden campaign had been lacking in youth energy, big time, and the Harris coconut tree memes could be a step towards repairing that.

On a slightly separate note, after many of you responded to my LBJ post recounting where you were when you watched his withdrawal, I’ve been wondering if my generation has just experienced our first two “where were you when…” moments — with both of them taking place about a week apart.²

4. Bridge building. Biden’s announcement was shocking, but also unsurprising — both because of the weeks of build-up, and because of how he described his presidency from the very beginning. During his 2020 campaign, Biden described his envisioned tenure as a “bridge” presidency — a transitional term to stabilize the country after the Covid-riddled Trump era.

After this weekend, we now know that Biden will, in fact, have been a bridge. Whether that’s a bridge connecting the two Trump terms, or a bridge to the first Black female president — we’ll have to wait to find out.

1. I think this is an interesting example of how titles can’t always tell you everything in Washington. On paper, Zients is Ricchetti’s boss and Dillon is Donilon’s. And yet, in reality, the two long-serving aides wield more power than the two new arrivals to Biden’s orbit — hence, Donilon and Ricchetti being part of the decisionmaking process with Biden on Saturday, and their bosses only being informed after the fact. There is more to power than a title.

2. I don’t count the Obama or Trump elections, because Election Day is a set day where we know something big is going to happen. Covid is the other obvious possibility, except there wasn’t really one specific day/moment attached to Covid — although I’d accept arguments for the day in March 2020 when Tom Hanks tested positive and everything seemed to start shutting down.