President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race for the White House on Sunday, ending his bid for reelection following a disastrous debate with Donald Trump that raised doubts about his fitness for office just four months before the election.
Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris is being thrust into the most scrutinizing of spotlights, suddenly the leading candidate to succeed Biden as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and her party’s main hope of defeating Trump.
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Vice President Kamala Harris says President Joe Biden’s list of accomplishments are “unmatched in modern history.”
In her first public remarks since Biden announced he was leaving the presidential race, Harris made no comment of her own presidential candidacy.
PHOTOS: 2024 Election Latest: Harris vows to ‘earn and win’ party nomination after Biden drops out
Speaking at a Monday event with NCAA athletes on the lawn of the White House that Biden missed as he recovers from COVID-19, Harris said that Biden, in one term, got more done than many two-term presidents.
“I am firsthand witness that every day, our President Joe Biden fights for the American people,” she said. “And we are deeply, deeply grateful for his service to our nation.”
David Axelrod, senior adviser to President Barack Obama, said Biden’s withdrawal and his endorsement of Harris doesn’t simply erase concerns about Biden but elevates Harris as a motivating, tested national candidate who’s grown while in office.
“Democrats didn’t have a chance on Sunday and now they have a chance,” Axelrod told The Associated Press Monday. “It’s really that simple.”
“I think that it’s a different race now because she has maybe some of his liabilities and she may have some of her own,” Axelrod said. “But no one judges her as too old, or unfit in that way.”
The electoral map stays essentially the same, with Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin being the most pivotal states, he said. And within them, Harris will motivate in particular younger voters, Axelrod said.
But Harris faces the daunting task of launching a campaign and building one at the same time. “Which is hard, but it can be done,” Axelrod said.
In the central city of Deir al-Balah in the Gaza Strip, Palestinians coping with more than nine months of the devastating Israel-Hamas war say they feel indifferent about Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential election.
“We feel the United States is a partner in the assault on Gaza,” Hassan Shaqalieh told The Associated Press. “The news that matters the most to us is the end of the war.”
Biden in May presented a deal that aims to end the war in Gaza and return the Israeli hostages the Palestinian group Hamas kidnapped in their surprise attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, but Washington is Israel’s biggest political and military ally.
Hamza Fayyad who was displaced from the southern city of Khan Younis, says there has been no trust in Washington for the Palestinian people’s aspiration to a state and end to Israel’s occupation in the Palestinian territories.
“Someone bad leaves, only for someone worse to come in,” he said.
China’s foreign ministry on Monday said it had no comment on Biden’s exit from the presidential race, citing that “the presidential elections are the U.S.′ own affairs.”
The official Xinhua news agency, however, opined that it “once again exposed the ugly reality of U.S. politics.”
“Biden’s withdrawal once again expose the chaos and the essence of U.S. politics where partisan interests rule supreme and money drives elections,” Xinhua said in an editorial.
The second-term Democratic governor from one of the most-contested presidential states said in a news release Monday, “Today, I am fired up to endorse Kamala Harris for President of the United States.”
Whitmer continued, “In Vice President Harris, Michigan voters have a presidential candidate they can can count on to focus on lowering their costs, restoring their freedoms, bringing jobs and supply chains back from overseas, and building an economy that works for working people.”
Whitmer had been mentioned as a potential Democratic presidential prospect.
“So Michigan, let’s go to work,” Whitmer said. “We cannot let Donald Trump anywhere near the White House. Let’s go!”
The director of the Secret Service says the assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump was the agency’s “most significant operational failure” in decades.
Director Kimberly Cheatle told lawmakers Monday during a congressional hearing: “On July 13, we failed.” Cheatle says she takes full responsibility for the agency’s missteps related to the attack at Trump’s Pennsylvania rally earlier this month.
Additional endorsements Monday, including Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, left a dwindling list of potential rivals to Vice President Kamala Harris as she moves to lock up Democratic delegates behind her campaign for the White House.
Winning the nomination is only the first item on a staggering political to-do list for her after Biden’s decision to exit the race, which she learned about on a Sunday morning call with the president. If she’s successful at locking up the nomination, she must also pick a running mate and pivot a massive political operation to boost her candidacy instead of Biden’s with just over 100 days until Election Day.
The Secret Service director is set to testify Monday before a congressional committee as calls mount for her to resign over security failures at a rally where a 20-year-old gunman attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump.
The House Oversight Committee hearing will be Director Kimberly Cheatle’s first appearance before lawmakers since the July 13 Pennsylvania rally shooting that left one spectator dead.
Lawmakers have been expressing anger over how the gunman could get so close to the Republican presidential nominee when he was supposed to be carefully guarded.
As President Joe Biden was deciding to withdraw from the race Sunday morning, Vice President Kamala Harris had multiple phone conversations with him, according to a person familiar who spoke only on background to more freely divulge details.
Harris was at the vice president’s residence at the Naval Observatory in Washington. She was surrounded by family and staff and wore a hooded Howard University sweatshirt, workout sweats and sneakers, the person said.
She spent 10-plus hours Sunday placing calls to more than 100 party leaders, members of Congress, governors, labor leaders, and leaders of advocacy and civil rights organizations. Harris told all that she was grateful Biden endorsed her upon leaving the race but she planned to earn the Democratic presidential nomination in her own right.
The vice president also called her pastor, Amos Brown III, who, along with his wife, prayed over her.
Harris arranged lunch and dinner for assembled aides. They ate afternoon sandwiches and salad and pizza in the evening. Harris’ pizza had anchovies, which the person said is her go-to topping.
- Will Weissert
“The vice president is smart and strong, which will make her a good president,” Beshear said during a Monday morning appearance on MSNBC. “But she’s also kind and has empathy, which can make her a great president.”
Beshear praised Harris’ resume as a former prosecutor and says she’s ready to assume the presidency. He says he’s willing to do everything he can to support her.
Asked if he’s open to potentially joining the ticket, Beshear said he loves his job as governor. “The only way I would consider something other than this current job is if I believed I could further help my people and to help this country,” he said.
Beshear defeated Trump-endorsed Republicans to win the governorship in 2019 and to win reelection last year in his Republican-leaning state.
Speaking on Monday to CBS, the West Virginia Democrat-turned-independent said “I don’t need that in my life.”
Manchin had been the latest senator to call for Biden to exit the 2024 race before Sunday’s announcement by Biden that he would do just that.
Manchin had already mulled a late-breaking 2024 White House bid of his own but said in February after a listening tour that he didn’t want to be a “spoiler.” As a Democrat, he had often bucked his own party’s leadership.
Luxembourg Foreign Minister Xavier Bettel praised President Joe Biden for his announcement that he’s ending his bid for reelection.
“It takes courage for a politician to say ‘I’m a bit old and I’m not capable of doing it anymore,’” Bettel said, describing it as a “courageous and difficult decision” by Biden.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat from New York, endorsed Harris and called her “an unwavering champion for families, workers and justice.”
Gillibrand, who ran against Harris in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, said in a statement Monday that the vice president is “incredibly well-qualified, with experience as a prosecutor, as a lawmaker, and as a leader on the world stage.”
“Now is the time to unite,” the senator said. “VP Harris has the grit and toughness to beat Donald Trump and I’m eager to join her in this fight.”
ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising platform, announced that it had collected $46.7 million as of 9 p.m. ET from small-dollar donations for Vice President Harris’ campaign.
The Biden campaign and affiliated groups previously had about $96 million in cash on hand. The Republican National Convention, by contrast, reported a campaign fund of $102 million in June.
Donald Trump’s campaign has spent the last year and a half viciously attacking Joe Biden, ridiculing his policies, mocking his fumbles and relishing a rematch they felt they were winning.
But it has also spent weeks preparing for the possibility that he might exit the race, readying a bevy of attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris that it unleashed as soon as Biden made his stunning announcement Sunday that he would step aside.
Biden soon after endorsed Harris, who was quickly winning support from Democrats to be the party’s nominee.
The shakeup less than four months before Election Day lays out new challenges for Trump’s team, which had until recently been focused on contrasting the former president’s vigor and mental acuity with Biden’s.
Read more about the Trump campaign’s pivot toward Harris.
The Democratic delegations of multiple states have decided to back Vice President Kamala Harris for the party nomination at next month’s national convention.
“Tonight, all 168 delegates of the North Carolina Democratic Party made history,” North Carolina party chair Anderson Clayton said in a post on the social platform X.
In South Carolina, party chair Christale Spain said in an email statement Sunday night that that state’s delegation met virtually. The vice president “has been fully vetted, and she has earned our unwavering support,” Spain said.
Harris received her first delegates earlier in the day from Tennessee, when the state party posted on X that its delegation voted during a meeting to back her.
Another state where the switch was made was New Hampshire, where the 25 pledged delegates voted unanimously Sunday night to endorse Harris.
The nation’s six Black state attorneys general threw their support behind Vice President Harris. In a statement on X, they laid out her qualifications and said she “has staunchly defended our right to choose and preserved our most sacred right to vote. There is no one more qualified to lead and continue to uphold the values of our great nation.”
The statement listed Letitia James, New York; Kwame Raoul, Illinois; Anthony Brown, Maryland; Andrea Campbell, Massachusetts; Keith Ellison, Minnesota; and Aaron Ford, Nevada.
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