The Daily - Joe Biden Drops Out

Episode Date: July 22, 2024

President Biden has dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, as his replacement.Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, discusses how the race for the White House has suddenly been turned upside down.Guest: Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: Mr. Biden dropped out of the presidential race, scrambling the campaign for the White House.Inside the weekend when he decided to withdraw.How will Democrats replace Mr. Biden at the top of the presidential ticket?For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Good day. We are coming on the air with significant breaking news. In a political earthquake. President Joe Biden has just announced that he is dropping out of the 2024 presidential race. Joe Biden has ended his campaign for president and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, as his replacement. Just moments ago, the president tweeted out,

It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your president. And while it has been my intention to seek re-election, I believe it is 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. on fulfilling my duties as president for the remainder of my term. Today, Peter Baker on how the race for the White House has suddenly been turned upside down. It's Monday,.m. Sunday night. We are all still catching our breaths and processing this news. But you bring a special set of credentials to this moment. You're not just

the chief White House correspondent for The Times. You're a historian of the presidency and of American politics. And so in that context, I very much want to understand your reaction to what happened a little before 2 p.m. this afternoon. Yeah, Michael, there's literally no historical precedent for this. Nothing. Nothing comes close. And I say that because no sitting president has dropped out of a race so late in the election cycle in American history. I mean, it just doesn't happen. And the closest you can come to this is Lyndon Johnson, who dropped out in 1968. It was a surprise like this in a way, but it was in March of that year when they were still having

primaries. They hadn't yet gotten to this point where the primaries were over and about to have a convention. And four months in an election year, that's a political lifetime. So this is very new and very much uncharted territory. Right. And I don't know where you were when you heard the news, but I was at a restaurant. The people around me, when they learned it, gasped out loud, clutched their phones, were deeply surprised, and it clearly rocked them. clutched their phones, were deeply surprised, and it clearly rocked them. Oh, yeah. When we first saw the online message, the first reaction that we had was,

is this real or is this a fake? We didn't hit the done button until we confirmed with two White House officials that it was for real because, you know, we didn't expect if he was going to do it, it would be just like that on an online posting. But he decided that was the best way to go. And he's got COVID, so he couldn't do it, apparently, in front of a camera without being raspy and coughing and so forth. But it was a shock to everybody. Well, there are so many dimensions of this that I want to cover with you, including the way in which he made this announcement, his subsequent endorsement, whether or not this actually settles the question of his replacement, how this is going to play out at a convention that's going to occur in just a few weeks. But first, I want to understand how exactly Biden came to this decision. Because, Peter, we left our listeners on Friday with the understanding

that party leaders were waging a campaign to drive Biden out of the race, but you, along with some of our colleagues, had found that it was infuriating Biden, this effort to oust him by senior leaders, and it was making him want to dig in further. What happened in what seems like a very short window of time where he was choosing between, you know, bucking his party and swallowing a lot of pride and deciding to walk away? Right. And he's been isolated in Rehoboth Beach, his vacation house, since Wednesday night. He's been coughing and unhappy, obviously, as anybody would be when they're sick, but also bristling, like you said, against the people who he thought were his friends and allies in a way,

people like Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, who he perceived to be, as he saw it anyway, running a kind of semi-surreptitious campaign to drive him out. And it was very hurtful, I think, as he saw it. He was very upset about it. He was mad about it. And in fact, you know, just last night I was talking with one of his closest people who said that he thought maybe he was actually starting to dig in more. He was in fact going to resist all the pressure, even though it seemed like he was moving toward this kind of a conclusion. And then the last 24 hours, it's been apparently a really dramatic period. Saturday morning, there was a call with the national co-chairs of the campaign, and the co-chairs were expecting there to be some news. They thought that they would finally get a sense of where things were

going and what was about to happen. And instead, they get this sort of routine report about the door knocking and the social media and all this and that that the campaign is doing. And half an hour in, a couple of them finally say, well, wait a second. We got to talk about the elephant in the room here. And it led to just a frustrated and inconclusive call. Meanwhile, as we're told now, at Rehoboth, the president was sitting down with whatever family is there, as well as three aides, and talking about maybe he should, in fact, call it quits. And they called Mike Donilon, really his longest probably serving advisor in the White House right now, and they said, you got to get to Rehoboth. And so he rushes to Rehoboth. And they start drafting the statement. President's sick.

He doesn't want to announce it on camera if he sounds bad. And so together they craft this letter. And this letter defends his presidency, talks about all the things they've accomplished, the things he's proud of, and then gets to the real punchline, which is that he's not going to stand for re-election after all. Now, the president at that point hasn't told anybody this

other than the people in that room. And they keep it secret. And only on Sunday morning, after he slept on it, he finalizes the decision. So he calls three people. He calls Kamala Harris, of course. He calls Jeff Zients, who is his White House chief of staff. And he calls Jan O'Malley Dillon, his campaign chair. So it's really very tightly held. And finally, they arrange a Zoom call for the really senior most people in the White House and in the campaign. That's when the president tells them, I'm giving up. I'm backing out. I'm stepping aside. It's going to be up for Kamala Harris to take the party forward. And he tells them this at 1.45 p.m. on Sunday. At 1.46 p.m. on Sunday, the letter is posted online.

So a one-minute warning. A one-minute warning. They were not brought in until literally one minute before the button was pushed. That's how much they wanted to ensure that he made this announcement on his own terms. And as you've hinted at, he not only wants to drop out on his own terms, he wants to anoint his replacement. Exactly right. So he says nothing in the letter about what should happen next. He wants that to be a statement about his presidency. But within a half hour, he puts up another social media post in which he says he's endorsing Kamala Harris, his vice president, to be the new nominee. And that was a big deal because with his endorsement, that's the imprimatur that she needs to go forward to try to secure a nomination in this extraordinarily intense and truncated period we're looking at right now. in this extraordinarily intense and truncated period we're looking at right now.

Well, Pete, I want to talk about this because it was not a foregone conclusion that Biden was going to endorse Kamala Harris. In fact, we understood from our colleagues here at The Times that one of the reasons, one of the reasons, that Biden seemed to be reluctant to leave this race for so long, even after the debate, was that he was not fully confident that Harris would necessarily win if she stood in his place. So what do we know about why he embraced her like this so quickly, so forcefully, rather than leave this decision to the Democratic Party and its delegates? Well, you're right about that. He did have doubts about her ability to take forward

this contest, and he had to be convinced. He had to be convinced of three things. One, this contest. And he had to be convinced. He had to be convinced of three things. One, that he couldn't win, right? Or that it would be very hard for him to win. Secondly, that she could. And thirdly, that there could be a clean transition, right? He did not want a huge mess. And that's why he would endorse her in order to clear the field. And ultimately, some of the polls coming back in the last few days have been dreadful for him. But there have been some that have shown that she actually does at least as well as he does against Trump. And in some cases, even a couple points better. And that's before she ever has a chance to introduce herself in a way as the titular head of the Democratic Party, right? So that gave him, I think, at least some confidence that there was a chance, a good chance maybe, that she can win. So, so far, it appears that party leaders are deferring to Biden's judgment

and deferring to Kamala Harris, right? Yeah, a lot of them quickly endorsed her. Most importantly, the Congressional Black Caucus, a number of other Democrats, including Bill and Hillary Clinton. And you also see nobody else rising to challenge her either. Governor Gavin Newsom of California has previously said he wouldn't challenge her if she were in the race. And Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, the other person a lot of people are looking at, an ally of hers said on TV today, no, she has said she's not going to be a candidate this year. And so if they're not running, then we haven't seen anybody else yet jump into the race. Somebody could, but those would probably be the two strongest

candidates if you were to rank the field. I mean, this may be academic, given what you've just said. I mean, there's no primary battle if no one decides to run against Kamala Harris. But it felt notable to me, Peter, that a few of the party's most prominent figures, including those involved in trying to get Biden out of the race, and here I'm thinking about Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama and Hakeem Jeffries, did not endorse Kamala Harris and instead seemed to leave open the possibility that what they really want is a competition for this job. And I wonder what you make of that, and is it important or does it not matter at all at this point? No, I think it's important. And in fact, Nancy Pelosi had said to her fellow members of the California delegation just a few days back

that she thought there should be an open contest, right? So that is in the air. And people noticed immediately, of course, that she didn't endorse Harris. And as you say, Obama didn't and Jeffries didn't. Now, it doesn't really matter if nobody else is going to come forward. And that's the real question. And I think we should know that within 24 hours. I mean, at this point, if you're going to run, you don't have time to dawdle. You have to get out there because it's really just a few days

before this all hits the head. In fact, remember, the Democrats aren't even waiting for the convention to formalize their nominee. They had decided to have a virtual roll call in advance by August 7th. And that means if you're going to try to get this done in that time, there's very, very, very little window here, very small window for anybody else to jump in. Peter, let's proceed down the path of Kamala

Harris as heir apparent. What are the logistics of her becoming the nominee and inheriting or recreating, if necessary, the apparatus of President Biden's reelection campaign and his financial war chest? Right. Well, first of all, she has to be ratified by the roughly 4,000 delegates to the Democratic Convention who are allowed to vote on a first ballot. Now, that could be a jump ball. But remember, those 4,000 delegates are almost all Biden delegates. jump ball, but remember those 4,000 delegates are almost all Biden delegates. That means they're already sort of bought into the Biden-Harris ticket, and they're presumably less likely than Democrats generally to be open to other candidates. We don't know that for sure, but that's a guess,

given that they're pledged to the president. But she can't take anything for granted, because we've never seen this in modern times. Then once that happens, once she becomes the nominee, obviously, she has access to the apparatus of the reelection campaign. Because remember, her name is on the organization documents and all of that too. It's the Biden-Harris campaign. So she has a legal claim to the apparatus, to the war chest, and so on and so forth. And it looks like the Biden people are telling friends and allies and staff that they're planning to be her team now as well. I just want to pause and reflect on the fact that we're talking about a set of logistics that were

inconceivable just even a few hours ago, and now we're in the thick of them. And one of them is who is going to be the number two on a theoretical Harris ticket because she has been the number two on this ticket until today. How do we think Kamala Harris is going to be thinking about that decision? And when does that decision come? Traditionally, you don't pick a running mate until pretty much the convention. Perhaps though she thinks she needs to pick a number two right now in order to seem like a strong nominee? Yeah, that's a really good question. We're jumping ahead from who's going to be number one to who's going to be number two, because there's really no time not to, right? And the party is focused on this, and she's focused on this. And because she has been the loyal number

two to President Biden all this time, she hasn't been able to do anything to prepare, right? There's been no official vetting going on. There's been no official meetings held. There's been no official interviews conducted. So she has very little time to start thinking about this at the same time she's consolidating support for herself. But there is a lot of thinking about this. The idea is that she would have to balance out the ticket with somebody who would, you know, make up for any weaknesses she has. There is a concern by a lot of Democrats about how she will play in some of these Midwestern states like Michigan and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that are so key to the election,

where the white working middle class may or may not be as excited about the first woman of color to head a national ticket. So can you find somebody who would appeal to those voters, you know, a governor from that area or something like that? Right. And those are states, and we've learned this very keenly at the RNC, where Trump's selection of a vice presidential nominee, J.D. Vance, is seen as immensely strategic and looking like a very wise choice when it comes to Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Absolutely. Presumably, they're going to park J.D. Vance in Pennsylvania for the next 100 days and really just have him play on the neighboring state solidarity kind of thing, and he can appeal

to some of these very voters we're talking about. So does that mean she picks, for instance, a Josh Shapiro, who's the governor of Pennsylvania right now? Does it mean she picks somebody like Governor Roy Cooper, governor of North Carolina, or Governor Annie Beshear of Kentucky, who maybe not from the most important states, but are seen as moderates and maybe more acceptable to some of the voters in these other battleground states? So those are the calculations you're going to see, I think, going forward. And she's not the only one now who has to pivot, of course. going forward. And she's not the only one now who has to pivot, of course.

The Republicans who had been running against Joe Biden and even kind of looking forward to it since the debate are now having to pivot to go after her. But they're champing at the bit to do it and to use this moment to keep going after Biden. And they want to wrap Biden around her neck and make his weaknesses her weaknesses. We'll be right back. Peter, tell us about how Republicans, especially former President Trump, are responding to this news that Biden is out endorsing Kamala Harris and how they're thinking about it strategically, given how little time there is. And as you said just before the break, the reality that they had wanted Biden to remain in the race. He was the devil they knew and he was weak. Yeah, exactly. And they've taken a

few approaches to this already. The first thing they're arguing is that Democrats have just invalidated the will of 14 million Democratic primary voters who voted for Biden to be their nominee. Now, it's hard to think that Republicans are really that concerned about the Democratic primary voters, but it's their way of sort of trying to drive a wedge in there and get Democrats upset who might be unhappy that Biden is dropping out. And the second claim they're making is that if Biden can't be the nominee, then he shouldn't be president. If he can't run, then he shouldn't govern. That's their argument.

Therefore, they're saying he should immediately resign. And you saw that from pretty high up Republicans, including Speaker Mike Johnson and Elise Stefanik, who's in the leadership. And it's a way of stirring the pot. And it's a way of making the argument that Democrats have a weak leader and that they're a party in disarray. In a sense, they're trying to impugn the entire Democratic brand by saying that the Democratic president shouldn't be president. And I suppose they're hoping that just trickles down and mars Kamala Harris. Right. And one reason they're doing it is because, in fact, Democrats, according to polls,

are doing pretty well this election year. It was really Biden who was having trouble. You know, a lot of these Senate Democrats who were in tough states were running many points ahead of Biden because his issue with the voters is really personal. It's not about his policies so much. It's not about his performance so much. It's about his capacity. They think he's too old. They think he would be especially too old in a second term. Well, Kamala Harris is 59. She's not going to be having that same issue. So trying to impugn her with Biden is trying to still have the advantages that the Republicans thought they had with Biden, but with another candidate. And of course, 59 is 20 years

or so younger than Trump. So does the age thing not only go away, but perhaps start to become a problem for Trump? Yeah, actually, this is one of the rare instances where a change in Canada allows a party to turn the argument that worked against them around on the other party, right? She's going to totally take that generational fight to Trump now because she's going to say he's the one who's too old. He's the one who has cognitive problems.

He's the one who keeps mixing up names and mixing up dates and mixing up things like that and that we should not allow him to be in office for another four years because he's not up to the job. Help me understand what the plan is to attack Harris herself. Clearly, they want to link her to Biden given the concerns about him, but what do we understand to be their strategy for critiquing Harris? Right. When they go after her, they try to paint her as a radical left-winger, right? That she's somehow much more on the fringe than Joe Biden is. And you saw Donald Trump Jr., the president's oldest son, write on True Social.

He said, quote, quote, Kamala Harris owns the entire left-wing policy record of Joe Biden. The only difference is that she's even more liberal and less competent than Joe, which is really saying something. So the strategy isn't just to attach Kamala Harris to Biden as a weak leader and hope that that kind of transfers from him to her, but in addition to suggest that she is a left-wing radical. I think that's exactly right. But in fact, the argument is kind of a tricky one because she is not seen, at least by Democrats, as being especially liberal. She was a prosecutor in California.

In fact, some of the liberals when she ran for president in 2020 didn't like her because she was too moderate in their view, too tough on crime, for instance. So they're trying to paint her as a radical. And I think, you know, some Democrats would argue that's a function partly of stereotypes, but she'll have to contend with that and make out to the public what she really thinks her philosophy is and define herself for who Kamala Harris is, not Joe Biden. I mean, there are so many questions that will now define this race if

Kamala Harris is the nominee. And just to hint at some of them, what does it mean to have a woman of color running against Trump, given his history of sometimes openly racist comments? What does it mean to have a former prosecutor taking on a convicted felon? Is it going to feel like Harris is, as we've talked about, far too attached to Biden to represent anything approaching a clean break in this race? And will the same issues that dogged her as vice president, which is that she would never quite seem to find her footing and her place in this administration, become the story of her campaign? Or is there just a very real possibility that in a short time period,

she catches fire because so many voters have been desperate for any alternative to both Biden and Trump? And I know that's a lot of questions to throw at you, but I think those are the questions that are going to define the next few weeks. Michael, you'd be a great White House reporter. This is exactly the way we ask the questions of the president. Let me give you the five questions I got for you, sir. But you're right. I mean, there's all the right questions, right? And the truth is we don't know the answer because we are in an area we haven't been before. And it's going to be a remarkable three and a half months to find out what the answers are. I think there's a decent chance that she does offer voters a fresh face because they are so sick of both these candidates,

Biden and Trump. The polls have made very clear that voters wanted nothing to do with either of them, frankly, even members of their own party. Finally, you have what they say they want, which is a fresh face from a new generation. Now, that doesn't mean she can turn it into support necessarily.

She's gonna have to convince the public that she's up for the job and that they really will get something that they want from her. I think you're right to say that she has struggled in the past with her own campaigns. Her own campaign for president in 2020 died on the vine. She didn't even make it to the first vote. But she has some opportunities here, and she can reintroduce herself to the public, and we'll see how she does does. And one last thing is you mentioned the part about a former prosecutor taking on a convicted felon. That could be really interesting. She sees herself more than anything as a prosecutor. That's her self-image. Her self-image is a prosecutor. And to watch the two of them on stage, assuming

he agrees to still do a debate with her, could be really interesting to watch. Right. We are rightfully, I think, focused on what the future of this race looks like now that Biden is out. And it looks like it's going to possibly be Harris versus Trump. But Peter, to end, I want to talk about Biden's place in history, given what he just did a few hours ago. He, from all you have written, dreaded this moment. He didn't want to be a one-term president. He believes his presidency was a success because of the list

of bipartisan legislation that he passed on everything from infrastructure to climate, which were historic pieces of legislation. And clearly he believes that all the external signs of his aging don't match the reality of his competence. But the rest of the party just doesn't agree with him, and the polls don't seem to agree with him either. I just want to sit for a minute with the idea of how this decision fits into the larger question of how we're going to be thinking about Joe Biden in four years, eight years, 12 years, 50 years. in four years, eight years, 12 years, 50 years? I think that's a great question because in fact, that was at the heart of the conversation

over the last three weeks. Not just could he win, but how would history remember him? For him, this is an excruciating decision. It fought against every instinct he has. Remember, he's been in politics for a half century. And every time somebody said, no, Joe, you can't do that,

he often did it anyway and often succeeded. In his mind, anyway, his self-image is somebody who overcame all the doubters and the skeptics and the people who didn't believe in him, the people who denigrated him. And to give into that pressure was, you know, I think searing for him. But part of the argument is you will be remembered kindly by history for putting country ahead of yourself. And that's why you saw these Democrats racing out today to lionize him over this decision, including former President Obama and former Speaker Pelosi and all these others saying that he will be remembered for his, you know, grace and courage and self-sacrifice. Obviously, that's to soften the blow. But also, I think maybe they believe it.

And I think that that's important for Biden's place in history. But the last thing I would say on this is because it happened so late, it still means the result of the election is going to play into how he's remembered in the history books. If Kamala Harris loses, a lot of people will still say that was Biden's fault for waiting so long. If she wins, he will be validated for having made this decision that he's made now to step aside, and he will be remembered more kindly. decision that he's made now to step aside, and he will be remembered more kindly. So this is a problem for presidents, right? History is always waiting, and they're always focused on what it will say, and you can't rewrite it once it's happened.

happened. Well, Peter, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Oh, thank you for having me. On Sunday, my colleagues asked Democratic voters to reflect on Biden's decision, his endorsement of Harris, and what it will mean for the final weeks of the presidential race. So what was your reaction to the news about President Biden today. I was relieved. He's been a great president, but it was time for new leadership in the party. I think he did the most patriotic thing I've seen a president do. He sacrificed his political future for the good of the country. I mean, I'm a little choked up. I cried because I love Joe Biden. I absolutely love Joe Biden. I still can't talk about Joe Biden without feeling like I'm going to cry. And I am really proud. After the debate, it was scary.

I don't think I want that guy in the office, and we need somebody stronger. I think Kamala is going to run, and I think that she's going to run. I hope she's got to go at it. I don't think Kamala has been around long enough. It's really sad and scary to say, but I don't think the middle of the country is going to vote for a female and one who is a minority. Honestly, I don't really think that Harris will do well nationwide. And you're saying that as a black woman?

As a black woman, yeah, I am. America's just not ready for a woman president, especially not a black woman president. We're going to see more people kind of perk up and say, all right, we have another good, strong woman who was a prosecutor, and she's going to run against a criminal. This is going to make a great story. I just hope now that people

will rally behind Kamala and not have a big fight on the floor for the convention coming up. So we need to get it settled and get to the business of beating Trump. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. The director of the Secret Service is now facing bipartisan calls to resign after the agency acknowledged that it repeatedly denied requests for additional resources sought by Donald Trump's security detail. The requests for more security were sought throughout the past two years, but were not specifically for the rally where Trump was shot. Even so, the revelation is fueling criticism of Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheadle, who is scheduled to appear before Congress later today.

Today's episode was produced by Jessica Chung, Shannon Lin, and Sidney Harper, with help from Olivia Nat and Carlos Prieto. It was edited by Devin Taylor, contains original music by Will Reed and Dan Powell And was engineered by Chris Wood Special thanks to Katie Edmondson Zolan Kano-Youngs

Heather Knight Robert Jimison Eric Lee Reed Epstein Alessandro Sassoon And Emily Cochran. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro.

See you tomorrow.