The Journal. - Biden Taps Out. Harris Taps In.

Episode Date: July 22, 2024

On Sunday, President Joe Biden ended his bid for re-election and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. Annie Linskey reports on Biden’s big decision and what lies ahead for Harris and the Democratic Party.  Further Listening: - Takeaways from the RNC: Trump Is in Control  - Will Biden Stay in the Race?  Further Reading: - How the Bet on an 81-Year-Old Joe Biden Turned Into an Epic Miscalculation  - Biden Drops Out of Presidential Race, Endorses Harris  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Sunday, at 1.46 p.m., President Joe Biden tweeted some big news. President Joe Biden has just announced that he is dropping out of the 2024 presidential race. It's a historical moment. Joe Biden is not going to be the Democratic presidential nominee. He's out of the race. Shortly after, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to be the Democratic presidential nominee in his stead. And today, Harris spoke publicly about the news at a White House event. Harris spoke publicly about the news at a White House event. I wanted to say a few words about our president. Joe Biden's legacy of accomplishment over the past three years is unmatched in modern history.

In one term, he has already, yes, you may clap. Now, with about 100 days until the presidential election, the race has taken a major turn. Can you describe for us the moment the Democrats are in right now? There is a strong urgency to act and figure out their next step as quickly as possible. That's our colleague Annie Linsky. I mean, look, Democrats have been, you know, starting in January, they thought that this ticket and this election was set. It was going to be Biden-Trump, Biden-Trump, the longest general election period in history.

And now it's going to be somebody else versus Trump, really the shortest general election period in sort of recent history. So it's a complete change. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Kate Linebaugh. It's Monday, July 22nd. Coming up on the show, the Democratic Party's scramble after Biden drops out. If only life had a remote control, you could pause or rewind. Well, life doesn't always give you time to change the outcome, but prediabetes does. Take the one-minute risk test today at doihaveprediabetes.org.

Brought to you by the Ad Council and its prediabetes awareness partners. At the end of last week, Joe Biden was sick with COVID and isolating in Delaware. Amid concerns about his cognitive abilities, he was under mounting pressure from within his own party to drop out of the presidential race. California Congressman and Senate candidate Adam Schiff says he believes it is time for Biden to pass the torch. New York Congressman Pat Ryan is now the eighth House Democrat to publicly call for Biden to pass the torch. New York Congressman Pat Ryan is now the eighth House Democrat to publicly call for Biden to step aside. Incumbent Senator Sherry Brown calls for President Joe Biden to exit the race for the White House. More than 30 members of Congress have openly called for Biden to drop out. But despite these calls, he and his campaign were strongly resisting.

calls, he and his campaign were strongly resisting. So as Biden is sick in his beach house in Rehoboth, recovering from COVID, he's also taking meetings from some of his closest advisors. And the president has had a very insular team all along. But, you know, over the last few weeks, that team has even become more insular. And over the weekend, he was just meeting with really the two kind of final aides that are quite close to him, Mike Donilon and Steve Reschetti. And he met with those two and then made a decision over the weekend. On Sunday morning, he privately told Vice President Kamala Harris, his chief of staff, and his campaign chair.

Vice President Kamala Harris, his chief of staff, and his campaign chair. What was really amazing about it is, you know, he put together this letter on Saturday, and then it was sent out just maybe a minute after he told his sort of broader team that he was going to be dropping out of the race. So this was a decision that was made and then was very, very closely held until really kind of the very end. So he tweets out this letter. Do you have the letter with you? Well, I don't. I mean, I can pull it up. The first paragraph is all his accomplishments and you want to get to the news.

So I was very eagerly scanning want to get to the news. So I was very eagerly scanning it to see what the news was. The news really comes in the fourth paragraph. 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 in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as president for the remainder of my term. Does he say why he's pulling out? No.

Do you read anything into that? I mean, there were so many factors at play in this decision, and some I think that we aren't actually going to know the truth of for months, if not years. The number of people who really do know the truth, they're very close to the president, and I're, you know, I'm eager to know. I'm eager to know what the real answer is. Do you have a sense of what factors may have contributed to this decision? You know, we do know from talking to some of his top aides that there were three things that the president and his team were looking at. One was money.

The money was drying up, and that was a very negative sign. Not impossible to overcome, but that was a bad sign. Then the second thing was polling. You know, how's the president doing in public polls? And that was also looking very bad. And the other, which is somewhat related to polling,

is the map. And the map was expanding. It was becoming clear that the president would, if he stayed in the race, was going to have to be fighting for not just, you know, six or seven states, but there were sort of three more states coming online as potential swing states. So the combination of those three things is what was creating this picture that showed his path to victory was just becoming exceedingly hard. what was creating this picture that showed his path to victory was just becoming exceedingly hard.

You've been reporting on questions about Biden's cognitive decline since even before the debate. Yeah. Reflecting on that reporting now, was this the outcome you were expecting? I mean, you know, getting anybody to talk about their discomfort with the president's age prior to the debate was exceedingly difficult, whether they were Democrats or Republicans. I mean, people from either party who really met with the president and had any kind of relationship with him did not want to talk about this. So the stories that we did, which went well beyond the kind of observational things of what you could see of his public events, those stories were hard to do. You know, I think I had, at least by the time he got to the debate, come to the belief that, look, this is the horse that the Democratic Party is riding, and this is where they're going to end up. Biden's campaign

had pushed back aggressively, saying he continued to carry out a robust schedule and handle presidential duties. I've seen him in public in ways that most Americans don't get to see a president. There was a time last year, I believe, where I sort of ended up accidentally being separated from all the press. And as the president was going to Marine One, and I literally ran into him in the Rose Garden. And I wasn't supposed to be there and he wasn't technically supposed to be there. But this is what happens in the White House. Sometimes you just run into the president of the United States. And I just remember in that interaction, he just looked so frail and so sort of confused. And in my mind, that was,

I think, at least for me, the first time where I thought, I don't see how this sort of life would be sustainable for another, you know, at that point, four and a half to five years. You know, at that point, four and a half to five years. Less than half an hour after Biden said he was leaving the race, he endorsed Kamala Harris as the party's nominee. Were you surprised that he endorsed Harris? No, I wasn't. I wasn't surprised. I was surprised that the endorsement was not in the letter.

I think maybe he sees this letter as a very historic document and maybe did not want to include politics. The endorsement came out right afterward. Look, the president, he clearly selected Harris for a reason. You know, they do have a close relationship. very stung when Obama pushed him aside in 2016 and didn't endorse him, the sitting vice president, in a presidential run that Biden had been considering in 2015, 2016. I think he wanted to sort of model a different way for a president to behave towards their vice president. So I think that was all sort of in his mind. And look, there had been jockeying going on over the past few days about Harris,

about, you know, with party officials taking a deep look at the party and trying to understand what it would look like if there was a truly, truly open process. And the party insiders that I talked to said, look, they felt it would be such a mess and a bitter, bitter fight and something that they wouldn't want to have going with just, you know, about 100 days left until the election. Coming up, Harris's campaign for president. for president. Ad Council and its pre-diabetes awareness partners. After Biden's endorsement, Kamala Harris jumped in and said she was ready to be the party's nominee. She wrote on social media, quote, I am honored to have the president's endorsement,

and my intention is to earn and win this nomination. She just started moving into campaign mode. And then her fundraising numbers were astronomical yesterday. I mean, the Democratic Party, her campaign brought in $50 million in a few hours. I mean, that is a staggering amount of money to bring in in just a few hours. So it did show that there is grassroots support for her. And it makes her more formidable because it would be more difficult for another potential nominee to take that. That money goes to the campaign that her name is on. Many prominent Democrats have come out toala Harris. Speaker of Merida, Nancy Pelosi, a congresswoman, has endorsed Kamala Harris. Right now, Democrats and Democratic leaders are largely in one place over backing Harris,

but it's not uniform. I mean, there have been some big leaders who haven't yet come out and haven't yet decided to back her. This kind of overwhelming support can make it harder for a challenger to emerge before the Democratic National Convention, which begins in four weeks.

There was a look by party officials over whether or not this would be the right way to go. And while Harris remains just a candidate for president at this time, I think it is fair to say that big elements of the party are coalescing around her. And the sort of toughest competition, the people who would put up the sort of toughest fight against her have been endorsing her. So I think that is also a sign that the party is getting behind her. Well, the other thing that Harris will need is a running mate. What do we know about how her campaign is thinking about that?

Yes, this is a great question. So there's been a lot of discussion about who that may be. She's a Black woman, and so the idea among many in the party, the conventional wisdom, is that she's going to pick a white man. And when you look around the country about who that may be, there are a few names that stand out. One is Roy Cooper of North Carolina. He's the governor there. He's been very close with Harris. He's done several events with her actually even quite recently within the last few days. But there are a lot of other names. Mark Kelly, the senator from Arizona, is one who's getting a close look.

He, again, is a senator who just won a statewide election in Arizona, another swing state that looked like it was probably going to be out of reach for Biden, but could be on the table with a perhaps Harris-Kelly ticket. He's an astronaut, so he's got a very interesting biography. Of course, his wife, Gabby Gifford, survived an assassination attempt when she was a member of Congress. How has the Trump campaign and the Republicans responded to this moment? Well, the campaign, Trump's sort of their official line is that look they always thought that this could happen they'd been planning for this as a possibility but it i think it's i think there's

a lot of unknowns i mean harris doesn't really have an independent identity outside of biden nationally and i say that because when you've looked at national polling over the last three years their numbers have mostly matched almost completely. You know, and I've talked to some of their pollsters about this, and they said, look, Harris is just seen as part of the Biden package. And so as she introduces herself to the nation, that could really change. Some of the Republicans I've been texting with have been relieved. They think that she'd be easy to beat. You know, Trump has beaten a female candidate before with Hillary Clinton. And they see, you know, maybe you could do a similar playbook that would be successful. But, you know, some of the Republicans I've been texting with have had a different view

that, look, she is going to energize the party in a way that it wasn't under Biden. that, look, she is going to energize the party in a way that it wasn't under Biden. She's more likely to bring in some of the, you know, parts of the Democratic coalition that Republicans were peeling away. So I think it's kind of, you know, this is the fun of politics. This is one of those questions that, like, conventional wisdom hasn't really settled around yet. OK, so this is not the election that we thought we were going to have a few months ago. No.

How will history view this moment? I think it's too early to know how history will view it. I think the sort of controlling factor is going to be what happens in November. Let's say Trump wins in a landslide. Then it's going to kind of look like, OK, you know, did it really matter at all? If it's a really close race and Democrats are able to do well in down-ballot races, then I think that it begins to look like it was a very smart move by Democrats,

because the problem with Biden was not only that he was going to lose, most likely, but he was really dragging down ballot races as well. And, you know, if she wins, then Joe Biden's legacy will look much different. It will look like he stepped aside to let the first Black woman become president of the United States. And I think knowing Biden, he really loves and cherishes these ideas of historic firsts. And I think then he will be viewed, at least by Democrats, as sacrificing himself for a larger good.

That's all for today, Monday, July 22nd. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. If you like our show, follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We're out every weekday afternoon. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.