Biden casts exit from 2024 race as bid to preserve democracy in speech to nation

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President Joe Biden said he abandoned his re-election bid to unite his own party in defending the democratic foundations of the United States, during a televised address from the Oval Office on Wednesday evening in which he made a thinly veiled plea to the American people to keep Donald Trump from once again occupying that space.

Mr. Biden said he believed his own record and political vision were worthy of a second term.

But “nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy – that includes personal ambition,” he said in the address, his first extended remarks about his Sunday decision to withdraw from the campaign and endorse Vice-President Kamala Harris to run in his stead.

His decision, Mr. Biden said, was motivated by a desire to see Democrats prevail in a presidential election this fall that he called critical to the future of the country.

“There is a time and a place for long years of experience in public life,” Mr. Biden said. “But there’s also a time and a place for new voices, fresh voices – yes, younger voices. And that time and place is now.”

Mr. Biden sought to defend his own presidential legacy, pointing to legislative advances on climate change and gun control, a decline in the rate of violent crime, and recent progress in slowing the record-setting waves of illegal migration that Republicans have promised to reverse.

He pledged to maintain his agenda in his last six months in the White House, saying he intends to keep working for peace in the Middle East and to call for reform of the U.S. Supreme Court, where the ethical practices of some justices have come under increasing scrutiny.

The President did not name Mr. Trump. But he reprised warnings made repeatedly on the campaign trail that the former president, if he returns to office, will threaten the foundations of a superpower that is nearing 250 years since its establishment.

Mr. Biden cited a warning from the inventor and statesman Benjamin Franklin that the U.S. would remain a republic rather than reverting to a monarchy only “if you can keep it.” He intimated that leaving office was his own attempt to contribute to the health of U.S. democracy, and beseeched voters to do the same.

“Whether we keep our republic is now in your hands,” Mr. Biden said, adding: “The great thing about America is here, kings and dictators do not rule. The people do.”

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The President, 81, only recently returned to the White House after remaining at home for several days with COVID-19, and he spoke with a voice occasionally made rough by hoarseness.

For weeks after a debate last month in which he exhibited moments of verbal incoherence, Mr. Biden, then the oldest man to run for president in U.S. history, insisted he remained perfectly fit for office.

His decision to withdraw on Sunday marked a dramatic acquiescence to the swelling ranks of those in his own party who had questioned whether he still had the capacity to lead the country for another four years.

The American public has welcomed Mr. Biden’s decision – nearly nine in 10 believe it was the right thing to do, according to a poll this week by NPR, PBS and the Marist Institute for Public Opinion – and the Democratic Party rapidly closed ranks around Ms. Harris. No challenger to her candidacy has emerged. The only serious question for Democrats is who Ms. Harris will choose as a running mate.

But Ms. Harris, a former California prosecutor who served only a partial term in the U.S. Senate before becoming Vice-President, remains less well-known than Mr. Trump. The former president has sought to define her as responsible for the inflation and record numbers of illegal immigrants during Mr. Biden’s term. He has promised mass deportations and a return to sunnier economic times.

In a country with an electorate divided along deeply partisan lines, even extraordinary developments have done little to shift voter preferences. Mr. Trump received a slight lift in support after he survived an assassination attempt, polls show. After Mr. Biden’s departure from the race – an act without modern precedent – several surveys suggest electoral deadlock, with Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump at effectively equal levels of support.

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The Democratic Party has worked to clear a path for the Vice-President, saying Wednesday that it will advance a vote to confirm its presidential candidate, which is now expected to begin Aug. 1 through a virtual roll call.

Ms. Harris, 59, has sought to differentiate herself from the septuagenarian Mr. Trump. During a Wednesday campaign appearance, she accused him of “trying to take us backward.”

She has pledged to seek stricter gun laws, more robust protections of voter rights and the restoration of national abortion rights.

“We are not playing around,” she said, speaking in Indianapolis to a cheering crowd of members at the Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc., a predominantly Black group. She acknowledged the work that will need to be done to organize and mobilize voters.

At a North Carolina rally on Wednesday, Mr. Trump offered his first extended response, in which he described his likely opponent as untrustworthy, antisemitic and frightening.

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“Lyin’ Kamala Harris has been the ultraliberal driving force behind every single Biden catastrophe. She is a radical left lunatic who will destroy our country,” he said, before accusing her – contrary to evidence – of supporting infanticide and wanting to ban red meat. He said Ms. Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee through backroom manoeuvres that ignored the millions of Americans who voted for Mr. Biden as their candidate. “So much for democracy,” he said, adding: “She had no votes.”

But the cheers of Mr. Trump’s supporters have, for now at least, found an equal in the newfound enthusiasm among Democrats, one born partly of relief that the party no longer has to wince each time Mr. Biden mangles a sentence.

“Now we all have hope, and that’s what you need in a campaign,” said Chuck Rocha, a Democratic Party strategist who is currently working on more than a dozen congressional races. Candidates do best when they can draw a contrast with their opponents, he said, and he believes Ms. Harris, the mixed-race daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, is well-suited to distinguish herself from Mr. Trump.

The outcome of the November election, he noted, is likely to turn on the preferences of a fraction of voters in six swing states.

“A bunch of them,” he said, “are women who live in the suburbs, who are married to Republicans and who want to see a woman president.”