President Joe Biden‘s decision to exit the 2024 presidential race and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris on Sunday managed to be both shocking and extremely predictable.
For weeks, the president had remained steadfastly committed to facing off against former President Donald Trump in November, despite a dismal performance in the first debate and a shadow campaign from party leaders in the ensuing weeks to oust him from the top of the ticket.
Still, reports had indicated that Biden was slowly coming to terms with what Democratic power players were saying in both private and public: The president was too old for office and must make way for a younger nominee if Democrats wanted to hold on to any chance of victory in November.
Bidenworld aides and veteran Democratic campaign operatives told the Washington Examiner that the president’s eventual decision came as a surprise to the rank-and-file staff.
One Biden official claimed the president’s inner circle, including senior White House adviser Mike Donilon, had suggested in recent days that the shadow pressure campaign to replace Biden had reinvigorated the president’s commitment to staying in the race.
“These are the same people that convinced President Biden not to run in 2016, and we all know how that turned out,” one Biden aide explained.
And while the writing might have been on the wall for Biden’s staff about an eventual withdrawal, reports indicated that aides were caught off guard by the timing, with many staffers learning about Biden’s decision from his posts on social media.
The president’s about-face came after days of tense discussions with his top advisers and members of the Biden family, and even after resigning himself to dropping out, the president was “really pissed off,” a person familiar with those discussions told NBC News.
Biden, who is still quarantining with COVID-19 in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, reportedly summoned top advisers Donilon, Steve Ricchetti, Annie Tomasini, and Anthony Bernal to his home Saturday night, where the group discussed internal polling showing Harris outperforming Biden against Trump.
The president had stated multiple times that polling and urgings from his staff would be one of the determining factors behind a possible withdrawal.
The New York Times reported early Sunday afternoon that Biden held multiple calls with Harris, White House chief of staff Jeff Zients, and his campaign Chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon to inform them of his decision.
The campaign changeup was then relayed to a slightly larger group of staffers before Biden put the news out on X, formerly known as Twitter, for all the world to see.
O’Malley Dillon held an all-staff call with the campaign Sunday evening, where she promised that anyone who wanted to keep their job could and stressed the need to quickly rally behind Harris.
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“There’s no point in crying over spilled milk. The president wouldn’t have picked Vice President Harris to be his running mate if she weren’t capable of performing the duties of office, and this team is ready to do anything and everything necessary to help her beat back Donald Trump and his MAGA allies,” one Harris campaign aide told the Washington Examiner.
