On today’s Front Page from The Free Press, we make sense of Joe Biden’s historic decision to drop out—and a transformed presidential race. Eli Lake and Peter Savodnik assess Kamala Harris’s chances against Donald Trump. We assess who’s up (Elon Musk, Obama) and who’s down (Dr. Jill, Democratic primary voters) in the wake of Biden’s departure. Plus: Katherine Boyle on the first meme election. Suzy Weiss on the emoji heard around the world. Tim Dillon. And more.
President Biden’s departure from the presidential race went from feeling like a distinct possibility to something approaching an inevitability last week. But the stench of death that surrounded his reelection bid going into the weekend did not dull the shock of yesterday’s announcement. “I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down,” wrote Biden in a statement posted on X.
Biden’s decision, made with just 107 days until the election, has tips Democrats into the unknown. Here’s what happened in the frenzied hours after he made it official:
The president endorsed Kamala Harris, and the vice president declared her intention to “earn and win this nomination.”
Bill and Hillary Clinton also endorsed Harris. So did many of those touted as possible alternatives, including California governor Gavin Newsom, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, and transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg.
Big Democratic donors—including Reid Hoffman and George and Alex Soros— immediately came out for Harris. Biden’s decision has also energized small-dollar donors. ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising platform, announced it had raised nearly $50 million as of 9 p.m. EST, making yesterday its biggest fundraising day of the 2024 cycle, though it is not immediately clear how much of that money went to Harris’s presidential bid.
Not everyone in the party is ready for a coronation, however. Barack Obama declined to endorse Harris, instead declaring his “extraordinary confidence that the leaders of our party will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges.” At the time of writing, speaker emerita Nancy Pelosi, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, and Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer have not endorsed Harris.
The DNC committed to a “transparent and orderly” process to select a candidate.
Any yet, except for a few rumors about Joe Manchin considering a run, a serious alternative to Harris is yet to emerge.
And so, for all the unknowns, the spotlight is now on Kamala Harris. And the question Democrats are asking themselves is the exact same one they were asking themselves about Joe Biden until yesterday: Can she beat Donald Trump?
That’s the question that Eli Lake investigates for us today in our lead story. He writes that she’d need to unify her party, gain voters’ trust, prove she didn’t cover up Biden’s health status, show she can compete in Pennsylvania, and overcome her record on the border.
After all that, argues Eli, Harris still has a very steep hill to climb.
After a traumatic 25 days since the presidential debate that tanked Joe Biden’s reelection bid, and with an uncertain path ahead, Democrats surely derived some pleasure from Donald Trump’s reaction to Biden’s announcement. “So, we are forced to spend time and money on fighting Crooked Joe Biden, he polls badly after having a terrible debate, and quits the race. Now we have to start all over again,” griped the former president in a post on Truth Social. “Shouldn’t the Republican Party be reimbursed for fraud?” he asked.
Except, as Peter Savodnik reports, the Republicans have seen this coming. Peter is just back from the RNC, where he saw a party sharpening its attacks against the VP who is poised to jump to the top of the ticket.
On Sunday afternoon—less than two hours after President Joe Biden announced he was bowing out of the race for reelection and also that he was endorsing Kamala Harris in his place—GOP vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance pounced.
“Joe Biden has been the worst President in my lifetime and Kamala Harris has been right there with him every step of the way,” Vance tweeted. “Over the last four years she co-signed Biden’s open border and green scam policies that drove up the cost of housing and groceries. She owns all of these failures, and she lied for nearly four years about Biden’s mental capacity—saddling the nation with a president who can’t do the job.”
For at least a week now, Republicans have been mobilizing for a showdown with the vice president.
That was obvious to anyone who spent last week in Milwaukee at the Republican National Convention, where four in ten speakers attacked Harris by name and Republicans road tested their anti-Harris talking points. (The Washington Post helpfully devoted an entire article to noting who at the convention mispronounced Harris’s first name.)
On Tuesday night, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley addressed the nearly 18,000 delegates, office holders, guests, and journalists packed into the Fiserv Forum. Her presence elicited a mixed reaction, with a small core of Haley supporters cheering her on and a smattering of boos. (Haley had the audacity to challenge Trump in the Republican primaries.)
But when it came to attacking Democrats, there were no dissenting voices. Read on for more from Peter on whether Republicans are ready for Kamala.
Joe Biden’s decision to drop out is unprecedented. It’s also a capstone on a historic nine days. Tevi Troy reviews the extraordinary long week bookended by the Trump shooting and Biden’s exit from the race. (City Journal)
Presidents don’t leave the fight voluntarily. Like LBJ and Nixon before him, Biden only waved the white flag after his friends abandoned him, writes John Harris. (Politico)
There’s a big pot of money earmarked for Joe Biden’s reelection effort. Where does it all go now that he’s not running? Most campaign finance experts say the cash can go to Kamala Harris’s presidential bid as her name is on the ticket. (AP)
Whether or not a Democratic “blitz primary” would be better or worse than anointing Kamala Harris, it would certainly be cringe-inducing. That’s the takeaway from a memo sketching out what that contest might look like. Zendaya and MrBeast would moderate one discussion, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Oprah would host another. It screams top-down, stage-managed, and insufferable. Spare us the pain, just give it to Kamala. (Semafor)
And things get even weirder inside the mind of West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin. He argues that Democrats should nominate Mitt Romney, a Republican. This would make for a great reboot of the show. It’s also not how the world works. And by the end of Sunday, Sorkin had dropped the idea and was all in for Kamala. (New York Times)
Matthew Yglesias is a former Kamala Harris hater. And yet he has come to view her as the Democrats’ least worst option. In a piece written before Biden dropped out, he lays out his case for the vice president becoming the Democratic nominee. (Slow Boring)
A new poll shows a surge in Donald Trump’s favorability ratings. Thirty-one percent of Americans had a favorable opinion of the former president last month. Post-shooting, that figure increased to 40 percent. (ABC)
But Elliot Ackerman asks: Has Trump peaked too soon? He thinks Republicans could have reached the “culminating point,” a military term for “the threshold when advantages peak and then rapidly turn into disadvantages.” (The Atlantic)
A Slate editor stumbles across what he thinks is J.D. Vance’s Spotify account and discovers that the millennial vice presidential candidate has millennial music tastes. And as the author taps his feet to Vance’s playlists, he finds it “uncomfortable” to have something in common with “a man who represents so many things I’m diametrically opposed to.” Some advice: if you’re surprised or troubled by someone you disagree with enjoying the same music as you, it’s time to log off and touch grass. (Slate)
The rise of fact-checking has been bad for the media and bad for politics, argues M. Anthony Mills. He urges journalists to stop playing referee and get back to journalism. We agree—and there’s plenty to report on. (The New Atlantis)
→ Winners and losers: Fortunes can change in an instant in politics, and Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the race yesterday was one such moment. Here are the winners and losers.
The winners:
Kamala Harris. You crash and burn in the 2020 Democratic primary but get picked by Joe Biden—who you insinuated was a racist—because he promised to appoint a woman of color. Now the Democratic elite is rallying around you, and you’re a shoo-in for the nomination. Not bad.
Barack Obama. “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to fuck things up,” said Obama once, in the most memorable line of the great orator’s career. Game, set, and match to the former president over the soon-to-be-former president in this underrated political rivalry.
Hunter Biden. The president’s recently convicted son emerged as one of his closest advisers in the last few weeks. He was urging his dad to fight on, so while he hasn’t gotten his way, he’s ultimately a winner, because the chances of a presidential pardon just went way up.
The Lord Almighty. Only the “Lord Almighty” could persuade me to step down, said Biden recently. The Lord hath spoken.
X. He just tweeted it out. Yes, the president of the United States announced his seismic decision with nothing more than a tweet. Reportedly, even White House aides first learned the news on the platform. Amid all the talk of a dying social network, yesterday’s news was a reminder that X will never die.
Nikki Haley. Back in February, Nikki Haley was mocked for predicting that Biden wouldn’t be the Democratic nominee. Okay, she said he’d be out within a month. But close enough.
Vivek Ramaswamy. Another Republican who called it.
Nancy Pelosi. She can stick in the shiv, and you don’t even know it. After Biden declared in a two-page letter he was staying in, she popped up on Morning Joe and put his departure back into play by saying, “It’s up to Biden to decide if he’s going to run.”
Drew Barrymore. The nation needs a Momala, she said in a personal-space-violating recent interview with the vice president. And a Momala we shall have.
Whichever Biden aide suggested an early debate. The decision to challenge Trump to a debate in June will surely go down as one of the worst calls in the history of presidential campaigns. Which is why the person who came up with this idea was surely running some kind of sabotage campaign. Mission accomplished!
The coronavirus. The pandemic sank Trump’s reelection. And now the virus struck Trump’s successor at his lowest ebb, possibly adding to the sense that the game was up. So Covid is 2-0 against American presidents.
Joe Biden. The Joe Biden rehab tour starts today! After being painted a selfish megalomaniac for staying in the race as long as he did, Joe Biden is already being talked of as a hero for the simple act of stepping down.
The losers:
Democratic primary voters. First, the Democrats hid Joe Biden’s mental decline from primary voters. Then, when his decline became obvious, they said to voters: “Just kidding—let’s go with someone else.”
Donald Trump. Kamala Harris may be an unpopular and untested candidate with many vulnerabilities, but she’s also compos mentis. For that reason alone, she clears the low bar of being a more formidable opponent than Joe Biden.
The media. Sure, he’s lost his fastball, but Biden is still up to the job and any suggestion otherwise is a little bit icky. That was the tone of most coverage of Biden’s age until the debate a month ago. And on that debate stage the legacy media—with a few notable exceptions—were caught in another lie.
Wolf Blitzer. On Sunday, the CNN stalwart was enjoying a “Wolf Spritzer” cocktail at happening D.C. Mexican spot El Presidente. Then the actual presidente ruined the fun by announcing he was dropping out. Just as he had a nice buzz going, poor Wolf had to hotfoot it back to the studio.
Ron Klain. Not everyone in the Democratic Party was doing their best to meet the moment after Biden’s announcement. “Now that the donors and electeds have pushed out the only candidate who has ever beaten Trump, it’s time to end the political fantasy games and unite behind the only veteran of a national campaign — our outstanding @vp, @KamalaHarris!! Let’s get real and win in November!” Way to keep it classy, Ron.
Andrew Bates. The Baghdad Bob of the Biden administration, press officer Andrew Bates, is as slavishly loyal as they come. “He’s just that fucking good,” he enthused after Biden spoke a few complete sentences at the recent NATO press conference. It’s just that fucking over, Andrew.
Jill Biden. Before the debate, Jill Biden had a reputation as a scholar, an educator, a molder of young minds. But Dr. Jill morphed into Dr. Macbeth over the past few weeks. At least she got that Vogue cover. —OW
→ Memes will decide this election: We’ve had television elections (1960) and MTV elections (1992) and Twitter elections (2016). But 2024 will be our first meme election. It’s not that we didn’t have memes in past elections, it’s that the memes have finally hit the normies and are deciding electoral outcomes.
Go through the op-ed pages of the last few weeks, and you’ll see the same language, the same plans, the same solutions by various writers and talkers. The morning after President Biden’s disastrous debate performance, among the most striking images was not from the debate, but of every op-ed writer at The New York Times demanding he drop out of the race for the good of the party and the country.
When those initial calls didn’t work, James Carville and George Clooney wrote virtually the same op-ed—using identical language—just days apart: we love the president. He’s our dear friend! But he must step aside for the good of the country. (Both then called for an open convention, which is another meme we’ll be hearing about soon.)
Watch cable news, and you heard the same language live. Joe can’t win. We love him, but he has to go. And then competing memes arrived from different factions of the party. His numbers are up! He’ll never go.
But the old adage on memes goes far in D.C.: “Tell ’em what you’re going to tell them. Tell them. Then tell ’em what you just told them.” Say something over and over and over again, and eventually it becomes reality. The only way to fight a meme war is with better memes. Seize the memes of production, and watch what was once unthinkable—Joe Biden dropping out less than a month before the DNC—become reality.
The meme wars will decide this election. Online and offline are finally merging. —Katherine Boyle
→ The 💕 heard ’round the world: Abigail Adams once wrote to her son John Quincy Adams about George Washington stepping down from the presidency: “Words cannot do justice to this last Legacy. Where shall we look What Page of History can shew us a Character like Washingtons.” That, I guess, was 1796’s equivalent of a double pink heart emoji, the only statement we’ve gotten from Jill Biden since her husband announced he wouldn’t be seeking reelection.
While Harris is likely boxing up her Manolos and shaking Doug’s shoulders with excitement, Dr. Jill, I’m guessing, is nursing a white wine spritzer at her Delaware beach house, telling an aide, “Just retweet what he said with a heart, and bring me some Valium on the Dolley Madison china.” The woman—sorry, doctor-woman—has had a rough few weeks. First was the disastrous debate, after which, with literally nothing to celebrate from her husband’s performance, she roused the crowd with “You answered every question!” Then, she had to hit the campaign trail, with events in North Carolina, Florida, and Georgia. Her thanks was her husband seeming to confuse another blonde woman for her. She had to hustle across the room and physically maneuver him away.
So what does the double pink heart mean? It’s a sign of affection, but a lazy one. It means “See you later,” “Thanks!” “Love ya!” and in this case, “After all I’ve done, you’re telling me you couldn’t keep it together for two more months so that I could have my run of the place?” —Suzy Weiss
→ Tim Dillon on Kamala Harris: Last week, comedian Tim Dillon joined the Free Press RNC livestream to offer his thoughts on Trump’s speech. He also had a few words about Kamala Harris. Watch below, starting around 1:30, for Tim explaining why the vice president now poised to clinch the Democratic nomination is “like your aunt who’s drinking red wine and talking crazy at the family party.”
Can things get crazier? You bet they can. It’s only Monday. And we’ll be here, right in your inbox, with all the news you need to know. Make sure you don’t miss a thing by becoming a subscriber today:
Oliver Wiseman is a writer and editor for The Free Press. Follow him on X @ollywiseman.
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