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July 21, 2024
Joe Biden Cements His Legacy
Abandoning his reelection run and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris took courage and vision. Other top Dems are joining.
President Joe Biden, left, and Vice President Kamala Harris on the Truman Balcony of the White House in Washington, DC, on July 4, 2024.
(Tierney L. Cross / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Stay tuned for a profile of Vice President Kamala Harris by Nation correspondent Joan Walsh within the next few days.
President Joe Biden proved Sunday afternoon that he has a sense of dramatic timing to rival writer Aaron Sorkin’s*—and an imagination that beats it. Biden announced, via social media, that he is suspending his campaign to focus on his presidency. While he praised Vice President Kamala Harris for being a great “partner,” he notably did not endorse her in his announcement.
Cue the wild speculation about what that meant. Within moments, the tweets were flying: Did Biden want a so-called “open convention”? Was he unsold on Harris? Did he oppose a so-called “coronation,” a frequently used term that demeans the woman who’s spent almost four years as his vice president? AP ran with this teaser: “Biden doesn’t immediately endorse VP Kamala Harris, throwing Democrats into chaos months before election against [Donald] Trump.”
Minutes after his social media announcement, however, Biden stunned again by, in fact, endorsing Harris. “My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President,” he wrote. “And it’s been the best decision I’ve made. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats—it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.”
That brief pause between statements packed more punch than if he’d endorsed Harris in his announcement. “It was a great, brilliant move,” says Black Voters Matter cofounder LaTosha Brown.
Expect the vast majority of Democratic leaders to fall in behind Harris in the next few days. She was San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general, making the “prosecutor vs. felon” narrative simply too delicious. (She was also known for vigorously prosecuting sex crimes; she will be running against an adjudicated rapist.) And Harris has been the party’s single best surrogate on the issue of abortion rights and reproductive justice, which is the Democrats’ winning issue.
One of the fascinating things about the intra-party debate over whether Biden should stand down following his disastrous June 27 debate performance has been that the loudest and loyalest people urging him to stay in the race have been Black leaders. The Congressional Black Caucus came out fully behind him, led by chair Representative Steven Horsford and caucus dean Representative Jim Clyburn. (Although Clyburn always said that if Biden did step aside, his top choice would be Harris.)
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Maybe more important to me, late last week, a group of Black women leaders released a letter, ultimately signed by 1,400, urging Biden to stay in the race and decrying the push to oust him.
“History is a great teacher and has taught us that a divided house will fail,” the women wrote Thursday.
As Black women we are uniquely aware of the very real threat a second Trump term poses to our country and especially to our community. But this is not a moment to give in to fear. Instead, we must unify around our deep belief in our values and our ability to effectively engage voters and win up and down the ballot in 2024.
Some of the same women had led the push in 2020 for Biden to pick a Black woman as his running mate, including Donna Brazile, Leah Daughtry, and LaTosha Brown.
Did this contradict those who were openly calling for Biden to step aside and back Harris? Not necessarily. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also Thursday, came out for Biden staying in, explaining it, in part, by noting that she was skeptical that Harris would easily replace Biden if the president were to be ousted. “If you think that there is consensus among the people who want Joe Biden to leave that they will support Vice President Harris, you would be mistaken,” she said, blaming “donors” and not voters for the anti-Biden upswell. I heard the same thing privately from a few Black women who signed the letter.
Now that Biden has stepped aside, expect those women to organize energetically behind Harris. “We about to hit these streets,” Brown texted me moments after the Biden endorsement. The CBC likewise quickly endorsed Harris. “The Congressional Black Caucus PAC joins President Biden in fully supporting Kamala Harris as our party’s nominee,” Representatives Gregory Meeks and Steven Horsford, said in a statement. “She will do an excellent job as President of the United States.”
This is, as Biden would say, “a big fucking deal.” Biden made history choosing Harris as his running mate, and he’s ensured his legacy in history by endorsing her immediately. (He’s also been an unexpectedly progressive president.) As late as Friday, former House speaker Nancy Pelosi was calling for an “open convention” and repeating the tired argument about avoiding a “coronation.” Pelosi is known to be a close ally of California Governor Gavin Newsom, but Newsom had already said he would not run if Biden stepped aside. Another media favorite, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, has said the same thing. So far, no Democrat has declared that he or she will challenge Harris.
President Bill Clinton and 2016 presidential nominee Hillary Clinton quickly joined Biden in endorsing Harris, a big boost given that some suspected the Clintons of doing their big donors’ bidding in the weeks following the debate. (They had urged Biden to stay in the race.) So did Clyburn, as well as one of Biden’s closest allies, Delaware Senator Chris Coons. No word yet from Pelosi. Former president Barack Obama, notably, praised his former vice president but did not endorse Harris, one of his earliest surrogates in 2007, calling for a “process” to select the nominee. It’s possible he wanted to keep the spotlight on Biden and will get behind Harris this week. A source I trust says that’s the correct interpretation.
Soon the focus will turn to Harris’s best choice of a running mate, and I’ll let others report on that. For now, I want to cosign something LaTosha Brown told me. She would love to see a two-woman ticket, and favors Whitmer. “You have this super-sexist machismo team on one side. They can make a helluva team. It could be a game changer.”
But first things first: At 4 pm on Sunday, Harris issued her own statement, praising Biden warmly and announcing: “I am honored to have the President’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination.” Sources say she and Biden spoke several times before his Sunday afternoon announcement.
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* The West Wing writer Aaron Sorkin penned a ludicrous op-ed in The New York Times Sunday, urging Democrats to dump Biden and nominate Republican Senator Mitt Romney. Stick to fiction, Aaron.
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Joan Walsh
Joan Walsh, a national affairs correspondent for The Nation, is a coproducer of The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts The Tonight Show and the author of What’s the Matter With White People? Finding Our Way in the Next America. Her new book (with Nick Hanauer and Donald Cohen) is Corporate Bullsh*t: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power and Wealth In America.
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