WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden plans to make a decision to end his own re-election campaign As a “defense of democracy” in his Oval Office speech on Tuesday White House.
Biden plans to say: “Defending democracy is more important than any title. I find strength and joy in working for the American people. But this sacred duty of improving our union is not about me. It’s about you. Your families. Your futures. It’s about ‘We the People.’ goes from”.
Biden and other Democrats have consistently argued that former President Donald Trump, who he has refused to acknowledge after losing to Biden in the 2020 election, is a threat to democracy.
The speech, which comes three days after he withdrew his offer, is the first for Biden efforts to shape his legacy After a disastrous debate performance in late June that prompted members of his own party to drop him from the campaign trail and allow another candidate to run against Trump. Many Democrats believed that Biden’s controversial debate performance and push to clean it up made his path to re-election impossible.
“I decided the best way was to pass the torch to the next generation. This is the best way to unite our nation,” Biden plans to say in a speech scheduled to begin after 8 p.m. ET. He will remain in office, although he will not seek a second term.
At a campaign rally in North Carolina on Tuesday, Trump went after his former rival. “Three days ago we officially defeated the worst president in the history of the country, crooked Joe Biden.
Biden announced his decision on Sunday afternoon to abandon his re-election campaign, following it up about half an hour later with the endorsement of his running mate, Kamala Harris, for the Democratic presidential nomination on X.
He quickly consolidated support from within his own party and is expected to win the virtual recall of the Democratic delegation (perhaps unopposed) on August 1 and no later than August 7.
By leaving the nomination to Harris, Biden became the first sitting president since Lyndon Johnson in 1968 to relinquish his party’s right to nominate the presidential nominee. That was two years before Biden’s first election in New Castle State Council, Delaware.
Two years later, at age 29, he defeated Republican Sen. Caleb Boggs in a closely contested campaign. Biden would go on to win six more terms in the Senate, where he was at various times chairman of the Judiciary and Foreign Affairs committees — the last victory coming in 2008, the same year he was elected vice president. Along with President Barack Obama, Biden was re-elected vice president in 2012. He came out of retirement to defeat his crowded rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, ultimately defeating Trump that November.
His decision to retire rather than remain on the 2024 ballot means he will finish his career undefeated in a general election — though he ran for president in 1988 and 2008 and lost. It also ends a career focused on the presidency. Biden first considered running for the Oval Office in the first election he was old enough — in 1980 — and at least considered offers in years when no Democratic candidates were on the ballot.
Once considered a centrist within his party, Biden won the support of progressives in Congress early in his administration. He and his Democratic allies credit him with the broadest domestic agenda since the Johnson administration — a claim that is difficult to measure and disputed by critics.
Regardless of the metric, Biden has signed major measures that have a profound impact on the country, including a nearly $2 trillion Covid-relief measure, a trillion-dollar infrastructure package and a bill known as the Deflation Act. climate change.
In addition to putting Harris on his ticket, the first woman, the first black woman, and the first Asian American to become vice president, he appointed Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first black woman confirmed to the Supreme Court.
Biden plans to say Wednesday night that he will follow a similar path until a new president is sworn in on Jan. 20.
“For the next six months, I will be focused on doing my job as President,” he said. “.
He is also expected to nod to what he sees as the threat of a second Trump presidency in a tacit call for Americans to reject his longtime rival.
“The great thing about America is here, kings and dictators don’t rule,” he said, “the people rule. History is in your hands. The power is in your hands. The idea of America is in your hands.”