USA's President Joe Biden will not stand in the autumn's presidential election. He announces that he supports Vice President Kamala Harris as the new presidential candidate.
"My intention is to earn and win the nomination", Harris writes in a statement.
It was on Sunday evening Swedish time, after increasing pressure from heavyweight Democrats, that Joe Biden finally threw in the towel.
"I had intended to try to be re-elected, but I believe it is in my party's and country's interest that I step aside and focus fully on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term", Biden writes in a letter on X.
In a subsequent post on the platform, he announces his support for Kamala Harris as presidential candidate.
"My first decision as presidential candidate in 2020 was to choose Kamala Harris as my Vice President. It is the best decision I have made", the President writes, and adds:
"I give my full support to Kamala as a candidate for our party."
Harris praises Joe Biden's "selfless and patriotic" decision.
"I am honored to receive the President's support and my intention is to earn and win the nomination", she writes in a statement.
Address to the Nation
In his letter, Biden also writes that he will address the nation later in the week to provide more details about his decision to withdraw.
Biden's withdrawal changes the game plan, notes Dag Blanck, Professor of North American Studies at Uppsala University. But the news did not come as a surprise.
It was not unexpected, one cannot say that, there has been a long period of pressure on Biden to do this. It means that the entire election campaign is being shaken up and entering a new phase. Right now, there are very many unknown factors, he says to TT.
The demands for the 81-year-old to step down as presidential candidate have increased in recent times. A total of over 30 Democratic members of the House of Representatives and three senators have urged him to hand over the baton.
Also Obama
Even former President Barack Obama and former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, have expressed doubts about Biden's ability to defeat the Republicans' Donald Trump, according to American media reports.
There was a growing number and eventually it was too many. Then he understood that it wouldn't work. He's doing it out of concern for the party so that it has a realistic chance now to find a new candidate who can defeat Donald Trump in November, says Dag Blanck.
Joe Biden, born in 1942 in the mining town of Scranton in Pennsylvania, is the 46th President of the United States.
He was Barack Obama's Vice President between 2009 and 2017. Before that, he was Delaware's senator for 36 years.
Biden is known as a cross-party centrist politician. Ahead of the 2020 presidential election, he highlighted his experience, his broad foreign policy knowledge, and his working-class background.
He is married to Jill Biden and has two living children. Biden's gripping family history is well-known in the USA. His first wife died in a car accident in 1972, along with their one-year-old daughter. Biden, who had been elected senator just a month earlier, became a single father to sons Beau and Hunter – who were also injured in the accident. Beau Biden died of brain cancer in 2015. Together with Jill Biden, he has daughter Ashley Biden.
Joe Biden became the oldest incoming President in US history when he won the election against Donald Trump in 2020
