Biden's biggest problem in the minds of voters is that they believe he is not capable of serving as president for the next four years.

Source: CNN

Compiled by: BitpushNews Mary Liu

In the end, President Biden withdrew from the political stage in isolation.

After a poor performance in the debate, Biden insisted that he would not leave. However, the abrupt end came not from his speeches at the White House or campaign rallies, but from a public letter he posted on X platform from his beachfront home in Delaware during his recovery from COVID-19.

As one of the most historically significant decisions in modern American politics, it was made public in such a low-key manner. Biden did not have time to make or announce the decision in person.

Never has a president withdrawn from re-election so close to election day—and in the 24 days prior, he was still stubbornly planning how to quell the public opinion storm after the June 27 debate in Atlanta.

For three weeks after the debate, he continued to reaffirm his intention to continue the campaign against former President Donald Trump, with a resolute attitude.

He insisted that he could defeat Trump, and his inner circle shrank to his closest aides and family.

However, he was forced to return to his home in Delaware, where, in the past day and a half, he made a decision and ultimately compromised: a man who had been loyal to the Democratic Party for more than half a century was seen as a burden to the campaign.

Pressure from Democratic Party leaders, ordinary members of Congress, and donors—along with opinion polls showing that Biden faced a dangerous and possibly insurmountable path as the gap with Trump widened—ultimately proved that Biden was unlikely to continue under the weight.

Biden was described as "more isolated than ever before," facing increasing pressure from behind the scenes and publicly. The harsh reality became a chorus of voices demanding the president's withdrawal from the campaign, like a boulder rolling down a mountain, gaining momentum.

The president's team had hoped that the debate with Trump on CNN in June (several months earlier than the usual presidential debates) would turn the tide for Biden. They succeeded, but not as they had hoped.

Instead, Biden's campaign began to unravel in the following 24 days. The president and his team tried to quell the concerns of Democrats, but they could not dispel the view that Biden's advanced age and poor health made him unfit to continue the campaign.

On Sunday afternoon, Biden posted two articles on X, announcing his withdrawal from the campaign and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris, hoping that the Democratic Party could quickly unite and overcome the chaos it had fallen into since the debate.

For Democrats, this was a high-risk, high-reward gamble. Biden restarted his campaign as the new nominee 107 days before the election, but he was at a disadvantage in this campaign. Trump was at the height of his campaign, and after surviving an assassination attempt, his support at the Republican National Convention was growing stronger, with supporters rallying around him.

Behind the decision to withdraw from the campaign

A senior campaign advisor said that Biden's final decision to withdraw from the campaign was made in the past 48 hours, consulting with family and senior advisors during his COVID-19 recovery. An informed source said that the plan to withdraw from the campaign began to take shape on Saturday night and was finalized on Sunday.

The advisor said that the president "was not stubborn," but he was studying upcoming data and was convinced that he would "drag down" the election and become an obstacle to defeating Trump.

A senior White House official told CNN that Biden's decision was not related to any medical issues.

Another source revealed that on Saturday, when Biden met with his two closest advisors, the polling information they provided and the position of senior Democratic Party officials emphasized that "there is basically no path to victory" for Biden.

The source said that during the meeting with longtime aides Mike Donilon and Steve Ricchetti, there were no single polling numbers, undecided Democratic Party officials, or fundraisers proposing a plan to push Biden to make a decision.

Instead, this information emphasized that the decline in national and swing state polling numbers and the potential rapid acceleration of party "defections" severely damaged Biden's path back to the campaign. This information included polling data and detailed information collected from outreach activities outside of Biden's core circle.

According to the source, unlike the situation in 2015 when Biden wrote in his book "Promise me, Dad" that Donilon told him, due to still grieving the loss of his son Beau, he should not run for president in 2016, this time neither aide explicitly suggested that he should withdraw from the campaign.

Before the meeting ended, Biden explicitly stated that he planned to withdraw from the campaign and asked his aides to start drafting the letter to be released on Sunday afternoon.

Biden is still recovering from his COVID-19 diagnosis, and he and First Lady Jill Biden spent the entire weekend at their home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

Biden did what he always does before making any major decision: he held a family meeting on Saturday night. According to sources, since making the decision to withdraw from the campaign, he has spoken with all of his family members, and his daughter Ashley and son-in-law Howard drove to Rehoboth earlier on Sunday.

Another source said that he confirmed the decision on Sunday morning and, accompanied by Ricchetti, began calling key figures outside of his senior aides and family.

Biden consulted only a very small number of confidants about this decision. Some members of his core circle did not learn of the news until a few minutes before he posted the statement on social media, including one of his closest communications advisors, Anita Dunn.

Multiple sources told CNN that Anita Dunn and a small group of senior aides knew about Biden's statement just minutes before it was released. Many ordinary staff members only found out after the statement was released. Dunn and her husband Bob Bauer were members of Biden's debate preparation team and had faced dissatisfaction from the president's family after the debate. An aide to Biden denied that her absence was related to the debate and told CNN that she and other senior aides were not in Rehoboth, "the president told his aides that he and his family would not blame them for his poor debate performance."

According to sources, Biden spoke with Harris multiple times before announcing his decision. He also separately spoke with Chief of Staff Jeff Zients and campaign co-chair Jen O'Malley Dillon to inform them of his decision.

On Sunday afternoon, Zients hosted a conference call in Washington with senior White House staff and all of the president's aides, and he spoke with members of Biden's cabinet. Zients is expected to hold a conference call with all White House staff on Monday morning and speak with political appointees in the executive branch.

Even his chosen vice president, Harris, his successor, did not know about his decision until the day he announced it.

"A bad night" changed the outcome

In the end, Biden faced a road he could not continue on: more than thirty Democrats publicly called for him to withdraw from the campaign. Party leaders told him he could not win. Donors' funds were dwindling, and they expressed feeling betrayed by the lack of disclosure about Biden's health.

Before Biden withdrew, a major Democratic donor told CNN, "I don't know of any major donor who would write a check for $100,000 or more. But I know many people like that."

Biden and his team tried to portray his debate performance as a "bad night." He and his aides attributed this to the president's overseas trip. He said he would participate in the debate again and do better. Then he immediately returned to the campaign, going to North Carolina the next day to deliver a lively speech, while acknowledging his shortcomings in the debate.

"I know I'm no longer young. I don't walk as easily as I used to. I don't speak as fluently as I used to. My debating skills are not as good as they used to be, but I know what I know. I know how to tell the truth," Biden said.

After the debate, Biden held a pre-arranged gathering with his family at Camp David, encouraging him to continue the campaign.

But in Democratic circles, panic had already begun to spread. The problem was clear: Biden's biggest issue in the minds of voters was that they believed he was not capable of serving as president for the next four years. The debate confirmed their concerns and exposed Biden's biggest political weakness to the public.

Any policy, statement, or criticism of Trump cannot change this.

Despite Biden's insistence that no factor could persuade him to withdraw from the campaign, Democrats have already begun to lay the groundwork and open the door for change. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on MSNBC, "I think people want to ask whether this is a special situation or an inherent condition, and that's a fair question."

On July 2, Texas Congressman Lloyd Doggett became the first Democratic elected official to call for Biden's withdrawal. The next day, Biden met with a group of Democratic governors, telling them he needed more sleep and should stop scheduling events after 8 p.m.

On July 5, Biden gave an interview to ABC News' George Stephanopoulos, attempting to prove that he could continue the campaign. In the interview, Biden said that only "Almighty God" could persuade him to withdraw, which angered many Democrats.

This was the first of many attempts by Biden's team to bring the president into the public eye and quell the growing discontent. However, all of these attempts ended in failure.

Signs of trouble

After July 4, Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner quietly tried to convene a meeting of Democrats to urge Biden to withdraw from the campaign. However, this idea quickly fell through.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries spoke with House Democrats that weekend, during which several members of Congress said that Biden needed to step down.

On July 8, Biden sent a passionate letter to Democratic members of Congress, stating his firm commitment to continue the campaign and defeat Donald Trump.

Calls for Biden's resignation quickly came from outside of Washington. On July 10, George Clooney published a column in The New York Times calling for Biden to step down. What was even more shocking for the president was Clooney's statement that he saw the same Biden at a fundraising event in June as he did in the June debate, and that the president had been on a downward spiral since taking office.

Pelosi also seemed to continue to "betray" Biden. On the same day that Clooney published his column, she refused to publicly support him in an interview with MSNBC, saying, "Whether he runs depends on the president himself."

Several news outlets, including CNN, reported that Pelosi and former President Obama had privately expressed concerns about Biden's campaign.

On July 11, during the NATO summit in Washington, Biden held a solo press conference, further hinting at the possibility of withdrawal, saying that if the data showed he couldn't win, he would consider stepping down.

Biden also made several minor verbal slips, including referring to Harris as "Trump's vice president." Earlier that day, he had referred to Ukrainian President Zelensky as "President Putin," before correcting himself.

After Biden's press conference, a few Democratic members of Congress called for his resignation, bringing the total number of people calling for his resignation to 15. The list included senior Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee, such as Connecticut Congressman Jim Himes, who said he deliberately waited until after the NATO meeting to join the calls for resignation.

That weekend, Biden met with several Democratic caucuses, including the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the moderate New Democrat Coalition. The atmosphere was tense with moderate Democrats, as Biden had a heated exchange with Colorado Democratic Congressman Jason Crow, who bluntly told him that voters were concerned about his vigor and strength, especially his performance on the world stage.

In response to Crow's concerns, Biden reportedly told him, "I don't want to hear that malarkey."

Calls for Biden's resignation briefly subsided, but did not last long

It was expected that more Democrats would publicly call for Biden's resignation that weekend, but the discussion came to an abrupt halt when Trump narrowly escaped an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

The attempted assassination caused a seismic shift in the political landscape, shifting public attention away from Biden's ability to win re-election and focusing on the bullet that narrowly missed Trump's ear, raising a series of questions: how a gunman could shoot at a Republican presidential candidate five days before his nomination.

The pause did not last long.

Behind the scenes, Democratic pollsters circulated a memo, stating that Biden might lose the election, and, importantly for Democratic members of Congress, this would also harm candidates in the election. Some polls showed that other Democrats had higher support in key battleground states than Biden.

"Losing everything," a Democratic described a memo sent by Stanley Greenberg, a Democratic pollster, to Biden's inner circle.

On Wednesday, the winds rose again. California Congressman Adam Schiff, a Democratic Senate candidate and the lead manager of Trump's first impeachment, became the first member of Congress to publicly call for Biden to withdraw from the campaign after the assassination attempt.

Schiff, with his high standing in the party as a potential senator and a close ally of Pelosi, became one of the most influential voices at the time.

In a statement, Schiff said, "While the decision to withdraw from the campaign is a personal one for President Biden, I believe it is time for him to pass the torch."

More party leaders "speak out"

Soon, more voices followed. And perhaps more importantly, the private calls for Biden to withdraw from the campaign turned into public calls for him to do so.

Maryland Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin, who led the second impeachment of Trump, confirmed that he had written to Biden on July 6, encouraging the president to "withdraw from the 2024 presidential election without shame," and compared him to George Washington and Red Sox pitcher Pedro Martinez.

CNN reported on Wednesday that Pelosi privately told Biden that polls showed he couldn't beat Trump, and that he might ruin the Democrats' chances of winning the House in November. Biden countered, saying he saw polls showing he could win. Pelosi at one point asked Biden's longtime advisor Donilon to get on the phone to discuss the data.

On the same day, Schumer told Biden at a meeting on Saturday that he had better withdraw from the presidential race. A source familiar with Biden's meeting with Jeffries said that the House Democratic leader did not ask him to step down, but instead passed the suggestion on to his members.

The White House and congressional officials tried to suppress these reports and issued statements denying them. However, the stories of party leaders conveying messages to Biden had an effect. On Friday, more than a dozen New Democrats issued a statement calling for Biden to withdraw from the campaign.

This included another close ally of Pelosi, California Congressman Zoe Lofgren. A source directly familiar with the situation said that Biden was "furious" with Pelosi on Friday, and Lofgren's letter exacerbated this emotion.

Disappointed donors

The public statements by Democrats highlighted one of the challenges Biden faced in the campaign—but equally important was the fact that donor defections would lead to a depletion of campaign funds in the final stages.

Major Democratic donors expressed doubts about Biden's viability, with several saying that their concerns had been met with coldness by Biden campaign officials.

"How do you think we feel?" a Democratic donor with close ties to the Democratic National Committee and the White House told CNN before Biden withdrew from the campaign, explaining the donors' feelings. "We all feel betrayed because they didn't honestly disclose his health condition to us."

Two sources told CNN on Thursday that angry donors also told the House and Senate Democratic campaign committees that they would freeze donations unless party leaders took stronger measures to force Biden to step down.

A senior House Democrat told CNN on Thursday evening, "Yes, the card has been played."

"They believe that if Biden becomes the presidential candidate, the House and Senate will also lose control," said a Democratic strategist closely involved in raising large sums of money. "They don't want to waste money."

According to sources familiar with the discussions, shortly after Biden announced his withdrawal from the 2024 election, donors suddenly began contacting advisors to make large donations. Before Biden decided to withdraw from the 2024 election, multiple donors proactively contacted Harris's team, indicating that they would support her if she became the candidate.

A "sudden halt" concession

Until the moment he withdrew, Biden and his team insisted that he would stay.

Biden's team had set a public schedule for the president over the past week to demonstrate his ability to continue the campaign.

On Monday, he again sat down for a TV interview with NBC News' Lester Holt, admitting to his poor performance in the debates while criticizing the media for focusing on his gaffes rather than Trump's lies. Biden once again stated that he had no intention of resigning.

Subsequently, Biden traveled to Las Vegas for campaign events, speaking at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) national convention and the UnidosUS annual conference, and being interviewed by BET and Univision. Biden told BET News' Ed Gordon that the only thing that would make him reconsider running for re-election was "physical condition."

The president delivered a speech at the NAACP convention, but before his speech at UnidosUS on Wednesday, he suffered another blow: a diagnosis of COVID-19.

The president returned to his home in Rehoboth Beach that day to isolate, and his public schedule was indefinitely suspended during his recovery.

On Friday, Biden released a statement saying that he would return to the campaign next week, and Biden's campaign chairman, O'Malley Dillon, said on MSNBC's Morning Joe that Biden would "absolutely" continue to campaign.

The campaign team also released a memo stating that "there are no plans to nominate anyone else."

Biden called some Democrats who had endorsed him on television over the weekend. Two of them told CNN that the president first expressed gratitude and then expressed anger at those trying to oust him. "There was some sadness in his voice, but more anger," said a loyal supporter of Biden.

Even on Sunday, Biden's team continued to publicly insist that he would not leave. South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn, a key ally of Biden, told CNN reporters on the "State of the Union" program that Biden and Harris "have received over 14 million votes, making them our standard-bearers. That's where we are," Clyburn said. The congressman supported Biden before the South Carolina primaries, which was widely seen as crucial to Biden's victory.

Before announcing his decision on Sunday, Biden spoke with Harris, and his decision contained two messages: first, he said he would withdraw; second, he supported his vice president to become the Democratic candidate.

A source familiar with the timing told CNN that Biden told his most senior team that he would leave around 1:45 p.m., and the public letter was sent out at that time.

The same source said, "Before that, his campaign momentum was very strong."

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