Biden’s debate performance and COVID diagnosis helped sink campaign

President Joe Biden spent months ignoring and downplaying accusations he lacked the mental stamina to serve another term in the White House. However, after the sole presidential debate against Donald Trump broadcast to the entire nation Biden’s fragility, the president couldn’t outlast the pressure from fellow Democrats who struggled to defend his candidacy.

A steady drumbeat of Democratic lawmakers called for Biden to step away and pave the way for another leader, such as Vice President Kamala Harris, to lead the ticket. In a particular blow, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi‘s (D-CA) close ally, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), sent a letter to Biden on Friday asking him to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race.

Then as the GOP gathered at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last week, Biden announced that at 81-years-old, he had COVID-19 providing an unwanted split screen against Trump’s image of strength after surviving a failed assassination attempt. In the midst of this, the Associated Press released a new survey showing nearly two-thirds of Democrats wanted Biden out as the presidential nominee.

It culminated with Biden’s announcement on Sunday that he was suspending his campaign.

“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your president,” Biden wrote in a letter posted to X on Sunday. “While it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as president for the remainder of my term.”

But before Sunday’s historic afternoon announcement, at least 37 Democrats had publicly called for Biden to step down after the June 27 debate against Trump saw Biden struggle to give coherent answers and visually lag in stamina.

“The room full of people supporting his sustained candidacy has become more empty by the day. I’m certain that he and his team were trying to weather this political storm but it just kept coming,” said Randy Jones, a Democratic political consultant. “The negative news cycles had sustained long enough that the decision had to be made regardless of his ability to serve. It took more courage to stand down than to continue fighting a losing game, and for that I applaud him.”

Douglas Wilson, a Democratic strategist in Charlotte, North Carolina, claimed that Democratic attempts to push Biden out were “a little bit too much.”

“The calls for him to step down, I think that coming out publicly about that, and doing it every day, it’s a different person, a different person, that to me wounded him politically than anything else,” Wilson said. “Because if you look at Republicans, they rallied around Trump when he received 34 felony convictions, and that rallying around Trump helped to energize his base.”

The June debate further vindicated Republican and political reporters who had reported on behind-the-scenes anecdotes that Biden’s mental acuity was decreasing.

“Maybe the hardest decision that people in public life, or maybe any area of life, have are when to quit,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) told the Washington Examiner in the wake of a bombshell Wall Street Journal article in early June. “And I think President Biden is not quitting at the top of his game, shall we say.”

“He’s missing a step physically and mentally, but people are going to have to factor that into their decision-making process,” he added.

The Wall Street Journal report angered top Democrats, who fumed that their comments defending Biden had been left out of the published story. Yet as Biden floundered during the debate, Democrats could no longer claim Biden’s problems were the result of Republican fearmongering.

“President Biden as the Democratic nominee was already in jeopardy before the RNC. After a very successful Republican convention anchored by the tragic assassination attempt on President Trump and senior Democratic leadership joined by dozens of lawmakers calling on a new direction, the situation became untenable,” said Erick Sanchez, a political consultant.

Brad Bannon, a Democratic strategist, said the COVID diagnosis was the proverbial straw that broke Biden’s ability to stay on top the party ticket. “I think that the President realized he wasn’t going to be able to campaign actively for a couple of weeks,” Bannon. “That on top of the pressure, his failure to quell the descent among dissident Democrats. But I think it was the COVID.

When Bannon saw Biden getting off the plane in Delaware last week, he thought to himself that Biden “was going to have to realize that he’s not going to be able to do this any longer.”

Shortly after suspending his campaign, Biden endorsed Harris in a post on X. “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,” said Biden.

The move could help to consolidate the nomination behind the vice president but with less than a month before the Democratic National Convention commences in Chicago, much could happen.

Democratic National Committee chairman Jaime Harrison said he would hold a “transparent and orderly process to move forward as a united Democratic Party” against Trump in a statement Sunday, which Democratic strategists echoed in conversations with the Washington Examiner.

“My only hope is the DNC constructs a way for every Democratic voter to have an opportunity to vote a new nominee with the absence of a traditional caucus and primary system that offers the diversity a non-incumbent election year generally does,” Sanchez cautioned.

Rachel Schilke contributed to this report.