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SELECTED REPORTING ON BIDEN/HARRIS ANNOUNCEMENT  
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July 21, 2024
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_ Selected reporting on Joe Biden's announcement withdrawing from
presidential race on Sunday and endorsing Kamala Harris for president.
_

Biden on picket line with striking UAW members., Detroit Free Press

 

THE HILL
[[link removed]] (LAUREN
SFORZA)

_CONGRESSIONAL BLACK CAUCUS BACKS HARRIS AS BIDEN REPLACEMENT_

The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) is backing Vice President Harris
as President Biden’s replacement after the president announced his
decision to withdraw from the race
[[link removed]] on
Sunday.

The CBC political action committee (CBCPAC) released a statement
[[link removed]] Sunday
on behalf of caucus Chair Steven Horsford 
[[link removed]](D-Nev.) and CBCPAC
Chair Gregory Meeks 
[[link removed]](D-N.Y.).

“The Congressional Black Caucus PAC joins President Biden in fully
supporting Kamala Harris 
[[link removed]]as our party’s nominee.
She has been instrumental in delivering the accomplishments of the
last 3.5 years and has led on lowering maternal mortality rates,
protecting reproductive freedoms, and ensuring economic opportunities
for all,” the statement read.

“She will do an excellent job as President of the United States.”

The statement also praised Biden.

“President Joe Biden  [[link removed]]is
the ultimate stateman. He’s dedicated his entire career, amid great
personal sacrifice, in service to the values of democracy; civility,
freedom and opportunity. He is undoubtedly one of the most
accomplished presidents in American history, a trailblazer on the
issue of gun safety, a staunch advocate for civil rights, and a
bipartisan lawmaker who has created millions of jobs across the
country,” the statement read.

“Americans and democracy loving people around the world owe Joe
Biden a great deal of gratitude,” the statement continued.

Numerous Democrats have already followed Biden’s lead to unite
behind
[[link removed]] Harris
after the president announced Sunday afternoon that he would be
stepping aside from the race and endorsed Harris as his replacement
[[link removed]].

The CBC statement comes just weeks after Horsford reaffirmed his
support
[[link removed]] for
Biden as many Democrats called on the president to withdraw from the
race.

Former President Trump’s campaign and his allies, meanwhile,
have already unloaded
[[link removed]] on
the vice president, with the campaign saying she will be “even
worse”
[[link removed]] than
Biden.

JACOBIN
[[link removed]]
(BEN BURGIS)

_JOE BIDEN’S REPLACEMENT MUST EMBRACE ECONOMIC POPULISM_

Joe Biden is out of the race and a second Trump term would be a
nightmare. To avoid it, Democrats need more than a candidate who can
complete sentences. That candidate must put pro-worker policies at the
heart of their campaign.

Just over three weeks ago, Joe Biden and Donald Trump met for a
debate. The most devastating moment was when Biden said, “I’m
going to continue to move until we get the total ban on
the…the…the…total initiative relative to what we can do with
more Border Patrol and more asylum officers.” Trump responded, “I
really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence, and I
don’t think he knows either.” The general impression even by many
erstwhile Biden loyalists was that if this man were a private citizen,
his children would be having a difficult conversation about moving him
to an assisted living facility.

Today, he finally threw in the towel. We’ve already heard a lot of
pablum about how this was an act of extraordinary patriotism — that
Biden sacrificed his personal ambitions for the sake of saving the
country from Trump. The reality is that he stubbornly clung to the
nomination for weeks after it was abundantly clear to all but his most
fanatical loyalists that he was incapable of winning. We’ve also
heard a lot of tributes to his presidency that leave out his shameful
decision to provide diplomatic cover and material assistance to Israel
in its genocidal rampage in Gaza that has displaced the vast majority
of its population and killed more children than had been killed in all
the war zones in the world in recent years.

But you don’t have to give Joe Biden praise that he absolutely does
not deserve to recognize that it’s good that he dropped out of the
2024 race. A Trump victory would be a disaster. At the debate on June
27, Trump outflanked Biden from the right on Palestine, bizarrely
saying that Biden had become a Palestinian — “a bad
Palestinian.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is rooting
for a Trump victory, knowing that the former president would give
Israel an enthusiastic green light for far worse slaughter than
we’ve seen in the past ten months. And all indications suggest
Trump’s return to the White House would unleash a wave of domestic
cruelty.

At the very least, we can expect Trump do what he did last time. He
cut taxes for rich people, he shredded workplace safety regulations,
and he filled the National Labor Relations Board with strike-breakers.
And the worst could get _much_ worse.

At the Republican National Convention (RNC), delegates were given
signs to wave demanding “Mass Deportations Now.” Speaker after
speaker falsely blamed undocumented immigrants
[[link removed]] for
fentanyl entering the country and thus for the epidemic of Americans
dying of fentanyl overdoses.

There are, at a conservative estimate, 11 million undocumented
immigrants in the United States. As Radley Balko points out, if Trump
actually follows through on “Mass Deportations Now,” making a
serious attempt to round up and deport  all 11 million, there’s no
possible scenario that doesn’t look like an authoritarian nightmare.
In fact, it’s plausible that Trump would put Stephen Miller — the
only senior staffer who isn’t a Trump relative who made it through
all four years of his first term — in charge of the operation. And
Miller has spelled out exactly what he wants to do in interviews.

As Balko writes
[[link removed]]:

Miller plans to bring in the National Guard, state and local police,
other federal police agencies like the DEA and ATF, and if necessary,
the military. Miller’s deportation force would then infiltrate
cities and neighborhoods, going door to door and business to business
in search of undocumented immigrants. He plans to house the millions
of immigrants he wants to expel in tent camps along the border, then
use military planes to transport them back to their countries of
origin.

Put that together with Trump’s constant fear mongering about
immigrants allegedly being sent straight from prisons and insane
asylums to the US border, and how some of them are
[[link removed]] “not
people,” and this could be a nightmare.

Anyone who doesn’t want to find out should be happy that Biden has
dropped out. He almost certainly would have lost. But that doesn’t
mean that Vice President Kamala Harris — or whoever else might
replace him — will win. The ability to complete sentences is a good
first step. But the _content_ of those sentences still matters quite
a bit.

Even before the extent of Biden’s cognitive difficulties became
apparent, he may have torched his re-election prospects by backing
Netanyahu’s grotesque assault on the population of Gaza. No matter
how he’d performed on the debate stage, it would have been very hard
to imagine, for example, Biden winning my home state of Michigan —
which is both a crucial swing state and a home to the largest
concentration of Arab-American voters in the country. A different
nominee not being as associated with that horror _might_ make a
difference
[[link removed]],
especially if they made a clear break from Biden’s policy, although
it’s also possible that at this point the damage is done.

On the domestic front, Biden was desperate enough to start making some
tentative steps in a positive direction in the final weeks of his
candidacy. He talked about ending medical debt, for example, and
finally moving toward desperately needed reforms to the Supreme Court
— an issue that had been raised
[[link removed]] by
the “Squad” of left-wing members of Congress. He unveiled a plan
to effectively cap rent increases at 5 percent
[[link removed]], making
major landlords’ tax breaks contingent on their adhering to this
limit — although in a telling moment he fumbled the delivery of this
announcement, telling the NAACP Convention that he was going to limit
rent increases to fifty-five _dollars_.

These moves were not only the right thing to do in themselves, but
evidence that some Democratic Party power brokers correctly understand
that a constituency that desperately wants reforms like these could be
crucial to winning the election. A candidate less likely than Biden to
say “$55” when they mean “5 percent” _might_ be able to
blunt the appeal of Trump and Vance’s cynical reactionary populism
[[link removed]].

Kamala Harris is now the frontrunner for the nomination. As hard as
this is to remember, she once claimed to support Medicare for All
[[link removed]].
Over the course of the 2020 campaign, she moved away from this in
fumbling efforts at triangulation, but she _could_ take the idea up
again.

Trump and Vance are leaning hard into populist rhetoric this year.
Vance’s Republican National Convention speech covered the pain of
communities devastated by deindustrialization, the housing crisis, the
opioid crisis, and more. Lines like “jobs were sent overseas and our
children were sent to war” hit home. When it comes to supporting
policies that would _do_ anything about these problems, it’s all
hot air
[[link removed]].
Trump was a ferociously anti-labor president, and Vance’s
legislative scorecard from the AFL-CIO sits at 0 percent.

But the fake populism taps into very real pain, and that appeal
can’t be countered by insisting that everything is basically fine
and all we need are competent liberal technocrats to sensibly steer
the ship of state.

Even if Harris or some other nominee did embrace a substantively
populist policy agenda, they might well go down to defeat. Too many
voters might dismiss it as empty election-season rhetoric. Harris in
particular might not be a believable messenger. And with barely over a
hundred days until the election, there might just not be enough time
to effectively reframe the election.

But fake populism being countered with policies that
would _actually_ help ordinary workers _could_ give America, and
the world, a chance to avoid whatever’s lurking on the other side of
a Trump victory this November.

FORBES
[[link removed]]
(ALLISON BECK)

_EVERY MAJOR DEMOCRAT ENDORSING KAMALA HARRIS FOR PRESIDENT (FULL
LIST)_

KEY FACTS

Several Democrats who were widely seen as potential Biden replacements
endorsed Harris on Sunday, significantly easing her path to the
party’s nomination: Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro
[[link removed]], California
Gov. Gavin Newsom
[[link removed]], Colorado
Gov. Jared Polis
[[link removed]] and
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg
[[link removed]].

Harris also picked up endorsements from Sen. Mark Kelly
[[link removed]], D-Ariz., and
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper
[[link removed]], whose
names have been floated
[[link removed]] as
possible Harris running mate picks.

Rep. James Clyburn
[[link removed]],
D-S.C., a key Biden ally who helped shore up his 2020 campaign and
former member of the House Democratic leadership, endorsed Harris on
Sunday evening.

Politico
[[link removed]] reports
a large group of current and former Democratic National Convention
delegates have signed a letter
[[link removed]] endorsing
Vice President Kamala Harris, who they favor for her experience as a
prosecutor, as well as her “resolve and fortitude in the face of
racist and sexist attacks by MAGA Republicans.”

Key Democratic donor
[[link removed]] and
tech investor Reid Hoffman (worth an estimated $2.5 billion
[[link removed]]) threw his support
behind Harris, calling her “the right person at the right time” in
a tweet [[link removed]].

Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton published a joint statement to X
[[link removed]] endorsing
Harris, saying the two “are honored to join the President in
endorsing Vice President Harris and will do whatever we can to support
her.”

A handful of key congressional Democratic groups threw their weight
behind Harris, including the Congressional Black Caucus’
[[link removed]] political
action committee
[[link removed]],
and the chairs of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus
[[link removed]] (Rep. Nanette
Barragán [[link removed]],
D-Calif.), the Progressive Caucus (Rep. Pramila Jayapal
[[link removed]],
D-Wash.) and the moderate New Democrat Coalition (Rep. Annie Kuster
[[link removed]], D-N.H.).

Harris picked up endorsements from Sen. Tim Kaine
[[link removed]],
Va., who was the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2016, along
with Sens. Tammy Baldwin
[[link removed]],
D-Wisc., and Elizabeth Warren
[[link removed].],
D-Mass., and Amy Klobuchar
[[link removed]], D-Minn.

The vice president also gained the support of a litany of House
Democrats, including Reps. Maxwell Alejandro Frost
[[link removed]],
Fla., Jerry Nadler
[[link removed]], N.Y., Mark
Pocan [[link removed]],
Wisc., Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
[[link removed]], N.Y., Ilhan Omar
[[link removed]],
Minn., Andy Kim [[link removed]], N.J., Ted Lieu
[[link removed]], Calif.,
and Abigail Spanberger
[[link removed]], Va.

KEY BACKGROUND

Biden announced Sunday afternoon he would not seek reelection in
November after weeks of pressure from more than 30 elected Democrats
for the 81-year-old to drop out of the race . Their calls followed
his poor debate performance
[[link removed]] against
former President Donald Trump last month and numerous speaking gaffes,
including once calling Harris “Vice President Trump.
[[link removed]]” Soon after he
released his first statement, Biden released a second endorsing
Harris, who is seeing mixed results
[[link removed]] in
polls against Trump, though she currently polls better than
lesser-known Democrats to take Biden’s place.

CONTRA

Former President Barack Obama did not endorse Harris
[[link removed]] or
any other candidate on Sunday, instead advocating for an open
nominating process at the Democratic National Convention. He did not
mention the current vice president in his statement, instead writing
that he has, “extraordinary confidence that the leaders of our party
will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee
emerges.”

WHAT TO WATCH FOR

Democrats have a few weeks before they officially choose
[[link removed]] a
presidential nominee. The party’s 4,700 delegates will make their
choice during a roll call vote between Aug. 1 and Aug. 7, including
the 4,000 delegates who were previously slated to vote for Biden. The
Democratic National Convention runs from Aug. 19 until Aug. 22.

WHAT WE DON’T KNOW

Who Harris will pick as her running mate
[[link removed]].
Kelly, a Navy veteran and former astronaut, was the first rumored
candidate so far to endorse Harris, followed by Shapiro and Buttigieg.
Other possible Democrats who could run alongside her include Newsom,
Cooper, Klobuchar, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Michigan Gov. Gretchen
Whitmer and Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga.

TANGENT

The American Federation of Teachers
[[link removed]], United Farm
Workers
[[link removed]] and Service
Employees International Union
[[link removed]] endorsed Harris
Sunday evening. They appear to be the first major unions to endorse
her as a presidential candidate.

MSNBC RACHEL MADDOW

* elections
[[link removed]]
* Joe Biden
[[link removed]]
* Kamala Harris
[[link removed]]
* US Presidency
[[link removed]]

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