2024 - Biden Exits Race in Unprecedented Election Upheaval

On July 21, 2024, President Joe Biden ended his campaign for a second term, becoming the first incumbent president to withdraw from a re-election race since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968. The 81-year-old president's decision came less than a month after a televised debate with Donald Trump that had sent his party into what one publication called "the Biden crisis." Within minutes of his announcement, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to take his place—launching one of the most compressed and unusual presidential campaigns in modern American history.

The withdrawal marked a stunning reversal for a president who, just weeks earlier, had insisted that only "the Lord Almighty" could convince him to leave the race. Biden had dominated the Democratic primaries, easily defeating challengers like Representative Dean Phillips to secure the party's presumptive nomination. Yet in a single 90-minute debate on June 27, concerns that had simmered throughout his presidency exploded into an intra-party crisis that would ultimately force his hand.

The Debate That Changed Everything

Biden's confrontation with Trump on June 27, 2024, was described by Politico as a "disaster." From the moment the president began speaking in a "haltingly hoarse voice," alarm bells rang among Democrats. He appeared confused and disoriented, struggled to defend his economic record, and repeatedly mixed up "billion" and "million." When he wasn't speaking, observers noted, he "stood frozen behind his podium, mouth agape, his eyes wide and unblinking for long stretches of time."

The performance reinforced what polls had already shown: that 86% of voters had major or moderate concerns about Biden's age and health. At 78 when he took office, Biden had been the oldest person ever to assume the presidency—older at his inauguration than Ronald Reagan had been when leaving office. A February 2024 special counsel report had described him as an "elderly man with poor memory" with "significant limitations," and most Americans who had voted for him in 2020 now believed he was too old to be effective.

"The alarm bells for Democrats started ringing the second Biden started speaking in a haltingly hoarse voice... He repeatedly mixed up 'billion' and 'million,' and found himself stuck for long stretches of the 90-minute debate playing defense."

A Party in Panic

The aftermath was swift and brutal. The word "Joever"—a portmanteau of Joe and over, originally coined in a 2020 meme—surged across social media and into mainstream media stories. Representative Lloyd Doggett of Texas became the first sitting Democrat in Congress to publicly call for Biden to withdraw, saying on July 2 that Biden could "put the country first by putting himself aside."

Biden attempted to steady the ship. In a July 5 interview with ABC News's George Stephanopoulos, he defiantly declared he wouldn't end his candidacy unless "the Lord Almighty came down and said, 'Joe, get out of the race.'" He added: "The Lord Almighty's not coming down." On July 3, twenty Democratic governors met with Biden to discuss the debate's fallout, with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz admitting it had been "a bad performance" and "a bad hit."

But the calls for his withdrawal only intensified. By July 19, more than 30 senior Democrats had publicly urged him to step aside. Behind the scenes, The Wall Street Journal reported that Biden's team had been limiting his schedule, media appearances, and unscripted exchanges since as early as 2021 to minimize concerns about his mental acuity. The pressure had become unsustainable.

The Decision and the Endorsement

When Biden's announcement came on July 21, it carried echoes of Johnson's 1968 withdrawal during the Vietnam War—another moment when a sitting president concluded he could not unite his party. Biden stated he would continue serving as president for the remainder of his term, but immediately endorsed Kamala Harris as his replacement. The vice president, already a historic figure as the first female, first African American, and first Asian American vice president, quickly launched her own campaign.

Harris's candidacy represented a dramatic shift. At 59, she offered the generational change that Representative Dean Phillips had called for during his own short-lived primary challenge. Phillips had been ridiculed publicly for suggesting Biden should step aside, but privately, as events would prove, many Democrats had shared his concerns. Now Harris would have to mount a presidential campaign with just months until Election Day.

An Ending Already Written

Harris officially became the Democratic Party's presidential nominee and selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz—the same governor who had defended Biden after the debate—as her running mate. Yet the compressed timeline and the circumstances of Biden's withdrawal would prove insurmountable obstacles. On November 5, 2024, Harris and Walz lost to the Republican ticket of Donald Trump and Ohio Senator JD Vance, returning Trump to the White House for a second term.

Biden's withdrawal had been unprecedented in modern politics. While Franklin Pierce had been denied his party's nomination at the convention in the 1850s, and several vice presidents who assumed office after a president's death had failed to secure nominations, no elected president seeking a second term had voluntarily withdrawn so late in the process since Johnson. Biden's decision reshaped the 2024 race—but it could not change its outcome.

Only one elected U.S. president, Franklin Pierce in the 1850s, has ever been denied his party's nomination at a convention while running for a second term. The word "Joever," used widely after Biden's debate performance, was originally created as a meme on the 4chan imageboard in 2020, four years before it became shorthand for his political fate.