WASHINGTON — For the past year, the presidential campaign seemed destined to be a monotonous slog featuring two candidates, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, that voters didn’t really want.
But that all changed on a quiet Sunday afternoon just 107 days before the election, AP reported.
Biden’s decision to drop out of the race and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor resets the campaign with a swiftness that is unparalleled in modern American politics.
Once a contest between two elderly white men, the election will likely force Trump to contend with the much younger Harris, who was consolidating support among Democrats and would be the first woman of color atop a major party’s ticket.
“It shakes things up entirely,” said Dan Pfeiffer, a former adviser to President Barack Obama. “It turns everything on its head.”
The crumbling of Biden’s reelection effort, which began with his shaky debate performance last month, has left both parties scrambling. Although no one has stepped forward to challenge Harris for the Democratic nomination, she still faces the unprecedented challenge of taking over a campaign only four weeks before the party gathers in Chicago for its convention.
At the same time, Trump must pivot his focus to Harris after designing his campaign for a rematch with Biden. Trump’s team claimed they were prepared to run against the vice president, and Republicans stepped up their criticism during the party’s convention last week in Milwaukee.
However, Trump himself expressed disappointment that “we have to start all over again” with the campaign. He mused on Truth Social, his social media platform, that Republicans should be “reimbursed for fraud” for all the money they’ve spent running against Biden.
The shakeup in the presidential race came after an extraordinarily tumultuous month in American politics, starting with an unusually early debate between Biden and Trump.
The June 27 showdown catalyzed concerns that Biden, 81, was too old for a second term.
As Democrats pushed to dislodge him from the top of the ticket, Trump barely survived an assassination attempt on July 13 during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Then, on Sunday, Biden bowed to pressure within his party to step aside. He swiftly endorsed Harris, who is the first woman, Black person and person of South Asian descent to serve as vice president.
The breakneck developments left the political world gasping for breath as everyone tried to reorient themselves to a new reality.
Discussion about this post