President Biden announced Sunday that he is dropping out of the 2024 presidential race, a seismic event that will leave Democrats scrambling to select his replacement just weeks before their convention.
"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 my term," Mr. Biden posted in a statement on social media.
Mr. Biden said he would address the nation later this week.
Never before has a sitting president and presumptive nominee dropped out of the race so late in the process, and Mr. Biden's decision to do so underscores the severity of the crisis that enveloped his campaign after his disastrous debate performance against former President Donald Trump, his Republican rival, in late June.
In the days following the debate, a growing chorus of Democrats openly expressed concern over the president's health and mental state, his ability to defeat Trump in November and his capacity to lead the country for four more years. The pressure to step aside steadily increased as Democratic lawmakers and governors went days without hearing from Mr. Biden directly, allowing questions about his future to swirl within the party ranks. And a growing number of Democrats on Capitol Hill publicly called for him to step aside.
In the weeks since the debate, the president tried to push back, insisting in a series of public appearances and meetings with Democratic elected officials that he was committed to staying in the race. "I'm not going anywhere," he vowed. But even longtime allies began to urge him to change course.
The pressure eventually became insurmountable, with top Democrats in Congress telling Mr. Biden that he should step aside and allow a replacement to face off against Trump in November.
Mr. Biden is the first sitting president who is eligible for reelection to decline to run again since President Lyndon Johnson stepped aside the spring before the 1968 election. Johnson's vice president, Hubert Humphrey, won the Democratic nomination that year and lost to Richard Nixon.
Only a handful of first-term presidents in American history have not sought a second term, the last being Rutherford B. Hayes, who declined to run again in the 1880 election. James Buchanan and James Polk also chose not to seek the presidency a second time. Calvin Coolidge, who assumed the presidency in 1923 after the death of Warren Harding, won his own term in 1924 and declined to seek another full term four years later.
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