(New York) Three days after causing a political earthquake by withdrawing from the race for the White House, Joe Biden presented his historic decision as the best way to unite his country and defend American democracy.
The octogenarian president also said that the time had come “for new voices, fresh voices and, yes, younger voices.”
“I revere this office, but I love my country more,” Biden said, addressing his fellow citizens from the Oval Office in an 11-minute address that was at once solemn, resigned and at times hesitant.
“Nothing can stand in the way of preserving our democracy. Including personal ambition. So I decided that the best way forward was to pass the torch to a new generation. That is the best way to unite our nation,” he added.
It was Biden’s first speech since testing positive for COVID-19 on July 17. After isolating at his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, he returned to the White House on Tuesday.
In discussing his accomplishments as president, Biden suggested that those records should have earned him a second term. But “nothing can stand in the way of preserving our democracy,” he said, implicitly admitting that he would have lost the 2024 presidential election.
PHOTO EVAN VUCCI, ASSOCIATED PRESS
US President Joe Biden
Nearly a month after his pitiful performance in the first presidential debate, Joe Biden has failed to address the issue of his declining cognitive and physical abilities. His performance had sown panic within his party and led dozens of Democratic lawmakers to call for his withdrawal.
However, he assured that he intends to finish his term and continue fighting for his ideas.
“Over the next six months, I will focus on my job as president. That means continuing to cut costs for hardworking families and growing our economy. I will continue to defend our individual freedoms and civil rights, whether it’s the right to vote or the right to choose,” he added.
He also promised to work for the reform of the Supreme Court and an end to the war in the Gaza Strip.
A note of emotion
The scope of the speech did not allow him to make partisan remarks. He did, however, praise Kamala Harris, whom he endorsed minutes after she announced her withdrawal from the White House race on Sunday.
“She’s experienced, she’s strong, she’s capable,” he said.
Nor did he refer explicitly to the November 5 election. But he made it clear to Americans that the future of American democracy belongs to them.
“The great thing about America is that here, kings and dictators don’t rule,” he said. “The people rule. History is in your hands. Power is in your hands. The idea of America is in your hands.”
America will have to choose between forward and backward, between hope and hate, between unity and division.
Joe Biden, President of the United States
After beginning his speech by mentioning the portraits of the great presidents that adorn the Oval Office, from George Washington to Franklin D. Roosevelt, including Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, Joe Biden concluded it with emotion by recalling the disability that marked his youth and followed him throughout his life.
“Nowhere else on earth would a stuttering kid from a humble background in Scranton and Claymont ever be able to sit behind the presidential desk in the Oval Office of the White House. But here I am. That’s what makes America special,” said the 46e president.
Joe Biden’s speech is expected to put an end to a number of conspiracy theories. Since the beginning of the week, Republican lawmakers have repeated that the president’s “disappearance” was part of a “coup d’état” orchestrated by “Democratic elites.”
Harris on campaign
According to a CNN-SSRS poll released Wednesday, 90% of Democratic voters approve of Joe Biden stepping down and 70% of all voters agree that he should serve out his term.
Still, Republican lawmakers and commentators are accusing Democratic leaders, including Kamala Harris, of covering up the president’s health. The accusation could hurt the vice president during her campaign.
PHOTO DARRON CUMMINGS, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Vice President Kamala Harris speaking in Indianapolis on Wednesday
In the hours before the president’s address, Kamala Harris made her second campaign trip in two days. The vice president traveled to Indianapolis to address a group of almost exclusively African-American women who are members of the historically black Zeta Phi Beta sorority.
She defined the presidential election as a fight between “two different visions for our nation, one looking to the past, the other to the future.”
She warned the audience of about 6,000 about “Project 2025,” a conservative political program that is independent of Donald Trump’s campaign but counts among its creators many former aides to the Republican presidential candidate.
The crowd erupted into boos at the mere mention of the platform, which calls for a national abortion ban, abolishing the Department of Education and eliminating efforts to combat climate change, among other things.
“Can you believe they wrote that down?” Harris said, bursting into laughter.
Trump attacks Harris
Her trip to Indianapolis served as a pretext to explain her absence, as president of the Senate, during the speech of the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, before the American Congress.
An absence that Donald Trump denounced early in the evening during a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he did not hold back a single blow against his new Democratic rival.
“She distances herself from Israel,” the former president said, prompting boos from the crowd. “She is completely opposed to the Jewish people,” he added of the Democrat who has been married since 2014 to Doug Emhoff, a Jewish lawyer.
He also called the vice president a “radical” and a “socialist.”
If you want a socialist healthcare system, nation-destroying inflation, the death of American energy, and a lying, radical leftist extremist from San Francisco as your commander in chief, then Kamala Harris is your candidate. She is the one you want.
Donald Trump, Republican candidate for the American presidential election
In his attacks of rare violence, Donald Trump baselessly accused Kamala Harris of wanting to promote the “execution of babies.” “She wants abortions in the eighth and ninth month of pregnancy, up until birth and even after birth, the execution of babies,” the Republican candidate said.
“She will destroy our country,” he said, before giving the vice president a new nickname: “Kamala the liar.”
The rules now known
For its part, the Democratic National Committee announced on Wednesday the rules that should lead to the nomination of Kamala Harris as presidential candidate in early August.
Any candidate seeking the party’s nomination has until July 30 to demonstrate that he or she has met the criteria, including securing the support of 300 delegates, including no more than 50 from a single state.
If no candidate other than Kamala Harris meets the criteria, delegates will begin voting online on October 1.er August. If another candidate fills them, voting will begin on August 7.
The vice-president’s entourage also indicated that she would announce her running mate no later than August 7.
With Agence France-Presse