It’s Joever: Biden Drops Out of 2024 Presidential Race

President Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 race on Sunday, caving to increasing concerns over his age and ability to take on another four years in arguably the world’s most critical and tenuous position.

“Over the past three and a half years, we have made great progress as a Nation,” Biden wrote in a statement, citing victories in lowering prescription drug costs, expanding affordable health care, helping veterans, passing “the first gun safety law in 30 years,” and appointing the first African American woman to the Supreme Court.

“I know none of this could have been done without you, the American people,” the statement read. “It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President. And 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 the remainder of my term.”

In a follow-up tweet, Biden announced he is endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president.

“My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best decision I’ve made,” he said. “Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats—it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.”

The president has effectively opened up the Democratic Party’s nominating process to a near-total free for all, just four months out from the presidential election.

Top Democratic contenders for the final leg of the race include Harris, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Maryland Governor Wes Moore, and Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, all of whom outperformed Biden in polling match-ups against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Conversation around whether Biden would exit quickly overtook his campaign after a disastrous debate performance against Trump in June. During the match-up, the 81-year-old Biden shocked the nation by repeatedly losing his train of thought, forgetting the softball questions tossed to him, and utterly failing to challenge Trump by any measure of the word.

This story has been updated.

Senator Chris Coons, the national co-chair of Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, said on Friday that the president was “weighing” the viability of his candidacy as more and more elected Democrats call for him to step aside.

“This is an internal party matter and a matter of the campaign that is playing out very publicly,” Coons said at the Aspen Security Forum, an annual security and foreign policy conference, according to The Hill. “I think our president is weighing what he should weigh, which is: Who is the best candidate to win in November and to carry forward the Democratic Party’s values and priorities in this campaign?”

The Delaware Democrat was effusive about Biden’s “exceptional presidency,” and lauded him for his performance during last week’s NATO Summit. “He chaired … meeting after meeting, three days of the NATO summit—strongest NATO has ever been—did a press conference, did campaign events, did campaign rallies, and there are folks still saying he’s not strong enough or capable enough to be our next president. I disagree,” Coons said.

Shortly after speaking, Coons reaffirmed his support for Biden in a post on X, formerly Twitter. “I fully support the President. He’s told me he’s in it to win it,” Coons wrote. “I’m with him 100% because I know he can beat Trump just like he did last time.”

Biden, who remains in isolation after being diagnosed with Covid-19 earlier this week, has made no indication that he intends to withdraw. But he’s reportedly grown “more receptive” to concerns about his reelection chances and has begun some serious “soul searching.”

Meanwhile, on Friday alone, a whopping 11 congressional Democrats called for Biden to drop out of the 2024 presidential race, including Representatives Gabe Vasquez of New Mexico, Kathy Castor of Florida, Morgan McGarvey of Kentucky, Greg Landsman of Ohio, Betty McCollum of Minnesota, Zoe Lofgren of California, Jared Huffman of California, Marc Veasey of Texas, Chuy Garcia of Illinois, Marc Pocan of Wisconsin, and Sean Casten of Illinois.

Also on Friday, New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich became the third senator to call for the president to withdraw.

The CrowdStrike-Microsoft outage has left countless disruptions across the world, including the cancellation of more than 2,500 U.S. flights, issues with 911 systems and government agencies, and countless headaches for IT workers.

Naturally, the right wing is blaming corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion principles, better known as DEI.

Early Friday morning, Twitter CEO Elon Musk found an old CrowdStrike post from 2022 highlighting diversity with a picture of a woman wearing a hijab and took a shot at DEI.

Steve Guest, a former staffer for Senator Ted Cruz, looked up the company’s statement on diversity, equity, and inclusion and blamed the company for grounding flights.

Conservative pundit Steven Crowder attacked one of the company’s posts about Pride Month from June.

Right-wing election fraud conspiracist and pardoned felon Dinesh D’Souza also took aim at the company’s statement.

And the right’s point man on tearing down America’s education system, Christopher Rufo, similarly saw something nefarious in the company’s DEI efforts.

American conservatives blame everything on DEI these days, whether it’s the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, the rise in train derailments, or even Republican election losses. To them, every negative event somehow is because there are minorities, women, and queer people having jobs.

However, while the right might see all of the damning evidence on display, is CrowdStrike really committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion? The makeup of its board of directors suggests that it only goes so far.

A Massachusetts congressman who describes President Joe Biden as a “mentor and friend” says that Biden should step down. In an op-ed in The Boston Globe Friday, Representative Seth Moulton recounted how Biden appeared to not recognize him at an event last month.

Moulton came clean about the troubling interaction after previously calling for Biden to step down July 4. “I saw him in a small group at Normandy for the eightieth anniversary of D-Day. For the first time, he didn’t seem to recognize me,” wrote Moulton. “It was a crushing realization, and not because a person I care about had a rough night but because everything is riding on Biden’s ability to beat Donald Trump in November.”

On Friday, nine more lawmakers publicly called on Biden to drop out, including, notably, the first member of the Congressional Black Caucus, Marc Veasey.

But Moulton isn’t just a random House Democrat. The politician from Massachusetts’ 6th congressional district said his previous relationship with Biden was warm, with breakfasts, phone calls, and smiles from across the hall. “I have treasured him as a mentor and friend,” wrote Moulton.

Moulton warned that the change he has seen both interpersonally with Biden and on the national debate stage calls for action from his fellow politicians. “The harsh reality is that all the characteristics that have made Biden an irrepressible force—the energy, the vitality, the sharp, scrappy wit—are flickering.”

In order for Democrats to win the election, Moulton said, Biden must go. “Just as Republicans need to find the courage to speak out against Trump, my fellow Democrats need to find the courage to speak the truth about President Biden before it’s too late.”

It seems that nobody told Senator J.D. Vance about how privacy settings work on social media. Around the same time his Venmo account—with its friends list loaded with conservative elites—was uncovered, the Daily Dot reported that it discovered what appears to be his Spotify account.

Slate separately reached out to Vance’s office to confirm the authenticity of the account, but the outlet never heard back. But the Spotify account features the same photo as his private Facebook profile, which is common for users who sign up for the music streaming platform through Facebook.

While Vance’s friends list on Venmo included scholars who promote fascism and conservative think tank cronies, his Spotify account follows Imagine Dragons, Rage Against the Machine, and one woman who appears to have graduated from Yale law school the same year as the Ohio senator.

Another reason to believe it could be him is that one of the playlists, titled “Morning Has Broken,” contains what he once said was his favorite song: Merry Go ’Round by Kacey Musgraves.

He has several playlists that go back all the way to 2012, when he paired Justin Bieber with some Christmas songs on a playlist called “Making Dinner.” His most recent public playlist, put together in 2014, seems to have every song by Rockabye Baby! which produces lullaby covers of popular music by artists such as The White Stripes and Elton John, presumably for his kids, Ewan, Vivek, and Mirabel, to jam out to.

Exactly why the Republican nominee for vice president has allowed his public digital footprint to grow so large is unclear. It could possibly be because he is a political novice, or perhaps he’s trying to seem like an average American. At least, that’s what the mellow tunes of his laid-back morning playlist would suggest. But to be clear, Vance is far from an everyman.

The bestselling author had his rise to power bankrolled by right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel and a network of tech billionaires in Silicon Valley. He has ties to the “new right,” a movement of autocratic populists, and Christian nationalists who pass themselves off as the intellectual vanguard of the conservative movement. Despite unleashing strong condemnations of Donald Trump, Vance has slowly grafted himself to the former president—and now he’s his right-hand man.

But hey, he can still put together a decent playlist, so that’s nice.