Biden defends waiting until last minute to drop out of 2024 US election

Former U.S. President Joe Biden defended his decision to drop out of the 2024 presidential election just a few months before the crucial November vote, claiming it wouldn’t have changed anything if he’d called it quits sooner.

Biden has been criticized for announcing his withdrawal too late, giving his Vice President Kamala Harris — who became the Democratic nominee in his stead and ultimately lost to Republican opponent Donald Trump — just a few months to campaign.

“I don’t think it would’ve mattered,” he told BBC Radio 4 Today in an interview broadcast Wednesday, his first since leaving office, when asked if he should have ended his candidacy earlier.

Describing his administration as a “transition government,” his presidency was “so successful” that “it was hard to say, now I’m going to stop,” Biden said.

“Things moved so quickly that it made it difficult to walk away,” he said.

After a disastrous debate performance against Trump in June inflamed already swirling concerns about his age and health, Biden faced public pressure to withdraw from fellow Democrats, including powerful Democratic party figure Nancy Pelosi, the former house speaker.

Despite repeatedly vowing not to leave the race, he announced on July 21, just 106 days before the election, that he would no longer seek reelection, becoming the first incumbent president since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968 to do so.

Calling it “a hard decision” to take his name off the ticket, it was nevertheless the “right” one, he told the BBC, adding it would not have “made much difference” if he had dropped out sooner.

Harris’ campaign leadership told American political podcast Pod Save America last November that they did not have enough time to come up with a strategy to defeat Trump.

“There was a price to be paid for the short campaign,” David Plouffe, a senior Harris campaign adviser, said.