New Worker Editorial Board Statement on Biden Exiting the 2024 Presidential Election
On June 21, 2024—to no one’s surprise—President Joe Biden officially relinquished his nomination as the candidate for the Democratic Party in the upcoming presidential election. Many already expected Biden to drop out following the disastrous debate and his poor showings on various media outlets. The pressure to withdraw flared up even further following the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, with many Democrats seeking to shore up as much support as possible. Leading up to his withdrawal, Biden appeared in an interview on BET News where he spoke for the first time about the possibility of withdrawing in the case of a medical condition. On ABC News, he proclaimed that “only the Lord Almighty” could make him abandon the race, and later at a press conference he said he would only step down if his aides presented him with evidence that he could not win.
Current and former Democratic leaders also began to call for his withdrawal, some even personally attempting to persuade him to do so. Biden's “mega-donors” representatives of Silicon Valley investment funds such as Ron Conway (with investments in over 650 companies, e.g. Airbnb, Digg, Facebook, Google, Reddit, etc.) and Laurene Powell Jobs (widow of the founder of Apple)—also frantically exchanged phone calls, texts, and e-mails, wondering “what are we going to do with Biden” and how can they trigger their sponsorship clauses to have him drop out of the race. Thus, Biden’s final decision comes at a boiling point in an intense intra-bourgeois struggle occurring within the context of the ongoing battle for primacy in the imperialist system between the US and China, a battle which will also decide where the huge accumulated capital will direct its next search for profitable outlets (e.g. Biden for green capitalism, Trump for fossil fuels).
Amidst this conflict, the communists reiterate that the solution does not lie in the “carrot and stick” game of the major parties and all their deceitful methods for aligning the workers and popular forces to the various goals of the bourgeoisie. The only alternative, the only solution, regardless of the nominee for the Republicans and the Democrats, lies in the struggle for the reconstitution of the communist party.