"Thank God' Democratic voters' relief at withdrawal

For many Democratic swing state voters, Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the 2024 presidential election came as a relief.

- Alice Herman

“Oh thank God,” said Cathy Gramze, a retired nurse who lives in the suburbs of Detroit. “My diagnosis has for a long time been that he cannot run again and I am not entirely sure that he should finish his term in office.”

Gramze had worried about Biden’s fitness long before the debate. His 27 June performance merely confirmed what she had long feared. “A lot of the time he is the president we need, but some of the time he isn’t.”

Kamala Harris, whom Biden endorsed on Sunday and who has won the backing of most prominent Democratic elected officials, "needs to be the presidential nominee", Gramze said.

For more than a year, voters across the political spectrum said they felt Biden, 81, was too old to run for re-election. Those anxieties increased in the wake of his first debate with Donald Trump, in which Trump lied repeatedly and Biden struggled to push back or even answer questions coherently.