There’s Only One Reason Biden Won’t Drop Out

His campaign’s rationalizations for the status quo don’t add up.

Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Saul Loeb / Getty.
Joe Biden
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Updated at 4:30 p.m. ET on July 6, 2024

Why is Joe Biden still in the presidential race? In the days since his disastrous debate performance last week, pressure on the 81-year-old incumbent to step aside has continued to mount, forcing the candidate and his defenders to put forth elaborate rationales for why the only option is the status quo. One that has gained traction among Biden’s supporters is that the campaign war chest, about $240 million, is his alone—or, at best, could go only to Vice President Kamala Harris.

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On Sunday, Rob Flaherty, Biden’s deputy campaign manager, sent an email to the president’s supporters arguing that a contested convention would be “chaos,” all of which would be “in service of a nominee who would go into a general election in the weakest possible position with zero dollars in their bank account.”

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Jerusalem Demsas is a staff writer at The Atlantic.

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