What Clooney wants, Clooney gets. Less than two weeks after George Clooney published an open letter to President Joe Biden, calling on the 81-year-old incumbent and presumptive nominee for the Democratic ticket to drop out, the former Batman got his wish. In a letter on his social media accounts, Biden announced that he would not seek re-election and ride out the remainder of his term from the Oval Office, giving the nation reason to consider the coconut.“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,” he writes.Biden did not endorse Vice President Harris in his initial statement, but in a follow-up, he offered his recommendation.“My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President,” Biden writes. “And it’s been the best decision I’ve made. 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.”Harris accepted Biden's endorsement in a statement earlier today. She praised the President's “selfless and patriotic act," saying he is "putting the American people and our country above everything else."“I am honored to have the President’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination,” she said. “Over the past year, I have traveled across the country, talking with Americans about the clear choice in this momentous election.”“I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic Party—and unite our nation—to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda."It should be noted that, at least from a cursory glance at social media, Democratic voters are excited by the change and have begun buying coconut pills en masse—primarily by way of making remixes of her "coconut tree" speech. Assuming nothing else weird or unprecedented happens between now and the end of the Democratic Nation Convention on August 22, Vice President Harris is the presumptive nominee.And so ends a particularly chaotic period of Democratic politics. Following Biden’s disastrous debate performance in June, the President’s age and cognitive abilities became the story of the election, with big-money donors pushing Democrats to get this guy off the ticket. Thankfully, they didn't ask neo-liberal mythmaker Aaron Sorkin what to do. Earlier today, Sorkin published his “How I Would Script This Moment for Biden and the Democrats” in the New York Times, and it ends as badly as you think. We’ll save you a click: He suggested nominating Mitt Romney.We’re looking forward to tomorrow when all this chaos will feel like it happened six years ago. Let us hope this is the nadir of the election.
