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Hollywood star George Clooney , one of the first high-profile Democratic activists to urge Joe Biden not to seek reelection, on Tuesday announced his backing for Kamala Harris, while hailing Biden's exit.
"President Biden has shown what true leadership is. He's saving democracy once again. We're all so excited to do whatever we can to support Vice President Harris in her historic quest," Clooney said in a statement to CNN.
A major fundraiser for Democratic candidates and longtime Biden booster, Clooney broke ranks two weeks ago by openly calling on the 81-year-old president to give way to a younger candidate so that the party would have a better chance of beating Donald Trump in November.
"I love Joe Biden," Clooney wrote in The New York Times, shocking many. "I consider him a friend, and I believe in him... But the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time."
With Biden at the top of the ticket, the Oscar-winner said, Democrats "are not going to win in November," will lose control of the Senate, and won't gain a majority in the House of Representatives.
After days of mounting pressure, Biden on Sunday abruptly announced he was leaving the race and endorsed his vice president. Harris has rapidly garnered overwhelming support from party leaders and raked in a huge quantity of donations from voters.
US Vice President Kamala Harris appeared poised to clinch her party's presidential nomination after receiving support from enough Democratic delegates Monday, as she launched a blistering campaign against Donald Trump.
The formal nomination process for a US presidential candidate occurs when delegates from across the United States gather to officially anoint a nominee chosen by voters during the primaries.
But when President Joe Biden dropped out of the race on Sunday, the fate of those delegates, who had been slated to vote for him, came into question.
With the support of a slew of Democratic heavyweights, including Biden himself, and massive voter donations, Harris quickly closed in as the Democratic party's heir apparent, and delegates began falling in line to pledge their support.
"Tonight, I am proud to have secured the broad support needed to become our party's nominee," Harris wrote in a statement, after US media reported she had sailed past the number of delegates needed, 1,976 out of nearly 4,000, in order to decisively secure the Democratic presidential nomination during voting in the coming weeks.
The news came after Harris, in her first speech to campaign workers since Biden's announcement, lashed out at Republican nominee Trump on Monday at campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware.
Telling the crowd of workers she had come to address them personally after the "rollercoaster" of the last few days, she reminded them that in her past role as California's chief prosecutor, she "took on perpetrators of all kinds."
"Predators who abused women. Fraudsters who ripped off consumers. Cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump's type," she said to applause.
"We are going to win in November," a smiling Harris told the workers.
She also pledged to focus on the politically explosive issue of abortion, after Trump praised the Supreme Court's 2022 decision to overturn the long-held federal right to the procedure.
Biden, 81, meanwhile made his first public remarks in nearly a week as he recovered from a bout of Covid.
He called in to the campaign meeting to say that dropping out, after mounting party and voter concerns over his health and mental acuity, had been the "right thing to do" and he praised Harris as "the best".
On Tuesday Harris takes her fight against Trump to Milwaukee, Wisconsin where she will hold a rally hoping to bolster her following in the critical swing state.
© Agence France-Presse
