President Joe Biden announced that he will be dropping out of the 2024 presidential race after intense public pressure from Democratic lawmakers and liberal commentators following his disastrous presidential-debate performance last month, a dramatic shake-up to the electoral landscape with only months to go until votes are cast.

Biden posted a statement on X, declaring his intention to drop out of the presidential race after seemingly having decided that he is not the Democratic Party’s best candidate to defeat former president Donald Trump this November. He did not endorse a replacement to top the presidential ticket.

Now a lame-duck president, Biden, 81, will serve the remaining months of his single presidential term. His political career, which has spanned five decades, will likely be defined by his decision to bow out of the presidential reelection contest.

Before stepping aside, Biden and his aides vigorously defended his mental acuity but failed to convince the public. Poll after poll found that most Americans believed Biden’s age presented a serious concern, and his decline became increasingly noticeable with each public appearance.

In February, special counsel Robert Hur observed Biden’s memory issues in his final report on the investigation into whether Biden had mishandled classified documents as a private citizen. Although Hur concluded that Biden “willfully” mishandled classified materials, he did not recommend criminal charges, in large part because he did not believe Biden was fit to stand trial.

When Hur’s report came out, Democrats leaped to his defense and claimed that Hur was a right-wing partisan who unnecessarily editorialized throughout the final report. Only after Biden’s horrendous debate showing last month did Democrats finally begin discussing publicly the problem posed by Biden’s advanced age.

Throughout the presidential debate, Biden coughed, stumbled over his words, lost his train of thought, whispered into the microphone, appeared outright confused, and rambled incoherently. Immediately, Democrats and their media allies began discussing the possibility of removing Biden from the presidential ticket. Leaks began pouring through the mainstream press, undeterred by the Fourth of July holiday celebration the week after the debate.

As pressure mounted on Joe Biden, his inner circle shrank to only a few trusted aides and family members, with troubled son Hunter becoming his father’s de-facto chief of staff and First Lady Jill Biden remaining her husband’s strongest advocate.

Biden tried to stem the tide with campaign rallies, prime-time interviews, and radio appearances, all of which simply added to the pressure on him to resign. Last week, at the end of the NATO summit in Washington, D.C., Biden delivered a high-profile press conference billed as a do-or-die moment for his political life. Although Biden stumbled, coughed, whispered, rambled, and slipped up, his performance at the press conference was not enough to serve as the final nail in the coffin.

More than two dozen Democratic lawmakers publicly called for Biden to drop out, and many others voiced concerns privately. Other top Democratic lawmakers leapt to Biden’s defense, especially those in the Congressional Black Caucus.

For a moment, the conversation around Biden was overshadowed by the failed assassination attempt against Trump, and the Republican National Convention that followed. Nonetheless, lawmakers continued calling for Biden to drop out, and leaks of private conversations among Democratic heavyweights kept apace.

Undeterred, a slew of Democratic lawmakers urged Biden to resign on Friday, the day after the GOP convention wrapped up, as Biden was isolated at his Delaware beach house following a positive Covid-19 test. His campaign surrogates continued to insist that he would return to the campaign trail and be the Democratic nominee.

The desire to replace Biden was not solely confined to Democratic power brokers, as a recent poll found that almost two-thirds of Democrats wanted a different presidential nominee. At the same time, swing-state polls found Biden’s deficit against Trump mounting, an issue that campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon publicly acknowledged on Friday.

Biden won 99 percent of the party’s delegates in a largely uncontested primary contest against Representative Dean Phillips (D., Minn.) and author Marianne Williamson. It’s unclear who the Democratic nominee is going to be, but Vice President Kamala Harris is the presumptive favorite. Next month, the Democratic convention is set to take place in Chicago, the site of its famously chaotic convention in 1968, and this time around, party infighting looms large again.

Conversations will surely be had about Biden’s political legacy over his decades-long senate tenure and vice presidency under former president Barack Obama. Most of all, Biden will be remembered for his four year tenure in the Oval Office and the turbulence that came along with it.