Washington DC - President Joe Biden's decision to end his reelection bid is shaking up the 2024 White House race in unprecedented ways as candidates vie for a seat in the Oval Office.

Biden shared the big news of his exit in a letter posted to social media Sunday, announcing he would stand down from the 2024 race to focus on completing his current term.

Pressure had been mounting for the president to step aside after a disastrous debate performance against Republican nominee Donald Trump in June.

The growing concerns over Biden's age and mental acuity came on top of months of mass public demonstrations against his administration's support for Israel amid its brutal attacks on Gaza.

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After Biden dropped his bombshell, questions swirled as to who would replace the incumbent on the ticket. Biden and a host of prominent Democrats quickly endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, who would need to be formally approved by delegates at next month's Democratic National Convention before becoming the nominee.

But candidates outside the two main parties were quick to remind voters that there are other names in the running for the presidency besides Trump and the eventual Democratic candidate.

Here's how the top Independent and third-party contenders have responded to Biden's departure.

After Biden's exit announcement, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called a press conference at his family's compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.

"I want to begin by commending President Biden for a career in public service: a long, long career and representing and serving our country and for his handling of the many difficulties and challenges, personal challenges and tragedies that he suffered during his life with so much admirable conduct and the empathy that he derived from those experiences," Kennedy told reporters.

The Independent candidate, who initially entered the 2024 race as a Democrat, went on to blame the Democratic National Committee (DNC) for obscuring the seriousness of Biden's health issues and obstructing primary challengers.

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"The reaction of the DNC to that obvious condition was to hide it from the American public and to use their power over the Democratic Party nomination process to make sure that nobody could compete with President Biden in a way that would expose his deficiencies, and as a result, we are where we are today, which is in a period of crisis," he said.

Kennedy went on to slam the "corporate capture" of both establishment parties.

"President Trump has a connection to the American people, a populist connection," explained Kennedy. "But in many ways, it's the same fraudulent connection that we saw with the DNC over the past year, concealing the real purpose of their objectives, which was to give us a president that represents corporate interests rather than the interests of the American public."

Kennedy described himself as the only candidate in the 2024 race able to beat Trump, unify Americans, and deliver change.

The Green Party's Dr. Jill Stein issued a scathing response to Biden's exit announcement, hinting at mounting frustration over US support for Israel's assault on the people of Gaza as well as Democratic Party suppression of third-party challengers.

"Joe Biden has been removed from power by the same anti-democratic forces that rigged the field for him in 2020 & skipped the primary to anoint him in 2024," she posted on X.

"Don't be fooled. The same DNC elites that put him in power will replace him with another tool for Wall Street and the war machine," she continued.

"We will continue to fight oligarchy, empire and genocide like our lives depend on it. Because in fact they do."

Claudia De la Cruz, presidential candidate with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, warned against accepting a new Democratic nominee and laid out an alternative vision for the country.

"We're so glad to see Joe Biden go, but who is Kamala Harris?" De la Cruz asked in a video shared to social media, before going on to lay out the vice president's track record as a California prosecutor.

"Kamala supported policies that are key to mass incarceration, specifically impacting Black and brown communities. She supported and enforced truancy laws that threatened and criminalized parents. Kamala is an avid supporter of the death penalty and fought in support of prison labor, effectively a form of slavery," the third-party candidate said.

"As vice president, she has been instrumental in the Democrats' attack on immigrant communities, especially the cruel practices at the border," she continued. "And we cannot forget that Kamala similarly to Biden are collaborators in the genocide against the Palestinian people."

"Changing the face of the Democratic Party will not bring about a real transformation for working-class people, and it will not defeat the far right. It's been proven: we need solutions that meet the scale of the problems. We cannot continue to deal with the symptoms. We need to uproot capitalism."

Independent presidential candidate Dr. Cornel West slammed Biden's support for Israel following the exit announcement.

"As I predicted last year, brother Biden has had his LBJ moment and he is now out of the race! Despite the lies of his fellow Democrats, he was not a great or excellent president. He was first and foremost an enabler of genocide in Gaza, with over 15,000 Palestinian children murdered!" West posted on X.

The philosopher, theologian, and activist sees little chance of substantive change if Kamala Harris takes the helm.

"The same cold-hearted rich donors will now shift to sister Harris or someone else with the same policies that neglect poor and working people!" he predicted.

"We deserve better than Trump’s neofascist project and the Democratic Party’s militaristic agenda!"

The Libertarian Party's presidential nominee Chase Oliver also issued a response to Biden's unprecedented dropout.

"I look forward to competing against whoever replaces President Biden as the Democrat nominee. They may be younger than Biden, but their policies will still be taking America in the wrong direction of more deficits, more instability, and more state control over our lives," Oliver wrote on X.

"If Democrats truly care about democracy, they will include myself and Mike ter Maat in the upcoming debates," he added in reference to his running mate.

"Anything less is hypocrisy."

The general election for president is on November 5, 2024. The nominee to replace Biden on the Democratic ticket will be selected at the party's national convention in Chicago, scheduled for August 19-22.