After a debate that Joe Biden barely passed, commentators on US news networks wondered what might happen next. Could there be a contested Democratic convention? How would it work? Replacing the president may not be an option, they said, but many well-known Democrats are talking about it, encouraged by Biden’s poor debate performance.
MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace explained how a candidate could release his delegates. Journalist Joy Reid said someone sent her the rules: “The rules are floating around,” Wallace laughed. “No one is saying it’s going to happen, it’s very unlikely,” Reid reiterated.
Under current Democratic Party rules, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to replace Biden as the party’s nominee without his cooperation or party officials willing to rewrite its rules at the national convention in August.
The president overwhelmingly won Democratic delegates during the state-by-state primary process. And party rules state that “delegates elected to the national convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall conscientiously reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.”
That said, Democratic convention rules are not as strict as Republican ones, which throw out dissenting votes in violation of a delegate’s pledged position.
The fact that a network close to the Democrats addressed the idea of whether a sitting president running for re-election could be replaced after winning the nomination has led Democrats to rush after the debate to reassert Biden’s ability to lead the nation. And many are wondering if the party should seriously consider what else could be done.
From the start, Biden faltered in the debate, the first of the 2024 presidential election. He was hard to hear, mumbling and trailing off his lines, some of which — if delivered with the intended force — might have been successful. He said Donald Trump has “the morals of an alley cat,” but even that line was hard to discern.
Biden had challenged the former president to an earlier-than-normal debate to change the course of the presidential race. Biden had delivered a strong, forceful State of the Union address. And a debate could boost his campaign at a time when polls show him trailing Trump.
Instead of a march to victory, or even the more common back-and-forth over who claims to have won the debate, it was clear that Democrats view Biden’s performance as a liability.
Kamala Harris later appeared on CNN and MSNBC to rebut and reiterate the reasons why voters should side with Biden. Both she and Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, repeatedly talked about how Trump lied and deflected attention throughout the debate, and tried to remind voters what a Trump presidency was like and what it could be like again.
“It was a slow start, there’s no doubt about that, but I think it was a strong finish,” the vice president said on MSNBC before launching into a list of Biden’s accomplishments, saying that Biden fights for the people, while Trump fights for itself.
Newsom, on MSNBC, called the questions “pointless” and “unnecessary.” The conversations are “rabbit holes” that undermine Biden’s record and hinder democracy and the fate of the country. “We have to have this president’s back,” Newsom said. “You don’t turn your back on him for a performance. What kind of party does that?”
The endorsements came as Democratic activists, both in public and behind the scenes, worried about their prospects in November after a debate in which Biden’s age and acuity, his biggest liability, took center stage.
David Plouffe, a Democratic strategist and former Obama campaign official, called the debate “something of a Defcon 1 moment.”
“What worries voters the most in this election, both undecided and grassroots voters, is their age, and that has been exacerbated tonight,” Plouffe said.
Democrats tried to see how they could tip the balance back in Biden’s favor and make voters forget about his debate performance: sending surrogates to support him, putting strong speakers like Harris or Newsom on morning shows, announcing an initiative, an endorsement or a big idea. Anything to change the narrative.
The stakes of this election — the fate of democracy itself — underscore how important Democrats view a victory in November as, and how worried they are that Biden could lose to Trump, who represents an attack on their most basic values.
Maria Shriver, the former first lady of California, said she loves Biden and knows he is a good man, but that the night was “heartbreaking in many ways.” She added: “This is a great political moment. There is panic in the Democratic Party. It’s going to be a long night.”
Nicholas Kristof, a left-wing political columnist, said on Twitter/X that he hopes Biden will reflect on the debate and decide to withdraw from the race, leaving it up to the convention to decide who should be the nominee. He suggested someone like Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer; Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown; or the Secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo [incluso hay quien piensa en la vicepresidenta Harris o la ex primera dama Michelle Obama].
Former Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill said on MSNBC that Biden had a mission and failed to fulfill it: He had to “assure America that he was up to the job at his age, and he failed.”
“Democrats are doing more than privately lamenting and wondering why Biden’s surrogates, who were performing well to counter Biden’s debate performance, are not the ones leading the ticket,” McCaskill said: “I know what “It has felt tonight: like a punch in the gut.”
