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WASHINGTON.- The President Joe Biden’s faltering performance in Thursday night’s debate has led some members of his own party to begin questioning whether he should be replaced on the ballot before November.
There is no evidence that Biden is willing to end his campaign. And it would be difficult for Democrats to replace him Unless you decide to step aside.
This is the procedure:
All states have already held their presidential primaries. Democratic rules require that delegates Biden won remain obligated to support him at the party’s next national convention unless he announces he is dropping out of the race.
Through Biden’s victories in this year’s primaries and caucuses (in a race with virtually no rivals), The president has amassed the support of the vast majority of delegates attending the convention: 3,894 out of 3,937 so far, according to an Associated Press tally. Those delegates would be free to vote for a different candidate if Biden drops out.
Conventions and their rules are controlled by political parties. The Democratic National Committee could meet before the convention begins on August 19 and change how things will work, but that is not likely as long as Biden wants to continue seeking reelection.
The current rules say: “Delegates elected to the national convention who are pledged to a presidential candidate should in good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.”
Biden indicated he had no plans to do that, telling supporters in Atlanta shortly after leaving the debate stage: “Let’s move on.” Biden campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hittwas even clearer and said on Friday: “Of course he won’t quit.”
The fight for a new candidate could lead the party to a complicated and unexplored path that would expose marked ideological differences that Biden’s candidacy has kept at bay so far.
Democrats would face what is known as an “open convention,” an old-fashioned scenario in which the presidential candidate is chosen on the fly, historically with behind-the-scenes negotiations. With the advent of the modern primary system, decades passed since such a convention occurred.
“Biden represents a compromise that holds together the broad and potentially fractured coalition of the Democratic Party,” said Hans Noel, a political science professor at Georgetown University. “Any attempt to find a replacement will put those fractures at the forefront. Finding another candidate that everyone feels comfortable with can be difficult,” he added.
Elaine Kamarck, a political primaries expert who has also been a Democratic delegate multiple times, noted that there is a scenario, albeit an unlikely one, in which Biden refuses to step aside but a challenger emerges to try to convince his delegates to scorn him.
“Someone would have to argue that this would be terrible, that it’s the wrong thing to do, that it’s too old, whatever,” said the senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “So, frankly, probably no one would do it.” It would be extremely destructive”.
The vice president is Biden’s running mate, but that doesn’t mean you can substitute it at the top of the list by default. Biden also cannot decree that she replace him if he suddenly decides to drop out of the race.
The Democratic National Convention will be held in Chicago, but the party has announced it will hold a virtual vote to formally nominate Biden before the in-person process begins. The exact date for that moment has not yet been set.
If Biden chooses to abandon his re-election campaign, Harris would likely join other major Democratic candidates seeking to replace him. But that would create a scenario in which she and others would end up lobbying individual state delegations at the convention to get their support.
This hasn’t happened to Democrats since 1960, when John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson competed for votes during that year’s Democratic convention in Los Angeles.
In addition to the vice president, others who have endorsed Biden in 2024 while harboring their own presidential aspirations for future cycles include the governor of California, Gavin Newsom the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro Illinois Governor, JB Pritzker, and the representative of California Ro Khanna.
Others whom Biden outraised during the party’s 2020 presidential primaries could also try again, including senators Bernie Sanders from Vermont, Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, as well as the Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg.
If Biden were to abruptly drop out of the race, conservative groups have suggested that They will file lawsuits throughout the country, potentially questioning the legality of the Democratic candidate’s name on the ballot.
But Elaine Kamarck, who wrote a book about the presidential nominating process, said that The courts have consistently stayed out of political primaries as usual and when the parties that run them were not doing anything that contradicted other constitutional rights, such as voter suppression based on race.
“It is very clear constitutionally that it is the responsibility of the party,” Kamarck said in an interview before the debate. “The issue of nominating someone to represent a political party is a matter for the political party.”
AP Agency and The Washington Post
THE NATION
