Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden arrive for an event in the East Room of the White House, May 9, 2024. The 59-year-old Harris was endorsed by Biden on Sunday, July 21, after he stepped aside from the presidential race.Evan Vucci/The Associated Press
With only four months to go before the election, President Joe Biden announced he is ending his reelection bid and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris. Now Democrats must navigate a shift that is unprecedented this late in an election year.
Democrats are set to hold their convention in Chicago on Aug. 19-22. What was supposed to be a coronation for Biden now becomes an open contest in which nearly 4,700 delegates will be responsible for picking a new standard-bearer to challenge Republican Donald Trump in the fall.
The path ahead is neither easy nor obvious, even with Biden endorsing Harris. There are unanswered questions about logistics, money and political fallout.
Why did Biden drop out of the race?
After Biden’s poor performance at the first presidential debate, concerns over the president’s age and mental acuity dominated conversations. During the debate, Biden had trouble forming sentences, trailed off at times and stumbled over his words. He also appeared physically diminished, standing with his mouth agape and speaking in a quiet, raspy voice.
In the weeks since the debate, nearly three dozen Democrats in Congress and five senators publicly called on Biden to bow out. Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi also privately warned Biden that Democrats could lose the ability to seize control of the House if he didn’t step away from the 2024 race, according to several people familiar with the sensitive internal matters.
The political reaction to Biden’s withdrawal from presidential race
Who will replace Biden?
On Sunday, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris (pronounced comma-la) to replace him at the top of the ticket, and other parts of the Democratic Party quickly showed their support.
Nearly 200 congressional Democrats and Democratic governors have endorsed Harris, and she’s won endorsements from the leadership of several influential caucuses and political organizations, including the AAPI Victory Fund, which focuses on Asian American and Pacific Islander voters, The Collective PAC, focused on building Black political power, and the Latino Victory Fund, as well as the chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the entire Congressional Black Caucus.
Before Biden announced his decision, Democrats floated California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer as potential contenders, in addition to Harris. But since Biden’s withdrawal, both Newsom and Whitmer have endorsed Harris.
Some Democrats argued publicly, and many privately, that it would be a no-brainer to elevate Harris, who would be the first woman, first Black woman and first person of south Asian descent to hold national office.
Given how important Black voters – and Black women especially – were to Biden’s nomination and his choice of Harris as running mate, it would be risky, for Democrats to pass her over for a white nominee. Democrats already faced historical headwinds before Biden’s withdrawal.
But Biden’s endorsement does not guarantee Harris’s nomination. Delegates still need to vote for Harris at the Democratic National Convention, and they could still rally around another candidate.
Who could Kamala Harris pick as a running mate?
Although Harris is not been made the formal Democratic presidential nominee, she still needs to begin considering who would be her running mate in a race against Trump and his VP pick, J.D. Vance.
Here’s a look at some of the Democats Harris could consider:
Josh Shapiro: Shapiro, 51, was elected governor of Pennsylvania in 2022 after serving as the state’s attorney general from 2017 until he moved into the governor’s office. Pennsylvania is a must-win state for Democrats, and Shapiro’s stock among Democrats rose after he swamped his Republican opponent in 2022, Doug Mastriano, winning 56 per cent of the vote.
Mark Kelly: The Arizona senator first rose to national prominence after his wife, Rep. Gabby Giffords, survived an assassination attempt in 2011. Kelly, 60, a veteran of the Navy and a former astronaut, began campaigning for stricter gun control. He won his Senate seat in 2020. He has carved out an image as a moderate in Arizona, building a coalition that relied on white women in the suburbs as well as young Latino voters who were crucial in delivering the state to Biden in 2020. That kind of coalition is likely to be essential if Democrats hope to hold on to the White House this year.
Gretchen Whitmer: Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, has been a steady presence for Democrats on the national campaign trail – and a steadfast supporter of Biden – often focusing on abortion rights. Michigan is another crucial battleground state, and Whitmer is popular. She won re-election in 2022 by running as an effective executive and common-sense politician, in a state where the GOP has been taken over by right-wing Republicans.
Gavin Newsom: Newsom, 56, is the governor of California, and has been campaigning aggressively for Biden over the past two years. His name was frequently mentioned as a potential 2028 candidate, or as a successor to Biden, should he drop out. But it seems highly unlikely that he would be Harris’ running mate. First, he is from California, and there is a constitutional hurdle to the president and vice president being from the same state. He would provide no geographic or ideological balance to the ticket.
Andy Beshear: At 46, Beshear is a two-term Democratic governor from Kentucky, a solidly Republican state. When he first won in 2019, his victory was regarded as a fluke. But last year, he won re-election not only by capturing cities, but also small rural counties where he had previously lost. He has emphasized the “common good,” working with Republicans on legislation, including medical cannabis, and often talks about his Christian faith.
Roy Cooper: The North Carolina Governor has won praise from Democrats for his strong focus on economic development and his ability to win relatively strong approval ratings in a politically competitive state. Trump won North Carolina in both 2016 and 2020.
How will the vice presidential nomination work?
The vice presidential nomination is always a separate convention vote. In routine years, the convention ratifies the choice of the nominee. If Harris closes ranks quickly, she could name her choice and have the delegates ratify it. In an extended fight, though, the vice presidency could become part of horse-trading — again, a return to conventions of an earlier era.
What could happen at the Democratic National Convention?
There is no modern precedent for how the Democratic Party will now choose its presidential candidate.
Biden won nearly every state primary and caucus earlier this year. Normally the delegates of those states would vote for Biden to be the party’s official presidential nominee at the Democratic National Convention, which is set to take place Aug. 19-22 in Chicago.
Since current party rules do not permit Biden to force his delegates to vote for another candidate, Harris needs to gain support across almost 4,000 delegates from the states, territories and District of Columbia, plus more than 700 so-called superdelegates that include party leaders, certain elected officials and former presidents and vice presidents.
In order to secure the nomination, Harris would need to get a majority – that is, more votes than all the others combined.
But if the delegates fail to unite behind one candidate and no one achieves a majority, then there would be a brokered convention, in which the delegates act as free agents and negotiate with the party leadership.
This year’s convention has a historical echo of the contentious 1968 convention held after President Lyndon B. Johnson decided not to seek re-election, and following the assassination of one of those seeking to replace him, senator Robert F. Kennedy. The party ultimately nominated Hubert Humphrey, who lost to Richard Nixon.
What would happen at a brokered convention?
During a brokered convention, which is sometimes called an open convention, delegates would choose a nominee on the fly. Rules would be established and there would be roll call votes for names placed into nomination.
It could take several rounds of voting for someone to get a majority and become the nominee. The last brokered convention when Democrats failed to nominate a candidate on the first ballot was in 1952, when four major candidates sought the nomination. Governor Adlai Stevenson II of Illinois was nominated on the third ballot.
What happens to Biden’s campaign money?
Biden’s campaign recently reported $91 million cash on hand. Allied Democratic campaign committees brought the total at his disposal to more than $240 million. Campaign finance experts agree generally that Harris could control all those funds since the campaign was set up in her name as well as Biden’s.
If Democrats do nominate someone other than Harris, party accounts could still benefit the nominee, but the Biden-Harris account would have more restrictions. For example, legal experts say the money could be transferred to a Super PAC, officially known as an independent expenditure political action committee, which could then use the money to finance another nominee.
Can Republicans keep Harris off state ballots?
Any curveball during a U.S. presidential campaign is certain to produce a flurry of state and federal lawsuits, and some conservatives have threatened just that.
State laws, though, typically do not prescribe how parties choose their nominees for president. And some GOP figures – Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey – have worked already this year to ensure their party did not deny Democrats’ routine ballot access.
More reading:
Gary Mason: Kamala Harris’s early momentum shows there’s a path for Democratic recovery
Doug Saunders: Kamala Harris is the Democrats’ best chance at beating Donald Trump
John Ibbitson: Kamala Harris is better for Canada – and the world – than another Trump White House
Debra Thompson: Will the Democrats be undone by the chaos of democracy?
With reports from Nathan Vanderklippe, The New York Times, Associated Press and Reuters