Biden’s exit galvanizes Democrats – but the road remains rocky

President Joe Biden’s Sunday announcement that he won’t seek reelection this fall, and his subsequent endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris, triggered a political earthquake with just 107 days until the election. The news instantly energized and relieved Democrats, many of whom appeared ready to rally around the vice president rather than risk further damaging chaos in what’s suddenly become a brand-new race.

But whether it’s Vice President Harris or someone else, no candidate in the modern era has ever started this late and won the presidency. They will start the race without the hard-won support that comes with earning a nomination. And they will be tasked with defeating a former president who never stopped running for office after exiting the White House and whose recent survival from an assassination attempt has further galvanized his party behind him.

This is the first time in decades that one of the two major parties hasn’t had a clear nominee this close to the election. And it’s the first time since 1968 that a sitting president has opted not to run for reelection.

Why We Wrote This

Democrats appear eager to unify around a new standard-bearer after weeks of damaging public infighting. But they are heading into uncharted territory.

President Joe Biden is suddenly no longer Democrats’ standard-bearer. The question now is whether they can do any better without him.

Mr. Biden’s Sunday announcement that he won’t seek reelection this fall, and his subsequent endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris, triggered a political earthquake with just 107 days until the election. The news instantly energized and relieved Democrats, many of whom appeared ready to rally around the vice president rather than risk further damaging chaos in what’s suddenly become a brand-new race. 

But whether it’s Vice President Harris or someone else, no candidate in the modern era has ever started this late and won the presidency. They will start the race without the hard-won support that comes with earning a nomination. And they will be tasked with defeating a former president who never stopped running for office after exiting the White House and whose recent survival from an assassination attempt has further galvanized his party behind him. 

Why We Wrote This

Democrats appear eager to unify around a new standard-bearer after weeks of damaging public infighting. But they are heading into uncharted territory.

President Biden finally decided to end his campaign, with a letter posted on the social media site X, after a month of agonizing uncertainty for both him and his party. His June 27 debate disaster, where he fumbled over his words and appeared much frailer than even a few months earlier, set off panic within the party. For the first time, it opened up public chatter from Democratic leaders about whether he should step aside. 

In the weeks that followed, the Biden campaign’s attempts to quell the panic backfired. Mr. Biden took nearly a week to reach out to senior congressional Democrats, and performed unevenly in interviews and events that followed. Donors backed away, polls showed most Democratic voters wanted him to leave, and more than 30 congressional Democrats publicly called for him to step aside. Democratic leaders privately ramped up pressure on him to drop out, an orchestrated effort to convince him to exit the race that eventually forced his hand.

“There are folks who literally attempted to bury Joe Biden politically alive, and his demise is because of the onslaught of people… that pressed this case forward in such a public manner,” said one former Biden White House official. “He couldn’t have survived this if he wanted to.”

Can Harris grow her support?

Polls have long shown that both Mr. Biden and former President Donald Trump were disliked by solid majorities of voters. While surveys don’t indicate Ms. Harris is any more popular, she’s significantly less defined than her outgoing boss – a chance for both sides to shake things up.

“I am honored to have the president’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination,” Vice President Harris said in a statement. 

Ms. Harris, a former prosecutor, proved adept at flaying her targets during Senate hearings and on the debate stage. The best moment of her failed 2020 primary campaign was when she attacked Mr. Biden for name-checking a segregationist lawmaker.

She’s also Black and Indian American, a 59-year-old Gen-Xer with a penchant for Converse All-Stars and a love of hip hop, who presents a clear generational contrast. Mr. Trump is a 78-year-old white Baby Boomer whose personally curated rally playlist leans heavily on golden oldies like the Rolling Stones.

Democrats hope that by shedding their 81-year-old president for a candidate of a younger generation, they can now draw a clear age contrast. Mr. Biden’s exit now makes Mr. Trump the oldest major-party nominee in U.S. history.

Mr. Trump’s Republican National Convention speech on Friday raised Democrats’ hopes as well. He spent the first 15 minutes talking of unity and recounting his near-assassination, but then reverted to a long, polarizing, and often dull 90-minute speech that convinced many Democrats he’s still beatable.

Still, Mr. Biden is the one who actually defeated Mr. Trump four years ago, while Ms. Harris ran a lackluster primary campaign that ended with a whimper. She started as an early favorite, with plenty of establishment and donor support. But she flip-flopped on whether she supported Medicare for all, churned through staff, and sunk steadily in the polls. She dropped out before a single vote was cast. 

Mr. Biden picked her as his running mate after he promised to name a woman to the ticket, then faced heavy pressure to pick a Black running mate as Black Lives Matter protests broke out in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in June 2020. That left him with few viable options amongst senior elected Democrats.

Bakari Sellers, a former South Carolina state representative and longtime Harris booster who was a top surrogate on her 2020 campaign, says she has come a long way in her three-plus years as vice president, gaining experience, skills, and gravitas.

“She’s totally different,” he says. “She’s nowhere near the same person, same politician, [or] public servant. She’s battle-worn and battle-tested.”

Mr. Trump and his campaign have for months honed a campaign strategy specifically designed to go after the current president. But last week at the Republican National Convention, it became clear that they were beginning to prepare for a campaign against Ms. Harris, with a number of speakers attacking her on issues like the border.

On Sunday, Mr. Trump’s campaign immediately laid out their case against the vice president. “Kamala Harris is just as much of [a] joke as Biden is,” campaign co-chairs Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles said in a statement. “They own each other’s records, and there is no distance between the two. Harris must defend the failed Biden Administration AND her liberal, weak-on-crime record in CA.” 

The Republican National Committee quickly put out a video tying Ms. Harris to Mr. Biden’s record and specifically blaming her for what they painted as a flood of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, calling her Mr. Biden’s “border czar” (even though the Biden administration never called her that).

Lesson from history: It’s hard to pick a candidate so late 

This is the first time in decades that one of the two major parties hasn’t had a clear nominee this close to the election. And it’s the first time since 1968 that a sitting president has opted not to run for reelection. President Lyndon Johnson decided to step aside that spring after facing growing resistance over the war in Vietnam. The front-runner to replace him, Robert F. Kennedy, died by an assassin’s bullet that June.

Democrats descended into chaos fighting over whom to nominate during their national convention in Chicago later that summer, while a police riot against anti-war protesters turned bloody outside the convention hall. The fallout helped elect President Richard Nixon.

That year has haunted Democrats ever since. When they gather once again in Chicago for their convention next month, with anti-Gaza war protesters expected to gather nearby, they hope history won’t repeat itself.

With so little time before the convention, Mr. Biden’s departure has left little room for his party to find the best candidate. So far, it appears unlikely that other Democrats with national name identification will challenge Ms. Harris at this point. The convention may be contested, but unless someone with national aspirations surprises everyone and throws their hat in the ring, it may be no contest.

Mr. Biden’s quick endorsement for his No. 2 was quickly echoed by former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as well as the Congressional Black Caucus and a number of Democratic lawmakers.

Ms. Harris also benefits from being a co-signatory on the Biden-Harris campaign’s fundraising apparatus, meaning she can likely spend the money that she and the outgoing president already raised for their campaign. That’s roughly a $100 million difference, the amount of money that the Biden-Harris campaign had on hand as of the end of June. Republicans may try to challenge this legally – one Republican member of the Federal Election Commission has suggested as much – but it’s an uphill battle for them to win that fight.

Any other Democratic nominee wouldn’t be able to directly access that money, though it could be moved to a super PAC.

One risk for Democrats is that this process could appear less than democratic, driving home the point that Ms. Harris is the pick of party bosses, not the people. That could undercut the party’s message that Mr. Trump and Republicans are a threat to democracy because of his attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss, which ended in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot.

“Going to be hard to be the defenders of democracy when the party just overturned the will of their voters and dictated his replacement,” one GOP strategist texted after the news broke.

It could also trigger lawsuits, even if they’re unlikely to succeed. 

“Every state has its own system. And in some of these, it’s not possible to simply just switch out a candidate,” House Speaker Mike Johnson argued on ABC News Sunday morning. “It would be wrong and I think unlawful in accordance to some of the states’ rules for a handful of people to go in the back room and switch it out because they don’t like the candidate any longer.”

The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, the lawsuit-focused arm of a right-wing think-tank aligned with Mr. Trump, posted a social media message suggesting that they’ll soon launch lawsuits.

“We have been preparing for this moment for months,” the message read. “No more ‘make it up as you go’ elections. Stay tuned.”

The coming attacks show this is still a tough situation for Democrats. No one likes chaos this close to a presidential election. But ever since his disastrous debate performance, Mr. Biden’s star has been fading – and it had become clear to most Democrats that he was likely to lose to Mr. Trump this fall. Now they’ll see if what’s behind door number two is any better.

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