If Biden drops out now, how do the Democrats choose a new candidate?
The president has given no indication he plans to step aside, but possible replacements are already being named
Joe Biden gave no indication Friday that he planned to drop out of the presidential race, even as his widely panned performance in his debate against Donald Trump attracted censure from many fellow Democrats.
Some commentators had called for replacing Biden as the nominee even before the debate, largely citing the president’s age as a potentially decisive vulnerability in the election. (Biden is 81, and Trump is 78).
Biden’s dismal showing on Thursday transformed those conversations from scattered whispers to a full-blown shouting match, with many in Washington openly speculating about who might step in for the president.
With all of the presidential primaries over, the process for replacing Biden would be complicated and politically volatile. Biden has already won far more delegates than he needs to secure the nomination, and the Democratic national convention, which will bring a formal end to the primary process, is less than two months away.
Here’s everything you need to know about the process for replacing Biden:
Have Democrats already officially named Biden as their nominee?
No. Democrats will convene in Chicago from 19 to 22 August to formally select their presidential nominee, so Biden is still considered the presumptive nominee at this stage. The Democratic national committee plans to virtually nominate Biden before the convention to meet an Ohio ballot deadline of 7 August, but no date has been announced for that vote.
However, Biden has amassed 3,894 pledged delegates through his victories in state primaries, so he already has more than enough delegates to secure the nomination.
What will happen to Biden’s pledged delegates if he withdraws from the presidential race?
If Biden drops out of the race, his pledged delegates will arrive in Chicago uncommitted to any specific candidate, which would likely kick off a frenzied fight to win their support.
“Candidates who step into the breach hoping to take the place of the fallen candidate will find out who these delegates are and woo them in as many ways as they can. The outcome will be a convention where the result may not be known ahead of time,” Elaine Kamarck, a member of the Democratic national committee rules committee and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote in January.
Democrats have not seen a floor fight for the presidential nomination since 1968, when their convention was coincidentally (and infamously) held in Chicago. In a potentially eerie parallel to 2024, then President Lyndon Johnson decided against seeking re-election just months before the election. The assassination of Robert F Kennedy left Hubert Humphrey, Johnson’s vice-president, as the main opponent against Eugene McCarthy, the anti-Vietnam war candidate.
The fraught nominating process was overshadowed by the violence on Chicago’s streets, as tens of thousands of police officers and national guard officers confronted anti-war protesters. In the end, Humphrey won the nomination – even though he had never appeared on a state primary ballot – but he went on to lose to Richard Nixon in the general election.
Would Kamala Harris automatically win all of Biden’s delegates if he dropped out?
No. Because the delegates will be uncommitted if Biden withdraws, they could theoretically vote on the floor for any candidate In the hours after the debate on Thursday, a number of names – including California governor Gavin Newsom and Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer – were floated as possible replacements for Biden.
But Harris would probably go to the convention as a strong favorite for the nomination. As the vice-president, she has the largest national profile of any potential candidate, and Biden’s pledged delegates will be mostly party loyalists who may be looking for the safest possible choice if he steps aside.
How would a nominee be chosen on the floor?
On the first ballot, a winning nominee will need to secure the votes of a majority of Democrats’ roughly 4,000 pledged delegates. If no candidate wins a majority on the first ballot, Democrats will continue on to a second ballot, in which so-called “superdelegates” will have an opportunity to vote.
Superdelegates are mostly senior Democratic party leaders, and they will go to the convention not pledged to any candidate. With the roughly 700 superdelegates added to the voting pool, the winning candidate would then need to secure about 2,300 delegates to capture the nomination.
Although superdelegates would make up a relatively small share of the delegate pool, they could play an important role in choosing the nominee. Their support for a particular candidate would speak volumes and could sway fellow delegates.
How likely is any of this to occur?
It appears highly unlikely at this point. Biden and his top advisers insist he will continue on to November, and Democrats do not have a mechanism to force Biden out of the race. Unless Biden undergoes a radical change in thinking or suffers a major health setback in the next few months, he will be Democrats’ nominee in November.
Sounds like someone lit a match and throw in the prairie at the hottest and driest moment in the summer and let the grass burnt...with this talk of replacing JB as Democrat nominee for the 2024 US presidential election. If JB team says, I'm not going away, so what? Watchagonna do? Cue the late Gary Coleman of the sitcom Diff'rent Strokes...
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