| 2. His opponent’s campaign is in crisis: President Biden may be forced to drop out of the race soon, as Democratic leaders and politically vulnerable members of Congress continue to urge him to exit it. Even a majority of Democratic voters say he should step aside. If he stays in, it seems likely the party will remain divided about him ― and division, Democrats tell me, would be the worst possible situation for them.
“We must face the reality that widespread public concerns about your age and fitness are jeopardizing what should be a winning campaign,” four House Democrats from districts across the country wrote to Biden in a letter released this morning. But: Maybe Democrats can still win if they make this election all about Trump instead of Biden. Trump has his own political problems: He may have escaped prosecution before the election on Jan. 6, 2021, and classified documents, but he’s a felon — and many of his policies are politically unpopular. He didn’t exactly give an electrifying convention speech when so many eyes were on him. “[T]he majority of voters in this country are anti-MAGA,” argues Dan Pfeiffer, a prominent liberal. “Trump can — and will — be defeated if and only if we do the work to once again turn out the coalition that defeated MAGA in 2017, 2018, 2020, and 2022.” Still, every Republican we talk to feels like they have the race in the bag. “Suddenly,” The Post’s Dan Balz reports from the Republican convention, “Republicans are as sky-high and confident as Democrats are down and discouraged.” What happens if Biden drops out of the race? Vice President Harris would probably be the nominee. But it’s also possible to imagine a messy battle at Democrats’ August convention over who they should pick, in part because she doesn’t seem to poll much better than Biden against Trump. The Post explains the process of Biden dropping out step by step. Here’s an excerpt of our colleagues’ reporting:
Harris isn’t guaranteed: Unlike a president’s resignation, which automatically promotes the vice president, Biden dropping out of the race does not mean Harris will be at the top of the ticket. Most Democrats and strategists expect that she is the most likely replacement, but delegates who select the presidential nominee at the Democratic National Convention are free to vote for any candidate. How they vote on a new nominee: The nominee won’t become official until those delegates vote. How they vote depends on whether the party has coalesced around one candidate and no one else has decided to challenge that person for the nomination. In that situation, the delegates would be likely to vote for the party’s chosen candidate at the convention, as they would have done for Biden. If however, there are multiple candidates seeking the nomination, then there would be an open convention. Delegates would be free to vote for their candidate of choice. That hasn’t happened since 1968: A lack of a consensus pick sets up the potential for an open convention. There would be tremendous political jockeying behind the scenes as would-be nominees seek support from individual delegates. However, Democrats would probably try to avoid this by attempting to solidify support behind one person before the convention, and many delegates, if not most, would probably back the party’s preferred candidate. |
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