 |
| President Biden’s announcement on Sunday that he would not continue his re-election bid injected even more uncertainty into the 2024 campaign. Yuri Gripas for The New York Times |
Biden is out, and Democrats have a whole new set of questions.
 | By Jess Bidgood |
It’s over.
At 1:46 p.m., with the minute hand of the clock pointed to the number of his presidency, President Biden somberly ended his untenable re-election campaign and sought to give his downtrodden party something he could no longer provide: a sense of hope.
“It is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down,” he wrote in a letter posted to X, “and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as president for the remainder of my term.”
It was an earthshaking political moment many Democrats had been clamoring for — so I’m struck by how quietly it came, and with how little fanfare. Biden’s choice, made while he is at his Delaware beach house after testing positive for Covid-19, did not leak. He told some of his senior staff only a minute before he told the world, my colleague Katie Rogers reported. He did not make a speech to the public, though he said he will later this week.
His campaign’s transformation, though, starts now.
About half an hour after he withdrew, Biden endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris. A little after 4 p.m., she made it official herself.
“My intention,” Harris said in a statement distributed by the Biden for President campaign, “is to earn and win this nomination.”
In an all-staff call, the campaign’s leaders said they were now all working for Harris for President, according to my colleague Reid Epstein.
“We’re all going to do it the same,” said Julie Chavez Rodriguez, the campaign manager.
The stunning turn of events has plunged the presidential campaign into — if you can imagine it — even more uncertainty.
No sitting president has dropped out this close to an election, with the general election just 107 days away. There is no secret, behind-the-scenes plan that we know of to line up the party immediately behind a new nominee. Nobody knows exactly where this goes from here.
Biden is betting that his stepping aside will bring new energy and unity to a divided party that had all but given up on him. But underneath the nuts-and-bolts questions about just how Democrats will go about selecting a new nominee is a larger dilemma about what kind of party it wants to be right now.
Should Democrats join Biden in, essentially, anointing Harris as their nominee? Or would doing so open the party up to criticisms, already being stoked by Republicans, that it has sidestepped a more competitive process?
Here’s what we know so far about four questions I know are on your minds.
So, is Kamala Harris going to be the nominee?
Harris is well positioned to be. But it’s too soon to be certain.
It’s up to the 4,600 delegates to the Democratic National Convention to pick a presidential nominee, and there is lots of attention right now on the rules and mechanics of what those delegates can and will do.
I am no expert on the internecine maze of rules governing this process. But one thing I know is that, right now, the bigger question is this: Is anybody other than Harris going to run?
There has been lots of talk about an “open convention.” . But the central issue is whether or not there will be a contested convention, where more than one serious candidate seeks the presidential nomination.
OK. Is anybody else running?
At this early hour, no high-profile Democrat has jumped in to challenge Harris, and there are reasons to believe that at least some of the party’s brightest stars plan to sit this out. Some, like Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, have already said they would not run against Harris; on Sunday night, he endorsed her. Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania also endorsed Harris on Sunday.
But it is also worth noting that some other governors seen as potential contenders did not immediately endorse Harris on Sunday.
No comments:
Post a Comment