The big story in American politics prior to the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on July 13 was the struggle within the Democratic Party over efforts to convince President Biden to step aside as the presidential nominee after his bad debate performance on June 27. You can argue all day long about what would have happened had the shooting in Pennsylvania not occurred. Perhaps Biden would have soon put out the fire in his camp and restored order; perhaps the persistent unhappiness of elected officials and even the party rank-and-file would have built to a climax that forced the president to hang up his spurs and turn his candidacy over to Kamala Harris.
The prevailing conventional wisdom, however, is that Trump’s near-death froze any effort to defenestrate Biden in its tracks, and may have ended the Democratic rebellion as a serious prospect. But to be on the safe side, the Democratic National Committee, predictably a stronghold of Biden loyalists, is pushing ahead with plans to re-nominate the president well before delegates gather in Chicago on August 19. Plans are underway to formally nominate Biden via the sort of “virtual roll call” Democrats used in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, as the New York Times explained:
Leaders of the Democratic National Committee are moving swiftly to confirm President Biden as his party’s presidential nominee by the end of July, according to four people briefed on the matter who insisted on anonymity to discuss the sensitive deliberations. …
Since May, he has been set to be confirmed through a virtual roll call, weeks before the Democratic National Convention in August.
But as Mr. Biden faces persistent doubts from within his party, some delegates involved with the behind-the-scene bureaucratic process are eager to end the public conversations about his future that are unfolding during a fiercely contested campaign.
To be clear, the “virtual roll call” talk began long before the Atlanta debate debacle. It was mostly motivated by the success of the 2020 process, which allowed for a carefully staged roll call of the states that could be displayed to the world as a video presentation. The idea gained impetus as a roundabout way to minimize the number of high-stakes live events in Chicago that might become a magnet for the many pro-Palestinian protests being organized to coincide with the convention.
If the idea of dodging protests by simply refusing to hold traditional convention actions is questionable from a public-relations point of view, rushing the nomination to head off a potential rebellion against Biden is far worse. It’s true that prior to the debate flub the roll-call vote was expected to be a pro forma coronation, much like Trump’s nomination in Milwaukee, which was held during an afternoon session on the first day of the RNC with almost no one watching. That’s clearly no longer true. And the official excuse being offered by Biden loyalists for the rush to judgment is, quite frankly, a crock, as Axios explained:
The DNC’s stated reason for front-running the nomination — Ohio’s Aug. 7 deadline for ballot access — is no longer relevant because Ohio changed its law. The state’s new deadline is Sept. 1.
The new deadline is safely after the end of the Democratic convention. But in announcing his intention to hold a virtual roll call, DNC chairman Jaime Harrison vaguely alluded to some nonexistent threat to retroactively kick Biden off the Ohio ballot:
“This election comes down to nothing less than saving our democracy from a man who has said he wants to be a dictator on ‘day one,’ ” Harrison said in his statement. …
“So we certainly are not going to leave the fate of this election in the hands of MAGA Republicans in Ohio that have tried to keep President Biden off of the general election ballot.”
Predictably, this course of action has angered Democrats who want to renew the option of a different presidential nominee before it’s too late, as another report from Axios makes clear:
A letter circulating among congressional Democrats argues that there is “no legal justification” for an early virtual roll call after Ohio moved its filing deadline past the date of the Democratic convention.
“We respectfully but emphatically request that you cancel any plans for an accelerated ‘virtual roll call’ and further refrain from any extraordinary procedures that could be perceived as curtailing legitimate debate,” it says.
If this protest fails to regenerate the rebellion against Biden, perhaps his nomination is so secure that it doesn’t really matter whether he’s nominated in a live convention session on or after August 19 or “virtually” a couple of weeks earlier. But in that case, why rush it? There is a risk that the DNC’s maneuver will backfire and lend a sense of real urgency to a simmering revolt that has slowed to a low boil.
It’s possible the White House is worried about a scary drop in the polls that combines a post-convention “bounce” for Trump with the lingering concerns about Biden’s fitness for office that Republicans are already bringing up often in their communications from Milwaukee. There are already reports from CNN that veteran Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg is sending up flares in private communications to Team Biden:
“Lose everything,” is how one Democrat described a polling memo Greenberg sent to Biden’s inner circle in recent days. “Devastating,” was the one word answer of a second Democrat close to the White House who is familiar with the Greenberg memos.
These sources said Greenberg has sent several memos over the past two weeks since the president’s devastating debate performance, analyzing internal polling he asserts shows the president’s position continues to deteriorate because Americans overwhelmingly do not see him as up to serving four more years.
It’s understandable that Biden loyalists would prefer to move on to November before such disturbing data sinks in. But the last thing Democrats need is to convene in Chicago amid the hoopla of a national convention in which the real story just under the surface is buyer’s remorse.
