Democrats are increasingly panicked about Joe Biden’s 2024 chances after Thursday’s debate. But what will that panic result in?
The party is in uncharted territory. Doubts about Biden’s ability to defeat Trump have grown and speculation about whether he could be convinced to drop out of the race is mounting. Calls for Biden to quit are suddenly widespread in the media, even among commentators who had previously defended the president. Top Democrats are reportedly having similar discussions behind the scenes, but the extent and seriousness of those discussions is not yet clear.
First off: Don’t expect anything to happen immediately. No one can outright force the president of the United States to quit the race, and he would not do so on a whim.
At the moment, Biden’s aides are telling reporters he has no plans to drop out. If top Democrats, Biden’s own most trusted advisers, and his family members urge him to reconsider, that could change.
But that process would take some time — likely weeks, particularly given the complicated question of what would happen next.
Still, despite a great deal of uncertainty about what’s next, there appear to be three plausible options for where we’re headed.
Often, when pundits are hyping a supposedly game-changing political moment, it’s useful to take a step back and skeptically ask: Will anything actually change?
Biden won every state in the Democratic primaries this year, and the overwhelming majority of delegates are obligated to vote to nominate him at the convention by party rules. Those delegates are typically party loyalists trusted by the Biden team and state Democratic parties. They will not somehow revolt against him and depose him at the convention against his will.
That doesn’t mean it’s certain that Biden will remain on the ticket. But basically, the only way he’s leaving the race is if he decides to do so himself — likely after being urged to do so by people he trusts and party bigwigs.
The new chorus of calls from New York Times opinion writers for Biden to drop out is an ominous development for him. Former Democratic aides who are now media commentators, like Van Jones and Claire McCaskill, are saying similar things. But we have not yet seen similar public defections from currently serving elected Democrats.
How intense will the pressure get? In part, that depends on the personal choices of Biden’s family members, his trusted advisers, and top Democrats, who will all have to decide whether they want to try and nudge him out or stand by him.
Their decisions will likely be shaped in part by post-debate polling. In the optimistic scenario for Biden, there’s little change and he can simply ignore his critics, grit his teeth, and weather the storm. But the worse the polling looks, the more panic will rise and the more isolated he’ll be.
If Biden does decide to drop out, one way that could play out is that he’d endorse an intended successor at the same time.
The obvious choice would be Vice President Kamala Harris. But the obvious problem with that obvious choice is that many Democrats think Harris has her own serious political weaknesses. That includes Biden himself, who reportedly called Harris a “work in progress” early in his term. A report earlier this year claimed Harris was still struggling to penetrate what she called the “bubble” of Biden campaign thinking.
If Biden had clearly made Harris a trusted partner, helped prepare her for succession over the past several years, and viewed her as ready for prime time, a Biden-for-Harris swap would be an easier case to make. But none of that is really true.
Could Biden endorse someone else? In theory, he could pluck a Democratic governor somewhat at random — Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Gavin Newsom of California are often mentioned. He could then call on the party to unite behind that person, cross his fingers, and hope it happens.
But in addition to infuriating Harris and her supporters (passing her over for a handpicked white nominee would be quite controversial), that decision would lack any democratic legitimacy. And if any faction in the party or wannabe candidate are sore enough, they could make their own play for delegates at the convention.
In contrast, every Democrat who voted in the primaries knew they’d be getting VP Harris — and potentially President Harris, should Biden not make it through a second term. So if Biden does try to avert the possibility of convention chaos by anointing a successor, she’s by far the most rational choice.
The other option, if Biden chooses to drop out, is that he doesn’t try to pick a successor and simply says the party should figure it out.
And the obvious venue for such a discussion would be at the Democratic convention in late August.
In recent decades, the major parties’ national conventions have been coronations, in which the winner of the most delegates in the primaries gets the nomination. But in the days of yore, the conventions were where the nominee was actually decided — typically, in backroom deals among party power brokers who controlled the delegates.
If the convention was “open” again due to Biden’s withdrawal — freeing up the delegates to vote their conscience — the process would likely play out very differently in the modern media and social media environment. It would be far more public. (Ezra Klein’s interview with Elaine Kamarck has more specifics on how this could play out.)
Ideally, an open convention would be a fair venue for all the contenders in the party to make their respective cases, resulting in a fair vote (or multiple rounds of balloting), and eventually a nominee with majority support at the convention that the party can unite behind.
In theory, this is more small-d democratic than Biden trying to pick a successor in advance. It lets thousands of delegates decide, rather than just the power players at the top who stood beside Biden for so long.
But one problem is that Democratic Party delegates don’t have very much democratic legitimacy themselves. They were not picked to pick a president — they were picked to rubber-stamp Biden’s nomination. And they don’t truly represent the public. The only real rationale for letting them pick the nominee is that it’s too late and logistically difficult to redo the nationwide primary process.
The other risk is that an open convention devolves into a chaotic mess that divides and embitters the party rather than uniting it, and makes Democrats look awful to the public on national television.
The convention is less than two months away, so preparation for an actual open process would really need to begin soon if it’s going to happen. So all eyes will be on Joe Biden as he determines which path he will take.
