Welcome to The Campaign Moment, your guide to the big developments in the 2024 election — and now the biggest development yet.
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The big moment
I am ripping up my assumptions about the 2024 election, and you should too. It turns out it won’t be the much-dreaded rematch of 2020 that we have all spent months anticipating and planning for, after all.
President Biden made the historic decision Sunday to end his campaign amid concerted pressure from his party to reconsider it. His decision comes weeks before Democrats are due to formalize their ticket in Chicago.
The unprecedented move leaves Democrats an extremely abbreviated period during which to figure out what to do next.
By far the likeliest outcome is nominating Vice President Harris. Many big-name Democrats quickly endorsed her, including Biden, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and a few big-name potential rivals. But it’s still early, and even how Harris would be nominated is up in the air.
Here are the big questions I have about what lies ahead in the days and weeks to come.
Who takes over?
This is, of course, the big one. Harris is the strong favorite — both because she’s next in line and because that’s the expedient move, both politically and practically.
It would be fraught to bypass the first female and first Black vice president, particularly with Democrats struggling to hold on to their dominance among Black voters. She also has easy access to Biden’s large campaign war chest, which was quickly turned over to her — a huge factor in all this. And after weeks of uncertainty, you can bet Democrats would like to just be done with the top of the ticket.
But not everyone is closing ranks yet; Barack Obama didn’t quickly endorse Harris, for one. Sen. Joe Manchin III (I-W.Va.) is considering rejoining the Democratic Party and running.
And it’s not exactly a no-brainer. Harris is not a popular vice president, and recent polls suggest she doesn’t perform much better against Donald Trump than Biden did. (The Post’s polling average shows her trailing by 1.5 points in polls conducted after the debate, compared to Biden’s 1.9-point deficit.) Her own 2020 campaign was a disappointment.
I’m not getting the sense that too many in the party want to throw things open yet. But if they ultimately decide to — or if Harris falters — here’s my full list of plausible alternatives. Many of those same names will be in the mix for vice president, should the path remain clear for Harris, or as someone else’s running mate, if it doesn’t.
What is the process?
Harris signaled Sunday that she intends to “earn and win” the Democratic nomination. Exactly what it will mean to “earn” it, we don’t yet know.
Ultimately, this will be up to Democratic National Convention delegates, who are no longer bound to Biden or any other candidate. But Democrats need to figure out what kind of process they’ll use to get to that point.
They have a dilemma on this front. There is little time to figure things out — their convention begins Aug. 19 — but clearing the field for Harris risks looking like a coronation. And if she is just handed the nomination, it won’t do much to tamp down concerns about her prospects. Some, like Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Tex.), are withholding support from Harris in favor of a brief contest of some sort.
For now, the big questions are whether they will hold some kind of “mini primary”— and how that would even look — along with precisely when the ticket will be formalized. Party leaders have spent weeks saying they needed to virtually nominate Biden by Aug. 7 because of supposed uncertainty about ballot access. But some in the party had dismissed that as a pretext to jam Biden through.
Sticking to that accelerated timeline would surely cut down on how robust the process is. And to the extent delegates actually have a choice, debating the nominee virtually rather than in person is far from an ideal setup.
How does Harris play in the days to come?
Just as we all watched the polls like hawks after Biden’s stumbling June 27 debate performance, so too will our gazes be fixed upon them in the days ahead. They will go a long way toward determining how confident Democrats will feel about Harris.
Yes, she polls little better than Biden right now, and yes, her 2020 campaign didn’t go well. But vice presidents’ brands are often tied to the presidents they serve, and she now has a chance to reintroduce herself to a lot of people who didn’t pay much attention to her before. A Democratic optimist might also point out that running a primary campaign isn’t quite the same thing as appealing to general-election voters.
It’s plausible she gets a bump soon. Virtually every Democratic Senate candidate in the country has polled better than Biden, and often significantly better. That might suggest that a standard-issue presidential nominee without Biden’s age and acuity concerns might do better than him when the choice comes into focus.
Harris’s biggest task now is capitalizing on this massive opportunity.
What happens next with Biden?
Biden quickly signaled he intends to continue serving, saying in his statement that he wanted to “focus solely on fulfilling my duties as president.” Republicans are calling for him to resign.
Despite the arguments Republicans, including GOP vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance, make, Democrats saying that Biden should drop out because he can’t win isn’t the same as conceding he must resign.
But there is no question that Biden’s recent performances and now his bowing out will seed questions about whether he is up to his day job. Some Democrats have gone further than just questioning Biden’s campaign prowess; Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) wrote that Biden didn’t appear to recognize him recently, while Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.) suggested Biden should resign.
Some have also argued that Biden’s resigning would give Harris a leg up as an incumbent president. But she would also have to combine a very late campaign entry with taking over as leader of the free world, which is no small task.
Beyond that, how much of a presence is Biden in the closing days of his presidency? Is he freed up now that campaign concerns aren’t front and center? And how much does he campaign for Harris?
Some analogous moments from history
While an exit by a presidential candidate at this late juncture is unprecedented, we have seen a few somewhat analogous situations.
They haven’t generally gone well for the party looking to make the switch.
One is President Lyndon B. Johnson bowing out of his reelection bid in March 1968, shortly after Robert F. Kennedy jumped into the primary race. Hubert Humphrey (D) won the nomination after Kennedy was assassinated, and wound up narrowly losing the popular vote to Richard M. Nixon but losing the electoral college by a wide margin, 301-191.
Four years later, Democrats had to replace vice-presidential nominee Thomas Eagleton two weeks after their convention amid disclosures about his having undergone electroshock therapy for depression. It’s the only comparable modern example of a switch of some kind this late. George McGovern’s (D) campaign soon replaced Eagleton with Sargent Shriver, before losing in a landslide to Nixon.
We’ve also, of course, seen parties fret about the prospects of incumbent presidents without replacing them, including Gerald Ford in 1976 and Jimmy Carter in 1980. Both faced significant primary challenges; both times, the fretting party went on to lose.
This is a small sample size featuring examples with key differences. And the 2024 polls remains close. But of course, feeling the need to do something this drastic is anything but a sign of strength for Democrats.
Take a moment to read:
“Biden’s historic move sets Democrats and the country on an uncertain path” (Washington Post)
“Kamala Harris’s life, career and firsts from AG to the vice presidency” (Washington Post)
“Kamala Harris’s first presidential campaign was a failure. Has she changed?” (Washington Post)
“Trump slams Biden as he departs race, while advisers prepare to face Harris” (Washington Post)
“Across the years, Biden’s long path to the presidency” (Washington Post)
“Biden’s 50 years in politics defined by triumph, tragedy and a reluctant exit” (Washington Post)