ANALYSIS
Separating fantasy from reality: What now for Democrats and Joe Biden?
By James Pindell Globe Staff, June 28, 2024
Democrats are understandably fretting after President Biden’s objectively poor debate performance on Thursday night. It wasn’t that he was tactically outplayed by his opponent, former president Donald Trump; it’s that he came across as so old and incoherent that he didn’t even seem up for the job for the remainder of his current term.
This is not some right-wing talking point. High-level Democrats were openly saying this on cable TV moments after the debate concluded. The best take they could put on Biden’s performance was that it was simply “sad” to watch someone they know and love humiliate himself that way.
By Friday morning, Democrats were full of chatter about a whole list of “what if” scenarios that largely revolved around how to dump Biden from being the Democratic nominee for president this year — mostly fantasies not rooted in any type of reality.
At least give those Democrats this for consistency: If they really believe that Trump winning in November will end American democracy as we know it, then they need to do more than just shrug their shoulders and dismiss it as a bad night and that Biden had a cold.
So what really is next? Here’s a quick rundown:
Only Joe can dump Joe
Unless Biden decides to drop out of the contest, he will be the Democratic nominee. Let’s repeat that: Unless Biden decides to drop out of the contest, he will be the Democratic nominee. Oh, hell, let’s do it a third time: Unless Biden decides to drop out of the contest, he will be the Democratic nominee.
These are not the old days when a party walked into a national convention and just figured out who should be the party’s nominee for president. We have primaries now. In that state-by-state process, there are primaries and caucuses, and voters in those states pick who they want to be the nominee. Later, delegates are chosen who are bound to vote on the first ballot at the national convention in a way that proportionally reflects how each state voted in the primary.
The latest count from the Associated Press shows that Biden has 3,894 of 3,937 delegates committed so far on the first ballot. That is obviously more than the simple majority he needs to win the nomination.
But what if Biden does drop out?
Those who know Biden well describe him as a proud and stubborn man and don’t see Biden dropping out. That said, those same people are very aware of how bad Biden’s performance was during the first of only two planned debates.
But just for the sake of argument, should Biden drop out, then all of those delegates mentioned above are suddenly unbound, and it is a wide open nomination process. While there are some likely favorites, it is conceptually anyone’s game. Democrats could select someone who isn’t an elected official; they could pick someone who wasn’t even a Democrat before getting nominated. The only qualifications are that they are older than 35, born in the United States, and, as we have all recently learned, not guilty of participating in an insurrection against the federal government.
But this will (likely) not be an open convention like the days of yore
Unfortunately for political junkies (and cable news channels), there isn’t likely to be some epic floor fight for the nomination at the Democratic National Convention. You can blame Ohio for that.
Ohio’s state law requires that a nominee be selected 90 days in advance of the election to get on the ballot. That means that Democrats have to nominate someone by Aug. 7, even though their convention doesn’t begin until Aug. 19. To ensure ballot access in Ohio, Democrats had planned to just quietly hold a virtual roll call to nominate Biden and then do it all over again in prime time a few weeks later.
But suddenly, this little election year quirk is now an extremely important logistical event. It means that instead of a nominee being picked in a smoke-filled back room or some civic-minded primary, the nominee will be picked on Zoom.
What is most likely to happen?
There are really two scenarios that seem to be the most likely. First is that Biden just sticks it out and sees where the chips fall. Given how tight the 2020 election turned out to be, he was probably right that he was the only Democrat who could beat Trump last time. He believes he is the only one who can do it again in 2024, even though that may not be true at all.
The second is that if he drops out, he might endorse Vice President Kamala Harris in the same speech and prevent the party from all the hand-wringing about who to pick. Not only would that avoid weeks of unnecessary process, but logistically speaking, she might have immediate access to the hundreds of millions of dollars the Biden-Harris campaign committee has already raised in donations in ways other Democrats may not.
The future is now
So it is highly unlikely that the new crop of Democratic rising stars will do much else at the national convention besides get a coveted speaking spot. That said, the morning after the debate, it was announced that California Governor Gavin Newsom will travel to New Hampshire on July 8, likely with eyes on the 2028 New Hampshire primary and not the 2024 general election, as a candidate anyway.
James Pindell can be reached at
[email protected]. Follow him @jamespindell and on Instagram @jameswpindell.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/06/28/ ... ts-harris/
We who frequent the women’s board are well acquainted with him. He is quickly developing a similar reputation here on the politics board.
Face it counselor, your party just stepped full sole into the Joe Biden pile of dog poop. If Democrats don't kick DFJ to the curb y'all will be looking at 4 more years of trump. Bidens closest advisers should be blunt and honest with him. Biden needs to hand the baton over to a democratic candidate that would defeat trump without breaking a sweat.