What would happen if Biden dropped out?
stonespring
Shipmate
in Purgatory
It is highly unlikely that Biden will drop out of the race to be re-elected. And if he doesn’t choose to drop out, there is an almost zero chance that anyone else could become the Democratic nominee, given that the Democratic primaries are well underway and none of the few, relatively unknown candidates opposing Biden have any chance of winning (despite Jason Palmer’s (who?) win in American Samoa where only 90 some people came to the Democratic caucus). I think it might even be too late to even get other Democratic candidates on the ballots for the remaining primaries before Biden wins enough primaries to get enough pledged delegates clinch the nomination at the August convention.
As hard as it is to imagine, though, if Biden did drop out, maybe because things that might still yet happen: a combination of concerning but not completely debilitating developments in his health, poor performance on the campaign trail as the race heats up and he is less able to avoid potentially embarrassing public and media appearances, further declines in the polls, pressure within his party to drop out that is discreet at first to project party unity but that risks becoming public if a Trump victory against Biden looks more and more likely, and finally (and most importantly) concern that may develop amongst his closest family and advisors that his legacy may not be best served by staying in the race only to lose to a threat to democracy like Trump because a relatively-small-but-large-enough-to-be-decisive group of voters that might otherwise vote Democratic stay home or vote third party because of concerns about his age, anger over his position on Gaza, etc. --- if for any of these reasons Biden did drop out of the race but remained as president until the end of his term, then all delegates to the Democratic National Convention in August would then be free to pick any eligible person to be the nominee. Whether Biden should drop out (or whether he should have dropped out sooner), the reasons why Biden is criticized for his age more than Trump, and where the line is between valid concern about the effect of age on a candidate's ability and ageism are all topics for another thread.
Normally, the primary election results require the Democratic state conventions in each state to send pledged delegates to the national convention in a manner somewhat, but not exactly, proportionally to the vote share of each of the candidates who got more than 15 percent of the Democratic primary election vote in each state. This is how we wound up with both Hillary and Bernie-pledged delegates at the 2016 convention. If no candidate gets a majority of delegates on the first ballot at the national convention, then the pledged delegates are now free to vote for whomever they want on future ballots. Party leaders and elected officials (including Democratic members of Congress), also called superdelegates, who are also at the convention, are also able, starting on the second ballot, to vote for a nominee.
If Biden drops out in the next month or so, even if many of the primaries would have already happened, the Democratic state conventions would not have selected pledged delegates yet based on the primary election results. If all of the pledged delegates from
a state would have gone to Biden based on the primary election results, then the Stare Convention would be free to elect whatever delegates to the national convention they wanted, and any existing or new Democratic candidates would probably be campaigning hard at each State’s convention to get delegates elected who would not be forced to vote for them at the national convention but who would be likely to.
(Someone with a better understanding of the process could explain who exactly gets to vote at Democratic state conventions on the nominees that get to go the national convention, as well as at the county conventions that send delegates to the state conventions.)
If Biden dropped out in the late spring or summer, then almost all the pledged delegates at the national convention would have been already chosen by the state conventions based on primary election results, and almost all of them would have been pledged to vote for Biden, so they would now be free to vote for whomever they wanted. Anyone wanting the nomination and their campaign staff and allies would be running around the national convention trying to persuade both the formerly pledged delegates and the party leaders and elected officials (superdelegates) to vote for them. It may take multiple ballots for a nominee to emerge. Democratic state governors, Democratic state party chairs, and senior Democratic leadership in Congress, along with senior labor union representatives (who almost always are among the (ordinarily pledged) delegates sent by state conventions), would probably be the most important people for them to persuade, since they are likely to be able to convince a lot of other delegates to support whomever they support. This, basically, was how both parties chose their nominees before the disastrous Vietnam-Era 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, because the primary elections before then were non-binding and there were no pledged delegates. In the age of social media, though, it would be harder for the goings-on in what used to be called “smoke-filled rooms” at conventions, where deals were struck to win support for nominees, to remain secret.
Ok. So now to the question. What would happen at the convention and in the general election if Biden chose not to run at this late stage?
...This is a long OP so look to the next post for the rest of it.
As hard as it is to imagine, though, if Biden did drop out, maybe because things that might still yet happen: a combination of concerning but not completely debilitating developments in his health, poor performance on the campaign trail as the race heats up and he is less able to avoid potentially embarrassing public and media appearances, further declines in the polls, pressure within his party to drop out that is discreet at first to project party unity but that risks becoming public if a Trump victory against Biden looks more and more likely, and finally (and most importantly) concern that may develop amongst his closest family and advisors that his legacy may not be best served by staying in the race only to lose to a threat to democracy like Trump because a relatively-small-but-large-enough-to-be-decisive group of voters that might otherwise vote Democratic stay home or vote third party because of concerns about his age, anger over his position on Gaza, etc. --- if for any of these reasons Biden did drop out of the race but remained as president until the end of his term, then all delegates to the Democratic National Convention in August would then be free to pick any eligible person to be the nominee. Whether Biden should drop out (or whether he should have dropped out sooner), the reasons why Biden is criticized for his age more than Trump, and where the line is between valid concern about the effect of age on a candidate's ability and ageism are all topics for another thread.
Normally, the primary election results require the Democratic state conventions in each state to send pledged delegates to the national convention in a manner somewhat, but not exactly, proportionally to the vote share of each of the candidates who got more than 15 percent of the Democratic primary election vote in each state. This is how we wound up with both Hillary and Bernie-pledged delegates at the 2016 convention. If no candidate gets a majority of delegates on the first ballot at the national convention, then the pledged delegates are now free to vote for whomever they want on future ballots. Party leaders and elected officials (including Democratic members of Congress), also called superdelegates, who are also at the convention, are also able, starting on the second ballot, to vote for a nominee.
If Biden drops out in the next month or so, even if many of the primaries would have already happened, the Democratic state conventions would not have selected pledged delegates yet based on the primary election results. If all of the pledged delegates from
a state would have gone to Biden based on the primary election results, then the Stare Convention would be free to elect whatever delegates to the national convention they wanted, and any existing or new Democratic candidates would probably be campaigning hard at each State’s convention to get delegates elected who would not be forced to vote for them at the national convention but who would be likely to.
(Someone with a better understanding of the process could explain who exactly gets to vote at Democratic state conventions on the nominees that get to go the national convention, as well as at the county conventions that send delegates to the state conventions.)
If Biden dropped out in the late spring or summer, then almost all the pledged delegates at the national convention would have been already chosen by the state conventions based on primary election results, and almost all of them would have been pledged to vote for Biden, so they would now be free to vote for whomever they wanted. Anyone wanting the nomination and their campaign staff and allies would be running around the national convention trying to persuade both the formerly pledged delegates and the party leaders and elected officials (superdelegates) to vote for them. It may take multiple ballots for a nominee to emerge. Democratic state governors, Democratic state party chairs, and senior Democratic leadership in Congress, along with senior labor union representatives (who almost always are among the (ordinarily pledged) delegates sent by state conventions), would probably be the most important people for them to persuade, since they are likely to be able to convince a lot of other delegates to support whomever they support. This, basically, was how both parties chose their nominees before the disastrous Vietnam-Era 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, because the primary elections before then were non-binding and there were no pledged delegates. In the age of social media, though, it would be harder for the goings-on in what used to be called “smoke-filled rooms” at conventions, where deals were struck to win support for nominees, to remain secret.
Ok. So now to the question. What would happen at the convention and in the general election if Biden chose not to run at this late stage?
...This is a long OP so look to the next post for the rest of it.
Comments
If he endorses Harris, will many other candidates enter the race and will it be very competitive? If he doesn’t endorse her, will it be a very divided race with no clear outcome until the national convention?
How much would Harris be able to distance herself from Biden's policy on Gaza if she runs, because she would still be VP? Is the left of the party likely to raise a very bitter campaign against her unless the Biden administration that she is part of, at the very least, allows some kind of UN Security Council ceasefire resolution to pass without a US veto and stops using loopholes to avoid applying existing US legislation about the use of arms shipments in a way that is consistent with international law?
Who do you think would be the most competitive candidates for the nomination besides Harris? Are any of them more likely to win the nomination than she is?
Whether Biden endorses Harris or not, would progressive and establishment wings of the party likely to tear each other apart in a nomination contest over issues like Gaza, immigration and the border, and crime? Will this mean that whoever emerges as the nominee turns off either the left or the center of the party so much that they are even less likely to beat Trump than Biden?
Last and most importantly, would voters - especially Independent voters and those who do not follow politics closely - perceive this method of choosing a nominee as legitimate, whether it is consistent with US law and Democratic Party rules or not? Most states now have primary elections, not caucuses which feel much more like private party affairs. The people of each state have gotten very used to party primary elections and feel a right to register (for free) in whatever party they want and vote in them and the actual running of the primaries is done by the state and county governments so they feel like real elections. Some states even allow people not registered with a party to vote in them (although you can only vote in one party's primary per election cycle). So having the nominee for a party be decided at a convention, even if it used to be the norm, is likely to feel unfair to some people. The party can say that the delegates at the convention are the elected representatives of party members, like a legislature, so it is still a democratic process, and that it is happening in exceptional circumstances, but I'm still worried that controversy-chasing media and political opponents of the Democrats will paint the process as illegitimate.
Trump and third party candidates like Robert Kennedy, Jr., will start harping from the second that Biden announces he isn't running that because it is too late for people to choose a candidate in primaries, that the system has been rigged in favor of whoever "the elites" want the nominee to be, especially if Biden and other party leaders make clear that they have a favorite like Harris and try to unite the party around them. A lot of independents think that the whole political system is unfair and they don't have much of a say in who is a candidate or what they do if they are elected, and having the whole thing be decided at a convention might make some of these people decide not to vote, at least not for president, in the general election, or to vote third party.
Ezra Klein, whose podcast maybe I listen to more than I should, seems to think that since only a small share of the electorate even votes in primaries, choosing the nominee at the convention could actually involve a lot of apathetic people in politics because they could try to organize to persuade delegates, who are supposed to represent them after all, and the news coverage of it would be a spectacle likely to get a lot more attention than an ordinary convention which seems like just the coronation of a predetermined nominee. I'm not so sure. And it's not likely to happen anyway, but the possibility of it, and my worry about Biden's ability to defeat Trump given how dismal the polls look (although it's still early), fascinates me.
I do hope you're not worrying over this, though. It would be more likely for one or the other of the two candidates to die suddenly than to withdraw at this point, in my opinion, and given the shortness of the time before November, that's not likely either. The only reason I could imagine Biden withdrawing so late in the process would have to do with overwhelming health issues, and to some extent those are foreseeable. Were Biden in such terrible health as to need to withdraw, he would have made other arrangements already (Trump would be in denial, I'll grant you that).
In short, Biden is a "normal" president, and not likely to be hiding some massive problem that forces a last-minute withdrawal unforeseen both by the party that supports him and by all the people who work with him daily. That's more a plot for a political thriller.
When I was talking about whether Biden would endorse Harris if he chose not to run, I meant to say:
“If he didn’t endorse [Harris], there might be a sense that he is passing up the woman of color that he chose as running mate 4 years ago after saying himself that he thought his presidency would be a transition to a new generation and that he intended to pick an African American woman as his running mate, so some parts of the Democratic coalition might cry foul, regardless of the fact that Harris polls lower than Biden both in approval rating and in hypothetical match ups against Trump. The people most likely to feel betrayed would be the party "establishment" but not the establishment of moneyed donors or DC policy wonks but rather of the backbone of the party’s grassroots organizing efforts, no small number of which are African American women with no qualms in calling themselves politically moderate.”
I’m not too worried about it, although I’m concerned with the people I’m close to who despise Trump and enthusiastically voted for Biden last time but who now say that their conscience is screaming at them not to vote for either Trump or Biden because they believe that given how much Biden appears to them to have aged that he should not be allowed to govern four more years. I’m not sure that I agree with that, and it’s a topic for another thread.
More than anything else, I’m fascinated at what might happen if the Democrats at this late stage suddenly had to pick a new nominee. It would be like 1968 when LBJ dropped out of the race at about the same time as now, but it would be in the age of binding primaries, so people’s perceptions of it might be different. For multiple reasons, I’m not sure the race or the convention would be as chaotic as it was for the Dems in 1968.
I think Biden would probably endorse Harris. I think it would be hard for any other candidate to beat her to the nomination unless she performed abysmally on the campaign trail, which is possible because she had to drop out of the presidential race for 2020 before even the Iowa caucuses. And I think even if Kamal was not nominated that the nominee would probably be someone from the party establishment like Gretchen Whitmer, Gavin Newsom, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, Ralph Warnock, or Jared Polis, rather than a progressive like Elizabeth Warren (I doubt Bernie, who is older than Biden, could get away with running after Biden dropped out largely because of his age). John Fetterman, if he appears to be mentally competent, could mount an interesting insurgent campaign as a non-politically-correct progressive. I don’t think he would though.
One of the important parts of the primary process is to test candidates who may seem like good choices on paper but who turn out to be problematic on the campaign trail (e.g. Scott Walker, John Edwards, Marco Rubio, Rudy Giuliani, etc.). Another important factor is to give the eventual nominee a national profile. Among the non-Biden Democrats who draw speculation as potential replacements only Kamala Harris has anything approaching national name recognition. So to replace Biden at the convention (August 19-22) would give whoever emerged as the nominee exactly 75 days to:
I've probably missed a few things from that list, but the main point is that the current nomination process is as long as it is for a very good reason and dumping that in favor of a contentious 1968-style convention would be asking for trouble. The time for Biden to withdraw from the presidential race was sometime in early 2023. The die is cast. Everything else is just wankery.
Political polling seems to be broken in the U.S. To take one example, the New York Times polled 900 Democrats and found 45% of them wanted to vote for someone other than Biden. As a contrast, about 7.4 million Democrats have been polled in primary elections and more than 85% of them voted for Joe Biden. From my perspective the polls on election day are more accurate than media conducted polls, but YMMV.
Wanting to vote for someone else isn't the same as not caring who the someone else is, which is what would need to be true for that poll to play out as votes. That many Democrats will trudge to the polls for Biden is not news, the question is how many will be willing to vote barriers to voting for him, or willing to turn out at all.
Yes, Biden is outperforming the polling numbers, and Trump is under performing his polling numbers.
Just the other day I was listening to NPR. They were talking about how polling has changed. Used to be if a pollster called on the phone, about 1/3 of the people called would agree to the interview. Now, only about 1% of those called will agree to respond. Therefore, the opinions expressed are not representative of the general population.
That doesn't necessarily follow, unless the voting tendencies of those who are responding is markedly different from those who aren't, even after correcting for the various demographics that pollsters collect. Plus many samples are collected online now rather than by phone, and there is not a noticeable difference in the results, and pollsters monitor how their polls perform and adjust their calculations accordingly. Nobody is grabbing the first thousand people who pick up the phone and reporting the results verbatim.
I'd be interested to know if anyone is doing the kind of multiple regression analysis for US elections that has proved so useful for UK general elections.
This is the sort of thing:
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/blogs/ec_vipoll_20240215.html
Essentially it's trying to identify and predict the behaviour of relatively small demographic groups and using the proportions of those groups in particular areas to predict regional disparities in results. So it might be that you consider income level, education, gender, age and ethnicity so you have a fair idea of the likely vote distribution of e.g. women of Pakistani descent with postgrad degrees and incomes of £40-50k and then can project that onto the demographics of a particular constituency and get a pretty decent idea of the likely result. Yougov were reasonably successful with it in 2017 and 2019.
I’m not sure that was the point of that NPR piece. If I remember correctly, they said that different steps and types of analysis had to be taken to ensure that the polls were representative.
A real question for those running polls is how to get people under 30 to answer a call from a number they don't know. Most people in that age demographic would rather stick a fork in a power outlet.
538, which is now owned by ABC (the American Broadcasting Corporation, one the historically Big 3 broadcast networks in the US), is a good source for understanding polls. I particularly like their podcast.
Me too, and I'm barely under 70.