Biden drops out – what happens now?
2024-07-21 00:29:05
Every Friday, Guardian columnist and former Washington correspondent, Jonathan Freedland, invites experts to help analyse the latest in American politics. From politicians to journalists covering the White House and beyond, Jonathan and his guests give listeners behind the scenes access to how the American political machine works.
This is The Guardian.
In Norway, a woman's boyfriend forgets who she is, overnight. In Detroit, a man is arrested, but he was never at the crime scene. In Spain, disturbing pictures of young girls have appeared, and no one knows who's behind them. Something strange is happening. A collision between people and artificial intelligence.
Discover more in The Guardian's series, Black Box. Listen to the whole series right now, wherever you get your podcasts.
Historic news in Washington tonight. For the first time in 56 years, an incumbent president has ended his campaign for re-election. Joe Biden is out of the 2024 race.
President Biden has also endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, to be the Democratic nominee.
It was the decision the Democratic Party, and a watching world, had been waiting for ever since June 27th. The night Joe Biden turned in a disastrous performance in a TV debate against Donald Trump. So what happens now? Will Democrats rally around the current vice president, Kamala Harris, who won an early endorsement from Joe Biden? Or will another contender jump in?
And the crucial question, can anyone beat Donald Trump? I'm Jonathan Friedland, columnist at The Guardian, and this is Politics Weekly America.
It's historic, it's something I think many people of my generation and previous generations have never lived through.
Nikki McCann-Ramirez covers politics for Rolling Stone magazine.
I was at my partner's house helping him get all packed up because he's moving, you know, rearranging furniture and little trinkets for a garage sale, and all of a sudden one of his housemates goes, Joe Biden just dropped out of the race. So I think within 45 seconds, I was on a bike, pedaling as fast as I could back to my apartment.
Yeah, and lots of journalists all the world over will be doing the same kind of thing. Let's just talk about his announcement. He did it via social media, he posted a letter addressed to my fellow Americans. In a nutshell, what did he say in his announcement?
So he started off by touting the progress and the achievements he's made in his four years as president, help he's given to veterans, gun safety laws, his appointments on the Supreme Court, thanked the American people for their support, and then he wrote that it's been, quote, the greatest honor of my life to serve as your president. And while it has been my intention to seek re-election, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as president for the remainder of my term. And then, of course, he expressed his thanks to all the people who worked on his campaign. He thanked Vice President Kamala Harris and once again gave his appreciation to the American people. So that's kind of what we got.
I think it's very clear there. He will provide more details later on. But obviously, that letter just sent off alarm bells in every newsroom, reactions from all over Democratic, Republican media, lawmakers. I think everything is just happening so fast right now, it's near impossible to keep up.
Yeah, it is. Just explain to us your view of what made the difference, because these calls for him to drop out had been there more or less since the immediate aftermath of that debate on June the 27th, that disastrous TV debate, him against Donald Trump, in which he was seen to be staring blankly, unable to finish sentences. It started this whole discussion about his fitness for another four years and for the rigors of a campaign. There were calls, you know, at different points, people were saying even as recently as last night, he seemed, if anything, more dug in. What's your assessment of what turned things around?
I think it was twofold. I think it was the dam breaking, with Democratic lawmakers calling for him to step down. Developing. tonight, another Democrat is calling on the president to step aside. Ohio U.S.
Senator Sherrod Brown now asking President Biden to end his presidential campaign. Brown joins three other Democratic senators and more than 30 House Democrats in calling for President Biden to drop out. Suppressing the point that he could go down as the man who put aside his own political ambitions for the good of the country, or he could go down as the man who dug in, refused to listen to the polls, the reality from his advisers, the situation in critical swing states, ultimately lost the election and handed the country over to Republicans. I think the big example is always Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was encouraged to retire under a Democratic president. She ended up dying and Trump appointed a Republican to the Supreme Court.
So I think that was weighing a lot on Democrats' minds. I think the polling was looking really abysmal. The other big factor that I think really pressed the point to Biden was donor abandonment.
Donald Trump now has more money on hand than Joe Biden does in his campaign coffers. And so that was a signal that, after weeks of hearing that donors were withholding large sums of money, not only to his campaign, but to the various super PACs that run ads and try to find people across the country to turn out and vote, that it was going to become difficult to keep the lights on, conceivably in the coming weeks and to pay for the advertising and the travel and the staffing necessary.
We had a pretty significant string of prominent Democratic donors say that essentially they were pulling their funding and focusing on state-level racists in the House and the Senate, because the presidency was looking like a lost cause. And I think that really, for Democrats and the Democratic establishment as a whole, really kind of solidified that Biden was not going to be able to see this through. I think Democratic leadership, people like Nancy Pelosi, probably got in his ear and said, look, it's time. There's no path forward.
Yeah, we definitely know that Nancy Pelosi, regarded by many as one of the sharpest operators in American politics, about the greatest political operator on the Democratic side, was behind the scenes, pulling every string to get Joe Biden to reach this decision. Some people are shocked by that, because Nancy Pelosi is such a longtime ally and friend of Joe Biden's, but she was a crucial operator. And a lot of people, I mean, I have to say myself included, thought she's not going to rest until this is done. In other words, she doesn't do defeat. She doesn't do losing on moves like this.
And she was just going to keep plugging away. And obviously she did that. You mentioned donors. I noticed that Ron Klein, the former chief of staff to Joe Biden, very close ally of his, says he blames donors and electeds, meaning senior elected Democrats, for having, quote, pushed out the only candidate who has ever beaten Trump. Some bitterness there in the Biden camp, particularly about the point you made to us about donors and feeling as if they, in a way, left Joe Biden with pretty much no option.
It's a bit of a cop out, in my opinion. I think it's very clear from polling that we've been seeing, especially in the aftermath of the debate, I think, as you and I discussed in the episode we did right after the debate, the issue of Biden's age has been a concern for voters for a really long time. And in the past couple of weeks, it's become incredibly clear that the debate, the fallout, the TV interviews and press conferences didn't do much to assuage those concerns from voters. In fact, it seems that those concerns have become more pronounced.
And that's partly because, you know, if you think about the one he did after the NATO summit, brilliant answers on foreign policy, detailed, in-depth answers, but all marred by the fact that the whole thing kicked off with him introducing Volodymyr Zelensky as President Putin and calling Kamala Harris Vice President Trump. that overshadowed the rest.
Exactly. And I think for a lot of people, this idea that we're just kind of hanging on to the president's every public appearance as proof or confirmation of whether or not he's healthy or unhealthy, that in itself is a problem. It's a problem for voters. It's not just a problem for the media and donors. And I think if we look at the data that's coming out, he is polling under Trump in every critical swing state.
The general election remains fairly close. But, as we know, in American elections, the popular vote isn't what wins the White House. It's the Electoral College. And I think before Biden lost the donors, he was already losing the American public. And you know, there's going to be blame to go around.
There's going to be resentment. But if I were the Biden campaign, my pivot would now be to say to people, see, this is a man who put aside his ego, his political ambitions, and is stepping down for the good of the country, because he knows there's someone that could do it better. And if I were the Biden campaign, I would contrast that to Donald Trump, who I think can very easily be described as a narcissistic, power-hungry autocrat who wants nothing more than to gain political power. Instead of bickering with your donors and the Democratic establishment for being too mean to you, turn this to your advantage. If you truly are doing this because you want to defeat Donald Trump, then turn this into an attack line.
There's certainly now an opening in drawing that contrast. A lot of people have been stepping forward, including people who were previously critical of Joe Biden and urging him to step down, now, saying this shows he is a truly great American, selfless, this is a last great act of public service, of sacrifice.
What a man, what a patriot, what an act of selfless devotion to your country.
Great act of patriotism. So you're seeing that already happening and trying to draw that contrast. I have to say I was tickled a bit by the tweet by the Republican pollster, Sarah Longwell, who just very deadpan, said Donald Trump is the oldest major party nominee in American history, which of course he now is, now that Joe Biden is out of the race. Look, immediately, as soon as this happened, people were thinking, well, who's going to take his place? There were no clues in that letter that you were quoting earlier and that we discussed.
But within minutes, I mean, certainly less than half an hour, there was a tweet, again, social media posting from Joe Biden saying, my fellow Democrats, I've decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as president for the remainder of my term.
He goes on to say that his first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my vice president. He says, and it's been the best decision I've made today. He says, I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. He concludes by saying, and again, this is President Biden saying, Democrats, it's time to come together and beat Trump. Let's do this.
So now that is as clear an instruction as the outgoing nominee could possibly have in your mind, Nikki, was it straightforward and obvious that Joe Biden would always back Kamala Harris?
I think so. I think she really has come across throughout all the debates we've been having about this last couple of weeks, as the natural successor to the head of the ticket.
Many of the delegates who would have to vote on the nomination are already, were already prepared to vote for Biden with her in mind as the running mate. A lot of the campaign apparatus is built along that same principle. She is the easiest candidate that they could take all of the fundraising, state level, organization, all of the sort of, you know, intricacies of a presidential campaign and transfer that to her with as much ease as we could have in a situation like this.
And that's partly legal, isn't it? Because some of the money that people gave to the Biden Harris ticket, there were some people saying it's quite difficult legally to move that over to someone else, but legally simple to move it over to her because her name's on the ticket.
Absolutely. And I think, on top of that, you know, she's polling well in a lot of states. And in the mind of the Democratic Party, the most critical thing right now is moving quickly. They don't want to spend too much time caught up debating various nominees. So I think Biden coming out, tapping Kamala as his chosen successor, is going to go a long way to move delegates who are enthusiastic about him in her direction.
And I do think the big question that I am focused on right now is who's going to be her VP. So I think many of the candidates that were floated as potential replacements for Biden realistically understand that challenging Kamala in this moment is probably not going to end well for them. So if there is a discussion, I think it will more likely be centered around who will be the vice president on this ticket. There's a big list of names. Democrats have a really strong bench, and I'll be curious to see how that unfolds in the convention, and, you know, whose head pops out of the sand in the next couple of days.
So that's very interesting, because in a way there you're saying you've sort of got your head around the idea it's going to be her. There are definitely signs of that. I read just now, as we're speaking, that the Clintons, Bill and Hillary, have endorsed Kamala Harris. There does seem to be some momentum. Members of Congress as well, some of them making some early statements, some senior Democrats.
So there's a kind of rallying around. And, as you say, it would require quite a lot for now somebody to say, I know we've gone through the last three, four weeks of psychodrama, let's now do more. Because you know, there won't be many takers for that. I get all that. But you just said there about her strength in various states.
Let's talk about that. Because there are people who are worried about that and about Kamala Harris's chances. Because what was always said, you know, in the run up to this was, yeah, Joe Biden's polling really badly, but she's not polling that much better. And I just throw out a couple of things that I've just heard in the hours since we've had this decision. You know, America is a country that didn't elect a woman eight years ago.
Is it, has it changed that much that it's now ready, having rejected Hillary Clinton in 2016,, it is ready to elect a woman now? And then I also hear this, which is, you know, America has a country that with a very bruised history on race, it rejected a white woman eight years ago. Can we really see America, given the racial polarization of that country, choosing a black woman as its president? And that these things make a lot of people, even Democrats, nervous about her candidacy. What do you say to those?
I think the best thing about Kamala Harris is that she's already run for president. She ran on the 2020 ticket with Biden and won. And we already know what these concerns are and what the line of attacks from Republicans will be, because they've been there for a long time now, versus if they were to flow and select other candidates who haven't been tested in national office, you know, that opens up a lot of more, a lot more questions. It opens up a lot more oppo research. I think the things that Kamala has going for her is she has incredibly strong resonance with black women, who have often been the electoral backbone of the Democratic Party.
She has a strong background as a prosecutor, which served to her detriment when she ran in 2020 amid the George Floyd protests and all the issues around policing. But in 2024, when so much of the Republican campaign is focused around crime and safety, she's very well positioned to tackle those lines of attack. She is incredibly strong on the issue of abortion and reproductive rights, which are going to be a huge issue in this election cycle. She's sort of been the Biden campaign's surrogate on that issue.
Biden himself often struggled to actually say the word abortion, didn't he?
Exactly.
He was really uncomfortable with the issue, a Catholic himself. He was uncomfortable with it. And, as you say, Democrats believe it's one of their strongest suits. And she is somebody who can prosecute that argument. Just one small parochial point I'd make here, you know, we've just had an election here where somebody offering himself as a former prosecutor, Keir Starmer, the new prime minister here, that worked very well.
In a way, that would be part of her pitch, right, that she was a former crime-busting prosecutor back in California as an ADA and attorney general and assistant district attorney, I think, earlier in her career. So she's got all of that going for her. And I'm just thinking about some of those states, those states that went for Trump in 2016,, that blue collar, you know, those post-industrial states, often white men. Do we see those people in Michigan, in Wisconsin, in Pennsylvania, getting behind Kamala Harris?
Yeah, I think we've seen some polling that shows, and again, you got to always take polling with a grain of salt. We got to wait for more of them to come out so we can get a good aggregation. But I think we've seen that in critical, like, Midwestern swing states, she sometimes polls better than Biden and sometimes better than Trump. What I'm looking out for, kind of returning to our conversation about the VP, is the big tactic that Democrats are going to take here is probably picking a white Midwestern man to round out that ticket, someone a little bit more moderate, because Kamala has sort of leaned progressive on a lot of issues. And they're going to want to round that out with someone who can appeal to undecided voters, people who typically vote Democrat but might be skeptical of a black woman as president, as you raised the point earlier.
So the Democrats here have a really good strategic opportunity to recalibrate their ticket in a way that better serves the needs of voters, the desires of voters in these swing states where Biden has been struggling.
Yeah. And so some names that are being mentioned would be the governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, certainly ticks the box of being a white man from one of those crucial Midwestern states. He's also, his politics are more moderate than hers. Another name I've heard is Mark Kelly, the senator from Arizona, not one of the Midwestern states, but certainly a swing state with an extraordinary CV, background in the military in the United States Navy, former astronaut, married to Gabby Giffords, the congresswoman who was famously the victim of a shooting. I mean, he's got it all.
And you know, an astronaut, he's a kind of sort of comic book hero. in a way. He gets the sort of, the macho box is properly ticked with him. You know, who are you looking at? Who do you think is possible, as you very rightly put it, to round out this ticket?
The two that I think might be dark horses in this race are Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky, Kentucky, a little bit more of a red state, but Beshear is a Democrat elected in a red state who has a lot of appeal with sort of those suburban purplish voters, skeptical of a lot of progressive policies. The other one who I think might be a bit of a long shot, but is making a good argument for himself in recent weeks, is Pete Buttigieg, the secretary of transportation. He ran for the presidency in 2020.. Incredibly sharp debater, incredibly intelligent, also has a record of military service. I have my criticisms of him, but I think he would also be a strong contender in the race for the VP.
Yeah, I mean, the argument, I suppose, all of these, there is a deep bench of talent, isn't there? And people have noted that this was part of the argument around Biden. We don't have to rely on a man of his age. There's all this, you know, fresh generational talent. My hunch is, you know, that, just given the demographics, they will feel by having a black woman on the ticket, that there are those white men who will want to see themselves represented.
I've also heard, you know, it said that Pete Buttigieg, the fact that he's gay, you know, that could happen on a ticket where you didn't have a black woman at the top of the ticket, but it will be, as it were, too much for some of those conservative voters. It's a bit grim to have to talk like this, because it would obviously be much better all round if you didn't. But these are the kind of calculations that seem to be being made. What about just the mechanics? Just talk us through the mechanics of all this work, because we're in uncharted territory.
The last time this happened, it was Lyndon Johnson who, in 1968, pulled out of his re-election campaign. He did it much earlier, though. There were primaries still going on. He did it in March of that year. There was plenty of time.
Primaries then could choose someone else. The party was coalescing around Bobby Kennedy before he was assassinated. Very different situation this time, because he already had all the delegates, Joe Biden. So just talk us through the mechanics of how now the Democrats do go through this process, whether it's a coronation or a contest.
The Democratic National Convention is scheduled for August 19th in Chicago. They can either hold a virtual vote before the convention to officially confirm the nominee, or they hold the votes at the convention. One of the reasons I think Biden came out and endorsed Kamala Harris so quickly was because you need 1,976 delegates to secure the nomination, and a huge chunk of those delegates will probably be moved to support Vice President Harris just off of Biden's endorsement. Ideally, there would be one vote, Kamala Harris would be nominated, and that would confirm her spot as the official nominee on the Democratic ticket. Ideally for the Democratic Party, because then, if it goes into multiple rounds of voting, you can kind of end up in like a Kevin McCarthy Speaker of the House, situation, where you're just doing rounds and rounds of votes.
Things are getting delayed, it looks like the party isn't unified. But once Harris is confirmed as the official nominee, she would at some point select her VP. They would also have to be confirmed, I think, by a round of voting, and that would be the ticket.
So this could all be over pretty quickly, even if the formalities take some time. I think the one thing nobody wants is for it to go to Chicago and be a floor fight. I mentioned 1968 before. That's the precedent. people want to avoid, where there was just this four-day showcase of disunity, division.
It even turned violent outside. No one wants that again. So instead, I think there will be this convergence. And you'll see perhaps some of these big endorsements of Kamala Harris. What we wait is for anybody else to throw their hat in the ring.
I think also there will be great interest to see what former Speaker Pelosi or Chuck Schumer, the Democrats' leader in the Senate, they'll be watching to see what they do. Meanwhile, Donald Trump, what do you think? He's put out? a statement saying crooked, Joe Biden was not fit to run for president, certainly not fit to serve, never was.
All those around him, including the doctors and the media, knew that he wasn't capable of being president, and he wasn't. And now look what he's done to our country.
He only attained the position of president by lies and so on. We will suffer greatly because of his presidency on and on. So not being giving him a sort of gracious farewell or anything like it. If you are in Team Trump tonight, how are they feeling about the departure of Joe Biden and perhaps the arrival, the coronation of Kamala Harris?
I think it's an incredibly mixed bag for them. If Vice President Harris ascends to the ticket, Democrats do have a bit of an advantage in knowing what Republicans' lines of attack against her are. They've been countering this oppo for years at this point. But I also think a lot of Trump and Republican strategy this election cycle was built around the villainization of Joe Biden. And now that Joe Biden is out, you need to do a massive recalibration of your messaging and campaign strategy around a new candidate.
You have to combat this notion that Joe Biden did something incredibly altruistic, that Donald Trump is incapable of. And you, you know, have to pull back all the ads and all the sort of campaign messaging and campaign materials that you've produced around Joe Biden and redirect all that toward a new candidate. So I think there was some chatter, some like, oh, sources are saying behind the scenes stuff ahead of Joe Biden officially and announcing that he was dropping out, that some Republicans didn't want him to because they felt that Joe Biden was a beatable candidate and that they would struggle much more with someone else at the head of the Democratic ticket.
Yeah, he's been saying that, told CNN that, you know, Kamala Harris would be easier for him to beat. But I'm not sure that's true.
Now that he has stepped down and there will be great gratitude among many Democrats that he's done that. What do you think the lasting legacy of this very long career and this four year presidency will be for Joe Biden?
Every president's legacy is incredibly complicated. You have sort of standouts who are enshrined, like your Abraham Lincolns, as people who made leaps and bounds in the progress of the nation. But then you also have presidents, I think, like, like what Joe Biden will be, who have a mixed legacy of accomplishment, of complication, of trying to steer the nation through incredibly tumultuous times. But I think at the end of the day, this decision will ensure that Biden's legacy isn't of someone who acted selfishly in his own interest, over the interest of the nation, over the reality of the threat to democracy that is the current Republican project. And, you know, he's had a phenomenal career, like 50 years in office.
He's served through incredibly difficult moments in his life. And I think that can only be respected. Biden does exemplify it in a lot of ways, the things that we would like to see from a public servant in this country. And he can walk away knowing he made a decision that was about the country and not about himself.
In a way, it depends whether Trump is defeated. If Trump is defeated in November, I think he'll have a storied place in the American presidential history, because it will be his selfless decision, which perhaps led to that outcome. So we will see. For now, Nikki McCann-Ramirez, thanks so much for talking to us for this special episode of Politics Weekly American.
Thank you so much, Jonathan.
And that is all from me for now. Look out for all the latest on this historic decision from our colleagues on The Guardian website. The producer is Daniel Stevens. The executive producer today, Nicole Jackson. I'm Jonathan Friedland.
Thanks, as always, for listening.
This is The Guardian.
Experience the ultimate cooking app, Feast, today. Download now and enjoy a 14-day free trial. Terms and conditions apply.
v1.0.0.240919-5_os