No one knows quite what the process of choosing a new candidate would be if Joe Biden stepped aside, but many Democrats say it is more likely than ever that any process will end quickly with Vice President Kamala Harris as the nominee.
Informal conversations about how a fight to replace Biden at the top of the ticket would play out have been going on behind the scenes for weeks. But the uncertainty over the process has been so confusing that it has given many Democrats – even those with serious concerns about Biden – pause from speaking out against the president’s candidacy, given that what comes next could still be more complicated.
“Fuck it, I’m full of coconut. I just want this to be over,” said one well-known Democratic operative, referring to the online meme that emerged from an old video of the vice president telling a story of her mother saying, “Do you think you just fell out of a coconut tree?”
It’s not that everyone has suddenly come together, but exhaustion is becoming a consensus.
Internal polls are spreading that show Harris would at least be more useful in boosting Democratic enthusiasm and helping narrow the election. The arguments that she would be the quickest to put together a campaign are landing more strongly. Dreams are taking hold that she will present a more active and vigorous case against Donald Trump.
Many are deliberately putting off talking hypotheticals, as Biden’s advisers say she plans to return to the campaign trail next week once she recovers from Covid-19. But if that suddenly changes, two dozen prominent Democratic politicians and operatives told CNN, they can’t realistically see this ending any other way.
Some are pushing for a quick, closed process, where delegates would bless the exchange as part of their pre-convention virtual nomination plan.
Some reject the idea of a coronation, either because they prefer others or because they don’t like how it would look. But while there are musings about quickly creating a series of flash primaries or town halls, no one can agree on how that would work with just over 100 days until the election, much less before Democrats meet in Chicago. Still, it’s an idea that some Harris supporters support, doubting anyone serious will challenge it, no matter how much they puff out their chests behind the scenes.
Several Democratic members of Congress who called for Biden to leave refused on Friday when CNN asked them if they were willing to say they wanted Harris to be the nominee.
At least, people associated with several of the other more serious potential options and others acknowledge that they would likely feel hemmed in by both party loyalty and their own future ambitions. There will be a lot of pressure to unify after the last month of infighting, and anyone who accepts it would risk torpedoing her reputation with the base in a potential open 2028 primary if she were seen as weakened by it and lost.
Some Democrats believe that, even with the threat of early voting deadlines, the issue could be resolved at the convention in late August. However, if this drags on this long, several Democrats predicted the hunger for a resolution will only intensify.
That’s increasingly likely, these politicians and operatives say, both because of how close they are to Election Day and because of how impressed they have been by how the vice president has handled these weeks of Democratic crisis. They argue that the vice president has not been caught scheming, even in private conversations, and has instead shown herself to be passionate and loyal to Biden at a series of campaign events, which will continue Saturday at a fundraiser she will headline in Provincetown, Massachusetts. .
“I think it has to be the vice president. She is campaigning vigorously under the mantle and is the natural successor. In the event that the president is not the candidate, it will be important that we support her immediately,” said a Democratic member of the House of Representatives who asked not to be identified so as not to be seen undermining the president.
Biden’s hand would matter
Few can conceive of Biden stepping aside and not turning to her running mate to take over. To do otherwise would be a devastating insult to her, the kind that hurt Biden himself so much when Barack Obama turned to Hillary Clinton before the 2016 election. It would also be undermining her own judgment in choosing her four years ago as a nominee for the job. , which he reiterated in his press conference last week.
And it would mean overlooking a Black vice president after Black voters and leaders, including South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn, who has repeatedly said he wants Harris, if not Biden, not only carried him to victory in 2020, but they are some of the most strongly supporting it right now.
That kind of support would probably only lead to more, convincing both delegates and voters, and making it easier to accept. Even with his track record of a failed 2020 campaign and a rocky start to the vice presidency, it’s getting tougher.
Eleni Kounalakis, California’s lieutenant governor and a Democratic convention delegate who serves on its rules and bylaws committee, as well as an old friend of Harris’s, said it’s important to remember that if the president were to resign, he would win. Democratic primaries while talking about the achievements of “Biden-Harris”.
“When people voted for him as a candidate, they were voting for this ticket, so you have to conclude that the best way to validate the vote of the primary voters is to support the vice president as our candidate,” she said. “There is so much respect for President Biden that if he asked the delegates to support her, even with a public media chaos, I believe that the majority of the delegates would honor her wishes as the person chosen through the primary process and as our president”.
Thinking like this also resonates against it.
“I think Democratic leaders know better than anyone the power of stability. When there is chaos, they are the ones who suffer the consequences,” an aide to a Democrat in a frontline district told CNN. “The frontliners are like the stock market.”
Democratic politicians and top national policy advisers fear that unleashing an open process at the convention would be a disaster, prolonging the party drama and ruining support from the powerful Congressional Black Caucus, a force to mobilize grassroots support and increase the enthusiasm in November.
Even some Democratic members running for re-election in swing districts also see little advantage in the party undertaking a week-long sojourn to test out a new face of the party, and that means anyone would want to take on Harris, risking his own political future. . if they didn’t succeed now.
“The internal struggle is killing us. There is no world in which you can leave Kamala aside,” a Democratic insider told CNN on condition of anonymity to discuss the difficult political moment Democrats find themselves in.
Weaknesses have not been forgotten
People who long disliked Harris suddenly changed their minds. The amnesia has not appeared suddenly because of your past weaknesses or problems. That has been part of the calculations Biden is making as he deliberates what to do.
Texas Rep. Vicente González, who is running for re-election in a difficult race, told CNN he was surprised by how quickly the conversation had moved on from people saying just a few months ago that Harris would be a liability to the candidacy and that Biden could consider replacing him. his.
“I just don’t understand how we got from that to the idea that she should lead the ticket,” González said. “I have nothing against her, but the facts are just the facts. Not everything changed, right? How do we get from that to this? I mean, nowhere else in the world except this city, right?
Republican operatives tell CNN they are salivating, not only from remembering the old attacks and videos of his word salad responses, but also from asking him again and again what he knew and when he knew it about Biden’s health and the effects of aging. They will push for Biden to resign, to create more chaos and get her further out of the way.
They will also question not only the legitimacy of her making it through whatever rushed process is elected, but also whether she can legally be replaced on the ballot. House Speaker Mike Johnson’s comment in an interview this week that “some preliminary investigations are underway” is making the rounds, with real concerns that ballot access could be affected if Democrats move forward with an entirely new candidate emerging from a negotiated convention. .
And already in 2020, when Biden put Harris on the ticket, some went beyond deliberately mispronouncing her name, but instead threatened lawsuits over whether she is constitutionally eligible to serve, hooking on the erroneous argument that neither of her parents was born in USA.
They are not the only ones.
“If you think it’s going to be an easy transition, I’m here to tell you that a lot of the donor class, a lot of the elites, a lot of these people in these rooms that I see are pushing ‘Let Joe Biden not be the nominee is also not interested in the vice president being the nominee,” New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in an Instagram Live chat Thursday night.
Meanwhile, some progressives have said behind the scenes that they trust Biden to be more aligned with their agenda than Harris, and that’s part of the reason many have stuck with him.
“She’s auditioning for the presidency right now.”
For others, the political conversation is lagging behind the way this is reaching many outside Washington and people who obsess over internal polls and election data. donors.
“To some extent, he’s auditioning for the presidency right now,” said Ashley Etienne, his former communications director and a longtime Hill aide still in contact with many current members. She is well positioned to bolster confidence in Joe Biden while assuring people that he is ready. He needs to do it in deeper ways. The campaign needs to create opportunities for her to do that.”
For Rep. Jared Golden, a Maine Democrat who has said he doesn’t think he can vote for the president, thinking about a move toward Harris is just logical.
“I think a lot of Americans are thinking there’s a very good chance that if she wins the Biden-Harris ticket, Kamala will finish her second term,” Golden said. “So the question might be asked: Why not resolve that issue in this election?”
