Joe Biden is out of the U.S. presidential race. Now what?
Alexander Panetta, Caroline Barghout, Rhianna Schmunk | CBC News | Posted: July 21, 2024 11:24 PM | Last Updated: July 22
VP Kamala Harris vaults to frontrunner status with Biden endorsing her as replacement
There's an immediate — and overwhelming — front-runner in the race to replace Joe Biden atop the Democratic ticket. But she hasn't locked it up yet.
In the wake of Biden's bombshell withdrawal Sunday from the presidential race, he gave a powerful boost to Vice-President Kamala Harris by endorsing her. But there was conspicuous silence from other top Democrats
Harris's response appeared to acknowledge it might not be a coronation.
"My intention is to earn and win this nomination," she said in a statement, saying she was honoured to have Biden's endorsement.
That said, she received numerous endorsements from congressional Democrats, including the party's Black and Hispanic caucuses and some leading progressives like Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
She is also expected to gain another formidable advantage: use of the existing Biden campaign operation, which would further complicate any rival challenge.
Harris entrenched her dominance with a show of organizational force: tens of thousands of potential volunteers participated in a video call for Black female supporters, several state parties promised their delegates will support her, and the party shattered a one-day fundraising record.
The fundraising platform, ActBlue, said Sunday evening that small-dollar donors raised more than $46.7 million in the first five hours of Harris's presidential campaign.
But other big names in the party were notably circumspect on Sunday. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and former U.S. president Barack Obama all put out statements on Sunday recognizing Biden's service to the country — but none mentioned Harris or endorsed her.
It opens up the possibility that she may have challengers at the upcoming Democratic National Convention, taking place Aug. 19-22.
"We will be navigating uncharted waters in the days ahead," Obama said in a statement. "But I have extraordinary confidence that the leaders of our party will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges."
WATCH | An endorsement for his vice-president:
Biden's decision was a historic development after a head-spinning week that included the aftermath of an assassination attempt against his Republican rival Donald Trump. And it scrambles assumptions about the campaign.
Virtually every poll shows the Republicans leading against Biden, though those same surveys say a hypothetical race involving Harris is much closer.
Republicans have also built their campaign around Biden's weakness; they will now be thrust into a messaging rewrite.
"I think her candidacy will get a lot of people excited, a lot of Democrats excited, a lot of people like me excited who are Never Trumpers. [We] just weren't excited when it came to Joe Biden," said former U.S. congressman Joe Walsh in an interview with CBC.
Whole new ball game
Biden's announcement was the first of its kind in 56 years.
Former U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson was the last incumbent to announce he would not run, a shocking withdrawal that happened in March 1968.
It was a year with some familiar themes: a time of deep division, a deadly conflict overseas and civil unrest at home while the man in the Oval Office dealt with health issues and faced pressure from his fellow Democrats to step aside.
Making Sunday's news even rarer, experts say Biden's withdrawal is unprecedented because it comes so late in the race.
"It's absolutely chaotic," said Kevin Boyle, an American history professor at Northwestern University in Illinois. "I mean, it's an unprecedented moment in a lot of ways, mostly on the question of timing. This is very late in the election season in the United States.
"This is a whole, whole new ball game."
Republicans saw it coming
It was clear, even at their convention last week, that Republicans were already pivoting to the possibility.
Harris was mentioned more often than is usual for a vice-president at the opposing party's convention, with her name coming up dozens of times.
Donald Trump's team even laid out the three lines of attack he intends to use against her.
Some of it is predictable. For example, Republicans will attempt to tie her to alleged failures of Biden's presidency, especially the porous border, which was one of her assigned files.
WATCH | Trump's track record with strong women:
Other attack lines are more unorthodox. Republicans said they will trash the replacement of Biden as an anti-democratic move, given that Biden won the primaries. And Trump's campaign co-manager said he intends to throw this back in Democrats' faces when they complain about Trump threatening democracy and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
"It's literally a coup," said Trump campaign official Chris LaCivita at last week's convention. "They're going to disenfranchise millions of people who [voted in primaries for Biden]."
That has already begun.
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson was quick to react to Biden's announcement Sunday on the social media platform X . He called the decision undemocratic and said it essentially invalidated the votes of more than 14 million Americans.
Johnson also questioned Biden's capability to finish his term and called it the largest political coverup in history. "If Joe Biden is not fit to run for president, he is not fit to serve as president. He must resign the office immediately. Nov. 5 cannot arrive soon enough," he wrote.
What will happen at the DNC?
There's no guarantee Harris will be the nominee but she is the overwhelming favourite when the Democrats meet next month in Chicago.
American politics has not seen open conventions in decades — and they can be unpredictable affairs.
Case in point: the convention to replace Johnson in 1968, which was also in Chicago, was a chaotic event that culminated in Johnson's vice-president winning the nomination.
But they can feature intra-party subterfuge that isn't easily foreseen.
For example, before the modern primary era started in 1972, challengers might not even announce themselves before the convention. They might show up to win the nomination on a second or third ballot, if nobody clinched an outright majority on the first.
Adlai Stevenson, for example, had twice won the Democratic nomination and — despite not being a declared candidate — he showed up at the 1960 convention, with his team working the back rooms in a failed effort to build support for him as a later-ballot dark horse.
It's an unlikely scenario this time, but not impossible.
Presidential historian Lindsay Chervinsky said she will be watching to see if the party has learned anything from the 1968 election.
"The 1968 election had a very messy convention, and it caused a lot of bitter feelings among the different factions of the Democratic Party," said Chervinsky in an interview with CBC News.
"Can they put aside their differences in pursuit of a common goal, and really learn from that lesson in history and try to avoid that type of mistake again?" she asked.
Harris's next move
Harris must now choose a running mate. She is expected to choose a governor from a swing state or from the eastern U.S., to provide regional balance to the ticket.
Some names being touted as the likeliest candidates include Roy Cooper of North Carolina, Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.
Harris appeared at a rally with Cooper last week.
Polls show Harris performing only slightly better or about the same as Biden. However, one prominent Republican predicted last week that replacing Biden could change the election.
"You're going to potentially see a re-energized Democrat party," New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu told reporters at the Republican convention.
He predicted that swing voters would reward Democrats. Sununu said voters dislike the two elderly candidates and a newer face would be well received.
"There's no party rule or law or anything that says it has to be the vice-president," said Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington and member of the Democratic National Committee's Rules Committee. "But she has two big assets: one is that she has been thoroughly vetted. If there were any scandals in her closet, we would know about it. Second is that she knows the job. She's been next to the president for four years.
"So, the combination of those factors and the fact that nobody seems to be interested in getting in [the race] means, frankly, [the convention] may not be as chaotic as people think it would be."
Unexpected end to a historic career
Biden's announcement caps a historic half-century career that spanned top positions in American politics.
It began with the stunning 1972 upset of an incumbent Republican senator, J. Caleb Boggs, who was believed to be unbeatable.
"Hell, no!" was the general consensus in Delaware, according to the political classic What It Takes, a book on the 1988 presidential election, the first one where Biden sought the presidency.
"Joe could see the whole thing in his head."
His improbable career began in mourning, with his first wife and daughter dying in a car accident just before he was sworn into the Senate in 1973. He held key roles on top Senate committees; the vice-presidency; and, finally, the top office he'd aspired to for decades.
His presidency enjoyed historic legislative successes, notably massive spending campaigns to revive American manufacturing — in infrastructure, clean energy, and computer chips.
It also struggled through high inflation, which is now easing, and the blood-soaked withdrawal from Afghanistan. He was popular when he entered office, but his popularity collapsed in the summer of 2021, coinciding with the inflation spike and the Afghan disaster.
That popularity never recovered. Democrats remained hopeful he might still pull off a re-election bid, and no candidate believed to have a credible shot at winning challenged him for the Democratic nomination.
The key to a young Biden's success was his gift of the gab, his ability to out-talk and out-persuade anyone, the book said.
But it was that same quality that failed him last month.
His catastrophic performance at the presidential debate, punctuated by an inability to remember key phrases or even articulate a coherent argument for his re-election, set off a shock wave of panic within his party and triggered a weeks-long effort to push him aside.
Campaign donors shut their wallets. Allies told him it was time to go, reportedly leaving him aggrieved.