Understand how Biden would be replaced, according to Democrat rules

President Joe Biden said something interesting in his rare press conference on Thursday, when he was asked whether the delegates who pledged to support him at the Democratic National Convention have his blessing to support another candidate.

“They are free to do whatever they want,” Biden said.

The president noted that he overwhelmingly won the Democratic primary, which is why nearly all convention delegates are currently considered pledged to him. But then he added this:

“Tomorrow, if I suddenly show up at the convention and everyone says we want someone else, that’s the democratic process. It’s not going to happen,” he added confidently.

Biden is correct that Democrats’ rules allow delegates to vote for the candidate of their choice. But it’s a little more complicated than he let on.

During the roll call vote that officially selects the party’s nomination, for example, delegates who do not vote for a recognized candidate would only have their vote recorded as “present.”

Biden, for now, will likely be the only recognized candidate and will in all likelihood remain the nominee unless he drops out.

Before Biden’s press conference, I spoke with Elaine Kamarck about how Democrats choose nominees.

Kamarck knows more than most. She is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has written extensively as a scholar about the primary process and is also deeply involved in the Democratic Party, where she serves on the Rules and Bylaws Committee.

She told me how the Biden replacement process would work, considering that 3,949 convention delegates are currently committed to supporting him.

Below are excerpts from a longer conversation conducted over the phone.

Is it unprecedented for a president to face this kind of challenge?

KAMARCK: No, it is not unprecedented. You had that with (Jimmy) Carter. A sitting president who everyone thought would lose.

Certainly LBJ (in 1968) was forced to resign, or he thought he was forced to resign, by a poor showing in the New Hampshire primary and his inability to gain the trust of the antiwar movement.

So yes, presidents have had problems before. They have never had problems for this reason, and never this late in the process.

Is it too late to replace Biden?

KAMARCK: No, it’s not too late to replace it. Legally, according to party rules, he can be replaced at any time until roll call at the convention.

Politically, it is very difficult to replace him, because, with the exception of his vice president, none of the people mentioned have achieved national stature.

And his ability to speak to the delegates from Alabama as well as the delegates from Maine as well as the delegates from Utah is very truncated. And they don’t have time to develop it. We’re just running out of time.

(Note: Governors such as Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Wes Moore of Maryland, and Gavin Newsom of California are popular in their states and viewed as potential future presidential candidates.)

So you think the only viable replacement is Vice President Kamala Harris?

KAMARCK: That’s right. This isn’t according to the rules or anything, but realistically… think about who these 4,000 people are.

First, they are all very loyal people to Biden. So that would require Biden to drop out. Second, because she was vice president, she knows them, right? My guess is that of those 4,000 people, she actually knew a lot of them. This is not the case with anyone else mentioned.

The 2028 bench is very strong, which is good for the party, but none of them have left their states yet.

Who are the DNC delegates who select the party’s candidate?

KAMARCK: In most states, they are elected at congressional district conventions, which follow the primaries.

(They) run as delegates and then show up at a particular high school or somewhere in the district, bringing as many friends, colleagues and supporters as they can.

They are nominated and compete for delegate positions. Everyone is elected. And this is very important, because there is a lot of nonsense circulating about this being a group of elites. These people are the social studies teacher who is an active member of the union. These people are the leader in the abortion rights movement, or they’re a county commissioner or a state delegate or something.

These people tend to be locally notable and tend to be very astute and politically active because they have to run and get elected.

(NOTE: There is also a much smaller group of superdelegates who receive delegate status due to their position in the party, but who do not vote for the presidential candidate on the first convention ballot unless there is a consensus candidate.)

How strong is the promise or commitment of the 3,949 delegates to Joe Biden?

KAMARCK: The rule says – and the rule has been in effect since the 1984 convention, so it’s old – that delegates must, and the operative words are, “in good conscience vote for the person they have been selected to represent.”

It was never tested. There is no legal history on what “in good conscience” means.

Does this mean you suddenly don’t like the guy? I think probably not.

Does that mean you think he and the party will lose?

We don’t really know what this means because since it was put in the rules and the “robot rule” died, this has never happened. We have never had a convention where a lot of people voted against the person they were elected with.

When were the most recent convention contests?

KAMARCK: You can go to 1980. The Carter-Kennedy fight was a great fight. It was a real fight at the convention. It was bitter. It was angry. Kennedy brought a lot of things to the table.

In the end, Carter prevailed, but he fought to the end. In 1976, with the Republicans, Reagan challenged President Ford. That was a big, big fight.

They were very close in delegates, and Reagan narrowly lost and then conceded. Those are the two big ones. You don’t have to go far back in history to see conventions where there was a fight over the nomination.

Should Democrats be talking about all this now?

KAMARCK: I think we need to talk about this. And I think we have to look at this carefully. None of us see the president every day, so it’s very, very difficult, and that’s why I think Democrats are taking their time to think about this.

I went to the Democratic Congressional retreat in February, sat 20 feet away from the president and watched him answer questions from Democratic House members. He was fantastic. I didn’t see any signs of mental fatigue or confusion or anything like that. I thought he was fantastic.

The same day I was there, the Hur report came out. It was a very surreal experience to see this report come through my phone wires, and to be watching the man who was in charge of everything.

I think there’s a human element to this that everyone is missing, which is that these things can develop quickly. It’s really hard to tell how serious it is when you’re not with him every day. And so people are being cautious.

[…]

The fact is that these people are going to come down to Chicago around August 19th and the convention is going to start. And everything that happens between now and then is just politics, pure and simple.

This content was originally created in English.

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