An a growing number of congressional Democrats are calling on President Joe Biden to withdraw from the 2024 presidential election due to concerns over his eligibility, some party members have begun debating the possibility of a nominated replacement.
But the decision to step aside is entirely up to Biden, and the president has said he is committed to staying in the race. “I’m determined to run,” Biden told reporters at a news conference Thursday night, suggesting he would drop out only if polls showed there was “no way” he would win. “They’re not saying that. No research says that,” he added.
At this time, 19 Democratic members of Congress have called for Biden’s withdrawal from the elections, representing just over 7% of the bench. Many expressed concern that a Biden-led ticket could threaten vulnerable candidates, while others questioned his mental acuity after his poor debate performance.
So what will it look like if Biden finally decides to drop out of the race? Here’s what historians say would happen if Biden resigned.
Biden withdrawing so late would be “unprecedented”
If Biden were to drop out of the presidential race before the election in four months’ time, he would be the first to do so this late in the campaign cycle, according to several historians. But it would not be the first time that a sitting president decided to withdraw his candidacy or not seek re-election.
Matt Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University, says that former presidents Harry Truman (1952) and Lyndon B. Johnson (1968) decided to withdraw their reelection campaigns in March of their election years, despite being eligible to run for office. office. Second term. “It’s not unprecedented for a sitting president to decide not to run for re-election,” says Dallek, “but what would be unprecedented and what makes Biden’s situation unique is the fact that the campaign is already so advanced.”
He adds that no candidate has ever dropped out after securing enough delegates in the presidential primaries to be the nominee. (Biden won the Democratic nomination in March after winning more than 3,800 delegates).
Kevin Boyle, a professor of American history at Northwestern University, says the closest parallel to a presidential candidate dropping out late in the campaign came in October 2016, when the infamous Access Hollywood The tape and its audio of former President Donald Trump bragging about sexual assault were made public a month before the election. “There was a lot of talk within the Republican Party about replacing Trump as the candidate at an even later date than we’re talking about now,” says Boyle. Many assumed the scandal would force Trump to step aside, but he stayed in the race and won.
See more information: As Biden’s name mix-ups draw attention, supporters point to similar gaffes by Trump
The complex process to replace Biden as candidate
Replacing a candidate close to Election Day would involve a complex process, but the Democratic National Committee (DNC) has rules in place for such a scenario.
Historians say that if Biden ends his campaign before the Aug. 19 Democratic convention, his pledged delegates would be free to support other candidates and Democrats would choose a candidate at the event. However, the process could get complicated if Biden doesn’t support a replacement candidate, which happened in 1968 after Johnson dropped out of the race, says Boyle.
Dallek adds that “if Biden did not support his vice president, then there would be a mini campaign to recruit and win the support of the majority of delegates.” During this mini-campaign, the winning candidate would need to secure the support of the majority of delegates to obtain the nomination. Vice President Kamala Harris, Biden’s running mate, would enter the nomination fight with an early lead, but other potential candidates may have access to large numbers of delegates from their home states.
Julian Zelizer, a political historian at Princeton University, warns that open conventions with multiple candidates competing for the nomination can sometimes be grueling and have multiple roll call votes. During the 1924 Democratic National Convention, it took a record 103 votes before John W. Davis emerged as the presidential candidate.
If Biden withdrew from the election after being nominated at the Aug. 19 Democratic convention, the DNC would need to select a new candidate “by majority vote in a special session called by the president,” according to the National Election Task Force. This scenario occurred in 1972, when Thomas Eagleton withdrew from running for vice president, leading the DNC to select Sargent Shriver as his replacement on the ticket.
How Biden Could Secure Kamala Harris’ Nomination
If Biden were to withdraw from the race, political historians say the most likely scenario is that he would support Harris. Biden insisted he does not plan to quit, but praised his vice president on Thursday for her work on abortion rights and her time in the Senate.
“Look, I wouldn’t have chosen Vice President Trump [Harris] to be vice president [if I didn’t] I don’t think she was qualified to be president,” Biden said at his press conference on Thursday. Several Democratic congressmen said they would support her if Biden decided to drop out of the race, in large part because she would inherit Biden’s campaign money – about $91 million as of May 30 – given that her name is already on the current presidential ticket.
“I don’t care how talented you are — you can’t instantly put together a campaign that’s going to win a national presidential race,” said Rep. Glenn Ivey, a Maryland Democrat who would support Harris over outside candidates as a running mate. TIME. “It’s not realistic.”
Zelizer says fundraising “would be more complicated with the other candidates,” as almost all of the money in the Biden-Harris campaign account would have to be returned to donors if the nominee were another candidate.
Did the Founding Fathers plan this moment in the Constitution?
Historians say the Founding Fathers never anticipated the modern complexities of political campaigns, including the potential need to replace a presidential candidate close to Election Day. Nor did they foresee the emergence of political parties as dominant entities in American politics, nor did they foresee the intricate systems of primaries, conventions, and delegate selection processes that shape modern presidential nominations.
Although the Constitution requires the president to be at least 35 years old, there is no maximum age for the office. The Founders, however, anticipated the need for a line of succession and included a provision in the Constitution to replace the President if they were unable to fulfill their duties. “It’s worth remembering that life expectancy in the United States was much lower at that time,” says Boyle.
“I don’t think this exact moment was within the purview of the Founders,” says Dallek. “We are living in a dramatically different world than the one they lived in.”
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This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
