With the spread of rumors While there have been reports that President Joe Biden could be forced to drop out of the presidential race, Democratic National Committee leaders have been adamant that Biden will not drop out and that the party will move forward with a plan to nominate him through a virtual appeal held online weeks before the party's convention in Chicago next month.
Democratic Party staffers were surprised Sunday when Biden announced his withdrawal, according to two sources familiar with the situation. rolling stoneThe announcement was likely kept a closely guarded secret because of how regularly details of private meetings held in recent days have been leaked to the press, amid intense speculation about whether Biden would actually drop out of the race, one of the sources said.
“Of course they were surprised,” a close Biden ally said separately on Sunday. “A lot of this was orchestrated through leaks and an attempt to tear down a great president. President Biden and his team are doing this on his terms and not on anyone else’s.”
After Biden’s announcement, the Democratic National Committee quickly released a statement that offered no details on whether the virtual appeal would go ahead as planned. The statement, from DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison and sent more than an hour after Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, did not mention Harris by name.
“The work we must do now, while unprecedented, is clear,” Harrison said. “In the days ahead, the party will undertake a transparent and orderly process to move forward as a unified Democratic Party with a candidate capable of defeating Donald Trump in November.”
“This process will be subject to established party rules and procedures,” he added. “Our delegates are prepared to take seriously their responsibility to quickly present a candidate to the American people.”
The party had previously planned to nominate a candidate through a virtual appeal that would be completed by August 7, ahead of the convention, which is scheduled to open on August 19. rolling stone Party members in parliament said on Sunday they had not received guidance from the party on whether the early vote would go ahead as planned.
During the Democratic primary, Biden garnered 3,904 of the party's 3,933 pledged delegates. With Biden's formal withdrawal, those delegates are now free to vote for any candidate who nominates them.
At least one group has already been working to organize Democratic delegates with an eye toward potentially forcing Biden out. Christopher Dempsey, one of the figures behind the campaign, says Delegates Are Democracy has been in touch with hundreds of delegates in recent days as part of an effort to educate them about open convention rules.
“The word ‘release’ is how people describe this, but it’s not a technical term – [Biden] “Obama doesn’t need to issue a speech announcing that he’s releasing the delegates. His withdrawal from the process is enough to waive any commitments or obligations that the delegates made,” Dempsey explains. “In effect, this is now an open conversation.”
In order to secure the Democratic presidential nomination, a candidate needs at least 1,968 delegates in the first round of voting in order to win the nomination outright. If the vote goes to a second round, 739 superdelegates will be allowed to cast their votes.
For anyone who wants to challenge Harris — who has racked up a string of high-profile endorsements in the hours immediately following Biden’s announcement — that person will need a letter of nomination signed by at least 300 delegates, with no more than 50 of those delegates coming from any individual state.
While Biden's endorsement of Harris does not obligate his former delegates to support her, delegates who have reached rolling stone Democrats said Sunday that Harris had their full and unconditional support, even as they fretted over the massive pressure from donors and party leaders on Biden to drop out.
“Given the pressure from people like [former House Speaker Nancy] “I think it was just Pelosi and others who were so hurt that he had no choice,” said Luis Aleman, a Biden delegate from California.
Justin Fleming, a Pennsylvania state representative and a pledged Biden delegate, was similarly frustrated by the efforts to force Biden out of the race. In his view, such calls undermined the fact that millions of voters cast ballots for him in the Democratic primary. But now that Biden has made his choice, Fleming says, “the clear choice is Vice President Harris.”
“She’s worked side by side with the president for the last three and a half years, running the country, working on immigration, working on infrastructure, student loans, expanding health care and other things,” Fleming says. “That’s my position. I don’t know if my fellow delegates would agree with that. But after I’ve had a chance to think about it, I think the vice president would be a great candidate.”
Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi is an American disability rights activist and a committed Biden delegate from Maryland. She was on a Zoom meeting at the Democratic National Convention about convention credentials on Sunday when news broke that Biden was dropping out of the race. “I really love this president,” she said. “I’m crying — literally crying — because he’s so great. I’m looking forward to the rest of his term, and I’m really looking forward to a new candidate, so we can win.”
Mizrahi said she had not heard from any other candidates so far seeking her support for their candidacy. In conversations with other delegates, she heard uniform support for Harris.
“We’ve seen President Biden’s abilities diminish, but we’ve seen the vice president’s abilities increase tremendously,” Mizrahi adds. “Almost all of the delegates have seen her in person at live events recently, and we’ve been really impressed with what she brings and how she handles it. She’s very powerful.”
For his part, Aleman said he was happy to endorse Biden. “I’m sure we’ll get more details from the DNC about how this all plays out,” Aleman said. “But with the president endorsing her, she has my full, 100 percent support. I think she’ll be an excellent torchbearer for the party to articulate what we stand for as Democrats.”
