Democrats solved one problem by persuading Joe Biden to drop his doomed presidential campaign. Now they have another: Can they pass the baton to Kamala Harris without making it seem like the process was “rigged” all along?
“It's her time and turn,” South Carolina-based Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright told the Daily Beast.
Shortly after Biden announced on Sunday afternoon that he would drop his quest for a second White House term, Harris said she would seek the nomination. The announcement was met by widespread jubilation; over the course of a single day, the Harris campaign raised $81 million, the largest 24-hour raise of any candidate in history.
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The quick coalescence means Harris has now secured pledges from enough Democratic delegates to become her party's nominee.
“The grassroots is fired up,” progressive strategist Kenneth Pennington wrote in a social media post.
Two key figures who were central to convincing Biden to step aside did not join the immediate exultation: former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former President Barack Obama. (Pelosi waited 24 hours before endorsing Harris for president; Obama, who favored an open nominating process, has yet to back her.)
“I have extraordinary confidence that the leaders of our party will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges,” Obama said in a statement. The key word, unsexy as it is: process.
Pelosi is also big on the process thing. In a meeting last week with members of the California delegation, she “stressed that an uncompetitive process would turn off voters,” according to Politico.
Thus, the bind: Democrats have an obvious candidate in Harris, but being too obvious could pose a problem for the party that has spent the last several years touting its respect for institutions.
At the same time, with the Democratic National Convention only a month away, Democrats are desperate to avoid the kind of debacle that swamped them in 1968 as anti-Vietnam War activists sought to wrest the nomination from Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey on the convention floor.
Then, as now, the incumbent (Lyndon B. Johnson) had stunned the nation by announcing that he would not run. Then, as now, the convention was in Chicago. Only in 1968 Johnson gave his party much more time to find a replacement than Biden has in 2024.
“The train has left the station,” veteran Democratic operative Joe Lockhart told the Daily Beast, discounting the apparent concerns of Obama and Pelosi, as well as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who have yet to endorse Harris.
Harris was “the one and only,” Lockhart said.
And while the establishment is thrilled, some in the base are pissed. Right up until Saturday afternoon, they were told that Biden was going to be the one. He had, after all, won 14 million of their votes in the Democratic primary. And his campaign insisted he was staying in through November—right up to the moment that he wasn’t. Now his supporters are being told they need to line up behind a candidate whose 2020 run ended in disaster.
“Trump beat Hillary in 2016 & Trump will beat Kamala in a landslide,” the Chicago-based investor and philanthropist Ja’Mal Green wrote in a social media post. “Kamala is unpopular & is a bad choice for the nominee. The democrats need to have a mini-primary.”
A few blue-chip donors are also holding out, in what could be an ominous sign for the money-draining weeks that will follow the fadeout of this initial enthusiasm. “If Trumpworld could pick anybody to run against, I think they pick her,” John Morgan told ABC News.
In the end, though, Harris will probably emerge from Chicago late next month as the nominee.
“This late in the game would be an uphill climb for someone other than the current VP to try to be at top of the ticket,” a Democratic insider told me. “If you actually want to be president some day, I don’t think you would go for it now because if you don’t win it could be a career-ender.”
There’s a famous scene at the beginning of Apocalypse Now, the 1979 Francis Ford Coppola classic about the Vietnam War, when Capt. Benjamin Willard (played by Martin Sheen, the future president of West Wing fame) prepares for the insane operation he is about to undertake deep in the jungle. “Everyone gets everything he wants,” Sheen rasps in a voiceover narration. “I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one.”
Democrats badly wanted Biden gone. And over his lonely weekend battling COVID in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, they finally succeeded.
Two years ago, conservatives got what they wanted, too, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending federal protections for abortion. At first there was great rejoicing—and nothing but grief ever since.
