President Joe BidenThursday’s performance in the first debate has prompted a new round of criticism from Democrats, as well as public and private reflection on whether he should remain at the top of the ticket.
“There’s a sense of shock about how he came out at the beginning of this debate. How his voice sounded. He seemed a little bit disoriented,” said David Axelrod, who was a top White House official and campaign manager for former president Barack Obama, on CNN.
“There will be conversations about whether he should continue,” Axelrod added.
A Democratic lawmaker, asked by NBC News whether the debate inspired confidence in Biden, replied: “The best thing I can do to help Joe Biden is pretend I didn’t get your text.”
Publicly, Democratic officials remain largely behind Biden, arguing that a lackluster performance will not change the fundamental stakes of the election.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose name has been frequently mentioned as a potential alternative nominee, told reporters in the spin room after the debate that his party “could not be more fully united behind Biden” and said Biden should not step aside.
But the private whispers flared up after Thursday’s debate performance, in which Biden was hoarse in voice, spoke softly and at times appeared to lose his train of thought, prompting his aides to try to deflect midway through the debate by saying he had a cold.
In modern times, a national party has never attempted to replace its candidate by hostile means, partly because it knew it would likely fail. The issue was raised by both parties in 2016, but neither took action.
Party rules make it nearly impossible to replace nominees without their consent, let alone replace them smoothly with someone else. And that would amount to party insiders overturning the results of the primaries while Democratic voters overwhelmingly chose Biden. He won almost 99% of all delegates.
And at the moment there are no serious attempts to displace him from the top spot.
Still, the Democratic National Committee charter does contain provisions for when the party’s nominee becomes incapacitated or decides to step aside, and an anti-Biden coup at the convention is theoretically possible but highly unlikely. So how would it work?
What happens if Biden withdraws before the convention?
The only plausible scenario for Democrats to get a new nominee would be if Biden decides to withdraw, something he has repeatedly renounced during other bumpy periods of his campaign.
He could do that while serving out the remainder of his term in the White House, as Lyndon Johnson did in 1968.
If Biden were to drop out before he is scheduled to be formally nominated in August, it would create a free-for-all among Democrats because there is no mechanism for him or anyone else to anoint a chosen successor.
It will take a majority of the approximately 4,000 pledged delegates to win the party’s nomination. Biden won 3,900. Under recent reforms, the party’s more than 700 superdelegates — Democratic lawmakers and dignitaries — are only allowed to vote if no one wins a majority of pledged delegates on the first ballot, so their votes could be crucial in a contentious convention.
Because Biden’s opponents all effectively won no delegates during the Democratic nominating process, there would be a virtually clean slate going into the convention, and the decision would most likely come down to the convention delegates initially promised to Biden.
Biden would have some influence over his promised delegates, but ultimately they can vote however they want, so candidates would most likely campaign aggressively to win over each individual delegate.
There’s a potentially important wrinkle, though: Democrats plan to formally nominate Biden virtually ahead of the late August convention to sidestep any concerns about ballot access in Ohio, where a technical quirk has complicated matters .
Democrats decided to schedule a virtual nomination for Biden after Ohio Republicans refused to pass pro forma legislation that would allow Biden to be on the ballot even though the convention falls after a state deadline. But while Republicans passed a bill to move the deadline, Democrats decided to go ahead with a virtual nomination anyway.
Can Democrats replace Biden against his will?
There is no evidence the party would want to make a change without Biden’s consent. But even if it were, there is no mechanism to replace a candidate before the convention, and certainly no way to anoint a chosen successor.
If large parts of the Democratic Party were to lose confidence in Biden, delegates to the national convention could theoretically defect en masse. Of course, they were chosen as delegates because of their loyalty to Biden and have pledged to support him at the convention.
But unlike many Republican delegates, Democratic delegates are not technically tied to their candidate. The DNC rules allow delegates to “reflect in good conscience the sentiments of those who elected them,” which provides some leeway.
The party’s charter contains provisions for replacing the nominee in the event of a vacancy. The measure is intended to be used in the event of death, dismissal or incapacity for work, not to replace someone who does not wish to resign.
That was the measure that Donna Brazile, then interim chair of the DNC, considered implementing after Hillary Clinton’s fall two months before the 2016 election, she wrote in her memoir.
In her memoir, published a year later, Brazile wrote that she worried “not only about Hillary’s health but also about her bloodless campaign … which had so little fighting spirit.”
“Maybe changing the candidate was an opportunity to win this case, to change the playing field in a way that would put Donald Trump in trouble and prevent him from overtaking him,” she wrote, adding that advisers from other potential candidates contacted her, including then-Vice President Biden’s chief of staff.
But after less than 24 hours of consideration, Brazile realized that the idea was untenable without Clinton’s cooperation and would likely only further divide her party. “I could not make good on my threat to replace her,” she wrote.
Current DNC Chair Jaime Harrison is a longtime Biden ally who essentially serves at the president’s behest. And the national party has certainly given no indication that it isn’t fully behind his reelection.
What happens if Biden withdraws after the convention?
To fill a vacancy on the national ticket, the chairman can call a “special meeting” of the full DNC, which has about 500 members. On paper, at least, a majority of attendees is sufficient to elect new presidential and vice-presidential candidates. But that process would likely be anything but smooth and fraught with behind-the-scenes scheming and public pressure campaigns.
However, if a vacancy were to arise just before the November elections, it could cause constitutional, legal and practical problems. Among other things, ballots must be printed well in advance of the election, and it may not be possible to change them in time.
Would Kamala Harris replace Biden?
If Biden were to give up the presidency, Vice President Kamala Harris would automatically become president, but not the Democratic Party nominee. And she wouldn’t necessarily be the nominee if Biden withdrew from his re-election bid while still in the White House.
She may be a political favorite, but party rules don’t give the vice president much of a mechanical advantage over other candidates.
Biden’s delegates would not automatically switch to Harris, and the convention will hold separate votes on the nominees for president and vice president. So she would still have to win a majority of delegates at the convention.
If the top position were to disappear after the convention, she would still have to win a majority of votes at the DNC’s special meeting.
That’s all, at least under current party rules. But a vacancy at the top of the ticket is the kind of dramatic moment that could prompt party leaders to rethink them in the name of smoothing the transition. Harris has some close allies in key positions at the DNC, including a co-chair of the party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee. But nothing would likely happen without a fight.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
