Harris moves fast to lock up her Democratic nomination

Democratic National Convention delegates have yet to formally select a new US prez nominee

Vice President Kamala Harris moved swiftly to lock up Democratic delegates behind her campaign for the White House after President Joe Biden stepped aside amid concerns from within their own party that he would be unable to defeat Donald Trump. Biden’s exit on Sunday, prompted by Democratic worries over his fitness for office, was a seismic shift to the presidential contest that upended both parties’ carefully honed plans for the race.

Aiming to put weeks of intraparty drama over Biden’s candidacy behind them, prominent Democratic elected officials, party leaders and political organisations quickly lined up behind Harris in the hours after Biden announced he was dropping his reelection campaign. Biden’s departure frees up his delegates to vote for whomever they choose. Harris, whom Biden backed after ending his candidacy, is thus far the only declared candidate and was working to quickly secure endorsements from a majority of delegates.

It’s only the first item on a staggering political to-do list for her after Biden’s decision to exit the race, which she learned of on a Sunday morning call with the president.  If she’s successful at locking up the nomination, she must also pick a running mate and pivot a massive political operation to boost her candidacy instead of Biden’s with just over 100 days until Election Day.

Will Harris be most likely pick?

Now that Joe Biden has dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to be the nominee, it will ultimately be up to Democratic National Convention delegates to formally select a new nominee for their party. This will mark the first time in over 50 years that a major party nominee was selected outside of the democratic process of primaries and caucuses.

Kamala Harris with Joe Biden. Pic/AFP

Many Democrats had already begun discussing how to replace Biden. They worried that having the convention delegates, the majority of whom were pledged at first to Biden, select the nominee would appear undemocratic and illegitimate. President Biden had already won 3,896 pledged delegates during Democratic primary contests. That is much more than the amount needed to secure his party’s nomination.

Those delegates voted for a Biden-Harris ticket previously, but it will ultimately be up to them to decide which candidate they are backing as the Democratic nominee during the party’s convention next month. While Mr Biden’s endorsement makes Ms Harris the most likely pick for the nominee, it is not fully certain what will happen after he releases his delegates. The Democratic National Convention is scheduled to begin on 19 August.

The convention system

The tradition of picking a nominee through primaries and caucuses—and not through the “convention system”—is recent. In 1968, after President Lyndon B. Johnson announced he would not run for reelection, his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, was able to secure the Democratic nomination despite not entering any primaries or caucuses. Humphrey won because he had the backing of party leaders, who controlled majority of delegates. Many Democrats saw this process as fundamentally undemocratic, so the party instituted a series of reforms that opened up the process by requiring delegates to be selected in primaries or caucuses that gave ordinary party members the chance to make that choice. Since 1972, Democrats and Republicans nominate candidates in this way.

Ramaswamy’s prediction comes true!

Vivek Ramaswamy, the Indian-American, who then was the Republican presidential candidate in the primaries with Donald Trump, said two candidates —Kamala Harris and Michelle Obama—were possibly to be picked by the Democrats. “Let’s give credit where due. For a year one man has been saying “Biden won’t be the Democratic nominee” and predicting a last-minute blindside.

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