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Joe Biden’s shaky debate performance immediately raised new questions from anxious Democrats about whether he would withdraw from the presidential race.
This will not be an easy process, as Biden is already the presumptive Democratic nominee and enjoys overwhelming support from primary voters. The fact that Biden faced little opposition during the primaries and won nearly all of his party’s delegates makes it highly unlikely that he would drop out of the race against his will.
“This isn’t the ’60s. Voters choose their candidate. And he’s the candidate,” CNN analyst and Democratic strategist David Axelrod said in response to Biden’s performance at Thursday night’s CNN debate.
The current primary system, which gives primary voters more power than party officials, was born out of dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party’s choice of Vice President Hubert Humphrey as its candidate in 1968. President Lyndon Johnson dropped out of the presidential race that year due to his waning popularity and opposition to the Vietnam War, but Humphrey campaigned for Johnson’s continued Vietnam policies at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. When Humphrey accepted the nomination, protesters clashed with police, leading to riots.
The Democratic National Convention will resume in Chicago in August, but if Biden decides to drop out of the race, the landscape for 2024 could look very different.
As I first wrote in February, if a leading candidate drops out of the race after most of the primaries or during the convention, individual delegates will have to choose the party’s nominee at the convention (or, in some cases, during a virtual roll call).
That would put a spotlight on the usually niche question of who the delegates actually are. Democrats have set a June 22 deadline for states to choose the more than 3,900 delegates allotted as part of the primary process, nearly all of whom have now pledged their votes to Biden.
Not only have those delegates pledged to vote for Biden, they have also been endorsed by Biden’s campaign. That means that while a majority of the convention delegates could choose a new nominee, doing so would require a massive defection from the president’s own supporters. It also means that if Biden were to drop out of the race, the responsibility for choosing a replacement would fall primarily on his supporters.
For example, one could assume that Vice President Kamala Harris would be the front-runner in such a scenario, but there are other candidates who have previously argued that they could campaign more effectively against former President Donald Trump.
Will someone like California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who pledged his full support for Biden after Thursday’s debate, challenge Harris at the convention? Picking a replacement could be divisive and ugly. It will be up to the delegates to decide who to choose in a series of votes after frantic lobbying.
Democrats have one other group to consider: “superdelegates,” a group of about 700 party officials and elected officials who automatically become delegates to the convention based on their positions. Under normal party rules, superdelegates cannot vote on the first ballot if it could affect the nomination, but they are free to vote on subsequent ballots.
What happens if a candidate withdraws from the race after the party convention?
It would take a dramatic event for a candidate to withdraw from the race in the months between his party’s nominating convention in the summer and the general election in November.
Democrats and Republicans have slightly different ways of dealing with this possibility. We can probably imagine that the vice presidential candidate would end up on the general election ballot, but that’s not necessarily guaranteed.
Democratic Party – Under party rules, the Democratic National Committee has the authority to fill national candidate vacancies after the convention, after the party chair consults with Democratic gubernatorial and congressional leadership.
Republican – If a vacancy occurs on the Republican side, the Republican National Committee can either reconvene the convention or select a new candidate itself.
A detailed Congressional Research Service memo also noted that if a sitting president becomes unable to serve after winning his party’s nomination, the vice president would become president under the 25th Amendment, but party rules would determine the party’s nominee.
According to CRS, neither party is calling for the presidential candidate’s running mate to be elevated to the top of the nomination list, but that would apparently be the most likely scenario.
Have there been any instances of candidates dropping out of the race after the party convention?
In modern times, according to CRS, Sen. Thomas Eagleton was forced to resign after the convention when it was revealed he was undergoing treatment for mental illness (1972 was a very different time; today, thankfully, there is much less stigma attached to mental illness).
The Democratic National Committee needed to convene a meeting to approve Sargent Shriver as Democratic candidate George McGovern’s running mate for president.
Timing is also important if the president-elect dies.
According to the Constitution, the presidential election is duly cast by electors who assemble in state capitals. Some states require their electors to vote for the winner of their state’s election, while others give electors discretion.
The CRS memo cites several congressional hearings on the issue and suggests that it would clearly make sense for the vice president-elect to simply assume the roles of the president-elect, but the law itself is unclear.
According to the 20th Amendment to the Constitution, if the president-elect dies, his or her running mate becomes president.
For example, one might ask when someone becomes the next president: after the electoral college meets in December, or after Congress meets to count the electoral votes on January 6?
