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Nolan Finley is editorial page editor at The Detroit News.
President Joe Biden’s belated nod to reality turns the presidential race into a sprint, with his Democratic Party positioned well behind the starting blocks.
I believe Biden had no choice. The disastrous June 27 debate with former President Donald Trump and his failure to find a means of countering the doubts it created about his physical and mental capabilities sent Democrats into a late panic.
The party’s top leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, as well as some longtime allies, such as former President Barack Obama and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, added their voices to the chorus calling for Biden to step aside in favor of a candidate with a better chance of winning in November. Then, at the critical moment in Biden’s fight for survival, he came down with COVID and was unable to rise publicly to his own defense.
A large number of Democrats stopped believing Biden could defeat Trump, who just finished a successful Republican National Convention in Milwaukee and is enjoying a predictable bounce in the polls.
There was no way the party could come to Chicago for its national convention in three weeks and credibly proclaim their enthusiasm for Biden as their standard-bearer.
Now, the party faces a new dilemma. Who can beat Trump?
Biden, hoping to maintain control of the process, endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, almost immediately after posting his withdrawal on the X social media platform. Presumably, he will instruct his delegates, which is almost all of them, to support Harris, though they aren’t obliged to, and she’ll become the nominee. The vice president’s role is, after all, to step in for a president.
Some party officials have also suggested a series of mini-primaries to allow other potential candidates to compete for the nomination. But the short time frame would seem to make that a heavy lift and risks creating further divisions within the party.
“An open primary will disenfranchise people,” said Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens of Michigan, who was not among those calling for Biden to go. “There is a camp of people who reached the conclusion he needed to step down. Then there was a camp who really didn’t want him to step down but understood where this was going. And then there were people who were angry he was being shut down.”
“The only thing we can do is respect his opinion [on Harris]. It would be inviting chaos to open this up,” she said.
Former Democratic Chair Lon Johnson, who wrote a letter asking the president to end his run, believes Democrats will rally behind Harris, and sees hope for Democrats in the latest round of polls showing Trump’s lead over Biden growing. Those numbers likely pushed Biden to act.
“The good news in those disastrous polls is that they didn’t show Trump’s numbers growing, but rather Biden’s falling,” Johnson said. “We can beat him. We have 106 days to unite and win.”
That seems to be the Democratic consensus, though it’s tough to see how some degree of chaos can be avoided. While Harris is the easiest choice, she falls well short of inspiring universal confidence in her ability to win the election.
She’ll get a boost from the prospects of becoming the first woman president. And the donors who had started to withhold their dollars from Biden will likely come back into the fold, if the next round of polling is favorable.
With Trump gaining support among Black voters, Democrats have to weigh the fallout among that critical voting block of denying Harris her chance.
But she brings into the race the baggage of the Biden presidency, specifically voter outrage over the crisis at the southern border. Biden made Harris his border czar, but she hasn’t done the job. And Biden did little over the past four years to pump her up. Harris has an approval rating below 40 percent, putting her on par with Biden and Trump.
At the GOP convention, Trump’s son, Donald Jr., said in many ways they’d prefer to run against Harris. Democrats would stand a better chance against a vulnerable Trump with a clean candidate, such as Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro or Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
But in all likelihood, they’re stuck with Harris and will have to spend the next three months making voters forget about her many shortcomings. That’s the price they’ll pay for “ridin’ with Biden” long after they knew he couldn’t make it to the finish line.
