State of the Election: Biden Drops out. What now?

Election Watch Commentary by Abhinav Santhosh Nambeesan, Research & Publications Division

On 21st July, Joe Biden, the incumbent President, announced that he was going to be dropping out of the re-election race, and he was going to let the Democratic Party choose another candidate for President at the Democratic National Convention (DNC). This comes largely after the very negative response from both the general public and the party to his terrible performance in the first presidential debate against Trump, when his very old age showed clearly, and the party believed that the’d almost certainly lose the general election against his Republican counterpart. Even if he won, he wouldn’t be able to govern effectively due to cognitive decline.

What next?

Biden has endorsed his Vice President¹, Kamala Harris, and she has now launched her own campaign to fully unite the party behind her before the DNC, which is when the party officially nominates its candidates for President and Vice president, and then lead the party into the general election. Precedent suggests that when the incumbent is not running for re-election, and the Vice President seeks the nomination, they would win it, but there have not been many Vice Presidents who have won right after their term. Only four Vice Presidents- John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Martin van Buren and George H. W. Bush- have won the presidential election while they were serving as Vice President, though few Vice Presidents have actually attempted to run, so this precedent doesn’t seem like it can help us predict what will happen.

Who is Kamala Harris?

Kamala Harris is from California, and is most famous for serving as the chief prosecutor in San Francisco and attorney general of California, and then while serving as a Senator, she contested for the presidential nomination in 2020- a race she dropped out of after she performed terribly in the polls even before the first primary election. Biden picked her as his vice presidential nominee despite them clashing heavily on the debate stage, hoping he would compliment him with minority and women voters, though it is not clear if that happened or not. Harris performed terribly largely because of her tough-on-crime record and rhetoric, which didn’t help her in 2020 during the protests against police brutality, but now, that might not be that much of a burden for her.

Harris v/s Trump

Harris is not really in a great position against Trump, because Biden dropping out is not a good look for the Democratic Party as a whole. The opposition Republican Party can easily point out that the Democrats were on their way to nominate Biden despite clearly not having confidence in them. At the same time, the Republicans are firmly united behind Trump. Harris also trails Trump in national polls², but she does perform better than Biden, and actually is quite competitive in key swing states that are required to win the election. The public perception though is that Trump will definitely have the advantage, having survived an assassination attempt, having a unified party behind him, having a cult of personality behind him, and having the backing of many rich donors like Elon Musk³. Also, the Republicans are likely to raise legal challenges regarding the appearance of Harris on the ballot in several states, especially the swing state of Ohio, and this could be a problem, with the Supreme Court being very conservative.

Is this entirely new?

This move is not completely unprecedented though, and in several ways, this election has several parallels to a previous election. In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson was running for re-election after having served since President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, and having signed several landmark civil rights laws like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 that finally ended legal racial discrimination in the US, and having introduced very popular social welfare programmes in his ‘war on poverty,’ he had expected to win the primaries easily. However, his campaign was tanked by the extremely unpopular Vietnam War that he had led the country into, and following a poor performance in the New Hampshire primary and Robert F. Kennedy entering the race, Johnson had dropped out of the race. The Democrats ultimately ended up nominating his Vice President, Hubert Humphrey- a move that caused riots⁴ at the DNC in Chicago- and he lost in the general election to Richard Nixon.

Building Parallels

The parallels to 1968 are notable- an incumbent dropping out to hand the nomination to his Vice President, the Republicans nominating a conservative former office holder (former Vice President Richard Nixon), a strong third party contest (Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in 2024 and George Wallace in 1968) and American involvement in foreign wars being a big issue (Gaza and Ukraine in 2024 and Vietnam in 1968). Robert F. Kennedy, RFK Jr.’s father, had actually contested the Democratic nomination in 1968, but had been assassinated- and attempted assassination is another parallel. However, this time, Trump has actually been President before, is very unpopular with a large portion of the American public and is the first President to be convicted of felonies- he can’t be seen in the same way as Nixon.

What’s to come?

While the DNC hasn’t been held, and theoretically an open convention could result in someone else getting the nomination, Harris has almost certainly become the presumptive Democratic nominee now- the key question is who she will pick as her vice presidential candidate. Most Presidents pick someone who balances out the ticket by bringing something that they lack- Obama, a young, African-American liberal picked Biden, an old, white moderate with 36 years of service in the Senate; Trump, a relative moderate from New York who was not exactly religious, had picked Mike Pence, a younger man from Indiana who was very popular with conservative Christians. Harris, being a woman of African-American and Indian background, seems to need to pick someone the opposite of her- a white man who can appeal to moderate voters in swing states. Men like Josh Shapiro, Roy Cooper, Andy Beshear and Pete Butigieg can be candidates, but it does not seem like an announcement on the vice presidential pick will be made till the DNC is closer.

References

1. Hancock, Sam; Tan, Yvette; “Harris vows to ‘earn and win’ Democratic nomination after Biden drops out.” BBC News, 22nd July 2024

2. Igielnik, Ruth, “How Kamala Harris performs against Donald Trump in the polls.” The New York Times, 21st July 2024

3. “Pequeño, Antonio, “Elon Musk’s X adds Trump-themed hashtags after he endorses former president.” Forbes, 18th July 2024

4. Waxman, Olivia, “‘Violence was inevitable’: How 7 key players remember the chaos of 1968’s Democratic National Convention protests.” Time Magazine, 28th August, 2018