US Democrats face Hunger Games-type battle to choose new leader

This weekend as the president remains isolated at his beach house in Delaware after being diagnosed with Covid, the total number of Democratic members of Congress urging him to drop out has risen to nearly three dozen.

Among the new wave of Democrats expressing worries to allies about Biden’s chances are party grandees, such as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former president Barack Obama, who until recently had supported the president’s decision not to stand down.

Further adding to Biden’s woes was the news on Friday that Democratic megadonors from Hollywood to Wall Street have also heaped pressure on the president in what The New York Times (NYT) described as the “golden age of political scheming.”

“So many ideas are bouncing around the donor class that some card-carrying members say privately that they are having trouble keeping track of all the plots,” observed Theodore Schleifer, who writes about campaign finance and the influence of billionaires in American politics.

Donald Trump narrowly leads Joe Biden in polling (Image: free)

“Would it be best to funnel money toward a super PAC, which has raised $2 million so far, that plans to back vulnerable Democratic members of Congress who are calling for Mr. Biden’s removal? Or maybe the savvier move would be to raise money loudly for Vice President Kamala Harris, his heir apparent, as an affirmative sign that the president need not worry about passing the reins?

"What about setting aside some of the money in an escrow account that that would be spent only on a Democratic presidential campaign led by someone other than Mr Biden? “ asked Schleifer, listing some of the financial options that might help pressure Biden to exit the White House Race. 

Some megadonors who until recently were adamantly opposed to efforts to force out Biden say they are now convinced another candidate would have a better chance to beat Trump.

“If it goes the right way it could be the single greatest thing that happens to keep Trump out of the White House,” insisted one West Coast Democratic fundraiser who spoke to the Financial Times.

Biden and the Democrats’ not inconsiderable problems stand in stark contrast to those of his rival Donald Trump who accepted the Republican party’s nomination for president for the third time on Thursday night with the longest political convention speech in modern US history.

Some observers in fact went as far as to suggest that Trump’s long and rambling acceptance speech that veered repeatedly off script, might even have undermined what was otherwise a very disciplined and effective Republican convention.

Nonetheless, the mood at the convention felt more like an election night celebration with Trump amidst the falling balloons and delegate adulation presenting a very different picture from a Covid-stricken Biden shuffling aboard Air Force One a few days ago. 

So what then if Biden stays and what would happen were he to go? 

To take the first part of this question, it’s clear that should Biden dig his heels in, the clamour for him to stand down is not going away and that damage to the Democrats will continue to be done. 

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"We can't catch a break,” a Biden adviser admitted frankly, speaking on condition of anonymity to America's National Public Radio (NPR) and describing recent private conversations within Democrat ranks.

The same adviser said Biden showed no signs during recent  meetings – albeit before this weekend’s mounting pressure – of any cracks in his resolve to stay in the race and said it’s not yet clear whether the pile-up of woes has reached a tipping point for the president. 

Biden himself has already said he was “looking forward to returning to the campaign trail”, this week. That insistence on sticking it out however has resulted in what Lindy Li, a Democrat strategist and donor, described as a sense of “panic” in the party.

“The blue wall is crumbling and that isn't about the Democratic Party. It's about Joe Biden.

“He's fundamentally a good and decent man, but this is about winning. People are being brave and telling the president the truth,” Li told Sky News in an interview.

Li also said that Biden was “insulated” by a hidden circle of advisers and close family, including the First Lady, his wife Jill.

“It's really hard. How do you walk away from five decades of service and the presidency?"

"I think he will. He understands what's at stake,” Li added.

Writing in the Los Angeles Times recently, columnist Steve Lopez described the make-up of Biden’s backers saying they seemed to fall into one or more of three categories. 

“Those who think his health is good enough to handle the job going forward. Those who think it’s too late to switch to a replacement candidate. And those who would vote for a bean and cheese burrito before they vote for Trump,” observed Lopez wryly. 

He highlighted too how many believe that Biden still does better against Trump than others, and the chaos of “changing horses in midstream” would do more damage to the party than sticking with Biden. Other political analysts also say it is this fear of pivoting at the last moment on the nomination that perhaps convinces Biden to stick it out. 

But arguments in favour of him staying need to be offset against the fact that it could lead to open warfare within the Democratic Party, leaving then wounded before the real battle in November against Trump. And should Biden then lose, he could drag down Democratic House and Senate candidates with him.

The fact that Trump and the Republicans want Biden to stay is perhaps the best reason he should go argue other Democrat strategists, though that in itself could be a smokescreen they caution.

All of this only explains the scenario were Biden to stay, but what if he voluntarily changes his mind and decides to go? 

Short of him dying or suffering a “disability,” many observers insist that realistically, the only way to replace Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket at this stage in the campaign cycle is if he agrees to drop out voluntarily. Were that to happen it will set off a series of events not seen in more than 50 years.

The party would then be headed for an open convention that could go to multiple rounds of voting if Democrats – and more importantly, convention delegates – don’t coalesce behind a single candidate before they convene in Chicago on August 19.

Kamala Harris (Image: free)

The convention could be preceded by something resembling a highly accelerated presidential campaign where the voters being wooed are the approximately 4,700 convention delegates. 

“You might not really know where it was going until we actually got to the convention and the delegates actually got there,” Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a Democratic National Convention (DNC) member told NPR recently. An open convention would be “reality TV like you can't imagine,” added Kamarck. 

“But there is a procedure for doing it right. There's a procedure for running conventions that's well over 200 years old.”

That procedure is spelled out in Democratic Party rules and if Biden ends his campaign before voting begins, the pledged delegates could cast their ballots for a new candidate. As DNC rules stand, if no candidate won a majority on that first ballot, then the more than 700 “superdelegates” could join in subsequent votes. The voting would then continue until one candidate won a simple majority of delegates. 

In the result of all this unfolding, the spotlight of course would then fall on vice president Kamala Harris, who many analysts view as the likeliest choice to replace Biden.

Harris, 59, has already been vetted, when she joined Biden’s campaign in 2020. What’s more, the fundraising war chest that the Biden campaign has accumulated in the current election cycle would transfer to her if she took over the ticket. 

Sensing that she may be poised to take over the ticket, the Republicans have already trained their attacks on Harris, accusing her of failing in her job as the administration’s “border czar,” even though she was not given that task.

According to reports in the US political website, The Hill, and citing a person familiar with the leadership-level discussions, Congressional leaders are said to be “lukewarm” on Harris as the nominee, but recognise her favourable rating is higher than Biden’s and believe the president can help boost her numbers by campaigning for her.

“Conversations are happening, and they’re different and stronger than they were a few weeks ago, even than a few days ago. They’ve intensified,” said The Hill’s source.

A recent The Economist/YouGov poll found 79 percent of Democrats would support Harris as the party’s nominee in November if Biden chose to withdraw from the race.

“The vice president is the logical choice, obviously,” said Meena Bose, director of the Peter S. Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency at Hofstra University, in an interview with the US channel CNBC.

“Time is really tight and it’s difficult to mount a campaign for anyone other than the vice president,” Bose added.

Meanwhile, other high-profile Democrats, such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom or Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, have been floated as potentially stronger alternatives to Harris if Biden were no longer in the race. But almost all of those figures have already said they would not run for president in 2024.

But as CNBC also recently highlighted, there is an added risk that leap-frogging the vice president in favour of another candidate could spark a bitterly contested party convention, something Democrats must avoid, especially after the Republican convention’s display of near-total unity behind Trump last week.

Questions about Joe Biden's age have increased since the recent TV debate (Image: free)

This weekend the internal pressure on the Democrats continues to grow as New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich called on Biden to exit the race, making him the third Senate Democrat to do so.

“By passing the torch, he would secure his legacy as one of our nation’s greatest leaders and allow us to unite behind a candidate who can best defeat Donald Trump and safeguard the future of our democracy,” said Heinrich, who’s up for re-election.

An increasing number of Democrats agree that a Biden withdrawal from the campaign might refresh the body politic and give them their best fighting chance. 

Others, however, among them many ordinary US voters, maintain that Biden and Trump simply offer a choice between what The Economist magazine characterised as a choice between the “incapable and the unspeakable” and that Americans deserve better.

Arguably, there is still time for Democrats to unite behind a concise message, and Biden, but the clock is ticking. Trump remains ahead even if he only holds a narrow but consistent edge in almost every national poll since Biden’s disastrous debate performance with his rival in Atlanta last month.

Certainly, any Biden decision to stand down will open the door to what one senior Democrat adviser described as a compressed “Hunger Games” race within the party to choose a new leader against a backdrop of little time and little organisation. “It's gonna be ugly. it's gonna be dirty. It's gonna be messy,” the same adviser told NPR.

In short, over the coming days the Democratic Party will be examining itself in the mirror like never before. Just what it sees there and how it identifies, could well determine the future of American democracy itself.