President Joe Biden could make a decision within days whether to remain a candidate for reelection, said Hawaii’s governor who participated in a recent meeting with Biden and other Democratic governors and whose family has known the president for years.
And if Biden decides not to run, Hawaii Gov. Josh Green told The Associated Press on Saturday that he believes the president will designate Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him on the ticket.
Green, who was a physician on Hawaii’s Big Island before he was elected governor, said everyone has parents or grandparents who have moments that aren’t that great or pauses in their ability to express themselves clearly. But, he added, they aren’t discarded because of their experience, wisdom and their role in the family.
Green was quick to point out that Trump is only three years younger than Biden and both will have bad days going forward. But he argued that temperament is more important than age.
“For God’s sake, these two guys have to hold the nuclear codes,” Green said. “I don’t want someone who tweets in the middle of the night and rages at other countries. That is not good. That’s not the problem we have with President Biden.”
If Biden drops out, it’s an open convention. The party can put Harris or anyone else forward as their preferred candidate, but the delegates aren’t pledged to them the way they currently are to Biden. Anything could happen at that point, really.
I understand how it’s procedurally possible to do. But why would everyone accept having the delegates at the convention just vote for some random person that the people didn’t get to vote on themselves? People around here talk about how the 2016 primary was so undemocratic because they had stuff like superdelegates, but at the end of the day the process was actually pretty democratic, unlike choosing someone totally unrelated after the primaries.
To me, Harris is the only one you could just put in place and say this is still the ticket you voted for. Anyone else, I don’t know how you pull it off.
The DNC nomination process is fairly democratic, but not entirely. Ultimately, the party delegates who are sent to the convention decide who the nominee is. By the time the convention happens this is usually a formality, but there have been open or brokered conventions before. You can look up and read very quickly how the process works, it’s not that complicated.
The reason people were mad about 2016 is that the DNC has rules that allow party leaders to put a thumb on the scale (sometimes a heavy thumb or multiple digits) if they don’t approve of how things are going. This is why Bernie wasn’t butthurt about losing whereas his following was; he knew the rules going into it, that not only would he have to overcome the superdelegates, but also anything else the party luminaries had in their back pocket along the way.
All that being said, the delegates who go to the convention are determined by the state primaries and are all for Biden this election. This means that if Biden does drop out, they are likely going to tow whatever line the higher-ups in the party want, which will be Harris. In the unlikely event that they don’t, there could be more of a contest, but they still have to reckon with the superdelegates.
I’m not saying people would accept it. But honestly, I’m not entirely convinced people will accept anything at this point.