Författare: Dafydd Townley Teaching Fellow in International Security Uni

Joe Biden’s decision to step down from the 2024 campaign is yet another significant moment in this year’s US election, following on from the attempted assassination of Donald Trump the previous Saturday, July 13.

Not since 1968, when Lyndon Johnson withdrew from the nomination process, has the incumbent president not stood for his party’s nomination for a second term in office.

Following his announcement, Biden followed up with a second statement proposing his vice president, Kamala Harris, as the presumptive nominee for November’s election. Biden offered his “full support and endorsement” for Harris.

Almost immediately, Democratic Party members praised Biden’s decision to put the good of the country above personal ambition. Harris thanked Biden for his “decades of service to our country”, while the former House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, called Biden one of the most “consequential presidents in American history”.

Messages of thanks to Biden were quickly followed by those of support for Harris, including potential rivals for the candidacy, such as California governor Gavin Newsom, who called Harris: “Tough. Tenacious. Fearless,” and insisted, “No one is better to prosecute the case against Donald Trump’s dark vision.”

Former president Barack Obama praised Biden on his “commitment to the ideals of freedom and equality that this country was founded on”. But, significantly, he failed to explicitly endorse Harris. Instead, Obama wrote that he believed that “the leaders of our party will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges”.

This is a position echoed by Pelosi who argued, last week, that should Biden step down from the race that there needed to be “open process” to the nomination. A transparent nomination process would nullify any accusations that party elites had chosen the candidate.

Harris made it clear that she would not rely on Biden’s support to assume the nomination. While thanking Biden for his “extraordinary leadership” and endorsement, she stated: “My intention is to earn and win the nomination.”

With the Democratic convention due to take place in Chicago at the end of August, party lines are already beginning to form around who should be the candidate. While there have been reassurances by Democrat leaders that there will be a “transparent and orderly process” for the party’s presidential nomination, there is nobody currently publicly opposing Harris as the candidate.

As well as being Biden’s vice president, there are a number of other reasons why Harris should be the candidate to face Trump.

Identity matters

Any claims that the Democrats will have of being a progressive, inclusive party will arguably disappear if Harris is passed over for the candidacy. The casting aside of a woman of colour for any other candidate would do irreparable damage to the Democrat’s image.

The US showed that the majority of voters were willing to put a woman in the White House in 2016, when Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. And they twice voted for a man of colour to be president in 2008 and 2012. Women voters and ethnic minorities will prove to be crucial to the outcome of the November election.

Harris has become a vocal champion of woman’s rights – particularly those associated with abortion and birth control since 2022 when the Supreme Court effectively overturned the landmark 1973 Roe V Wade judgment that established a woman’s legal right to an abortion.

Roe v Wade and the fight for women’s reproductive rights are at the heart of Harris’s campaign.
Craig Hudson/Sipa USA

Previously the Democrats had targeted Trump as a danger to democracy, following the storming of the capitol by his supporters in January 2021. But after the assassination attempt on July 13, a conscious decision was made to scale that rhetoric down. So targeting female votes will be crucial.

Harris also has the advantage of already having a campaign up and running. Within hours of Biden’s withdrawal, Harris’s campaign staff were reportedly working on gathering further party endorsements.

She was also reportedly raised over US$46 million (£35 million) in the seven hours after Biden’s endorsement. According to legal experts, she is also entitled to inherit the money already raised for the Biden-Harris campaign, which is said to stand at around US$95 million.

Finally, Harris enables the Democratic Party to provide a contrasting optic to that of Trump. In her brief 2020 candidacy campaign, she labelled herself as a prosecutor. Now she can be compared to Trump the felon.

Gone too are the Republican questions of Biden’s age and cognitive abilities. Instead, the focus now turns to Trump who, should be successful in November, will be the oldest president in history at the end of his second term of office.

Much of the wrangling between now and the Democratic convention is likely to concern who will be Harris’ running mate.

Running mate

Top of many lists is Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania. Shapiro won the 2022 gubernatorial election by 15% and his presence would do much to win an important swing state. The same might be said of Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, who was reported to have joined a call of Harris for President staff on Sunday.

Other potential running mates include the popular Pete Buttigieg, the secretary for transport, who would gain union support in rust belt states that have seen dramatic industrial decline, and senator and former astronaut Mark Kelley of Arizona, another key state in the battle for the White House.

Andy Beshear, the Democrat governor of traditionally Republican Kentucky would appeal to many Never-Trumpers and disgruntled Republican voters. He has already said he would consider being Harris’s vice president.

Whoever the final partnership is for November, Democrats have the opportunity to dominate the news cycle over the next few weeks in the lead-up to the national convention. Over the past few weeks, the Republicans have had several wins in the PR battle for the November election.

But as long as the Democrats unite behind their candidate quickly, they can make significant progress towards getting their candidate in the White House when Biden’s term ends next January. Läs mer…

The Republican National Convention has just kicked off in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The four-day event will be attended by around 50,000 Republicans including 2,400 delegates who are expected to confirm Donald Trump as the Republican candidate for November’s presidential election.

The attempted assassination of the former president in Pennsylvania on Saturday has changed the tone of the convention for some, but not all.

Trump has said he will tone down the vitriol in his rhetoric that has been a common feature of his campaign so far. In an interview with the Washington Examiner, he promised that in his speech to the convention, due to be delivered on Thursday, would be rewritten.

“The speech I was going to give on Thursday was going to be a humdinger,” he said. “Honestly, it’s going to be a whole different speech now.”

Trump also suggested that he would be speaking to those outside the convention as much as the faithful audience within.

“This is a chance to bring the whole country, even the whole world, together. The speech will be a lot different, a lot different than it would’ve been,” he added, as he boarded his plane for Milwaukee.

It’s not the first time that Trump has called for unity in the wake of the assassination attempt. On Sunday morning, he posted on the Truth Social network that it was “in this moment, it is more important than ever that we stand United”.

The announced change in rhetoric has been a welcome one for many Republicans, including the speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, who called for calm. In an interview with CBS News, Johnson said the US needed to “turn the rhetoric down, we’ve got turn the temperature down in this country” and called on leaders of all parties to do so.

The Republican senator for Wisconsin, Ron Johnson, told Bloomberg television that political figures had been responsible for the divisions in American society and that he would “like to be able to tone down the rhetoric” so that the nation could deal with the challenges the nation faces.

Anger and recriminations

Not all Republicans share those views. Some have pointed to the Democrats’ contention that Trump is a threat to democracy as a motivating factor for the assassination attempt.

Senator J.D. Vance, a freshman Senator from Ohio seen by many as a potential vice presidential candidate to share the ticket with Trump, was not so forgiving. He stated that the Biden’s accusations have “led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination”.

Republican congressman Mike Collins shared Vance’s view, posting on X just hours after the shooting that “Joe Biden sent the orders,” referencing Biden’s comment that it was “time to put Trump in the bullseye”.

Ten minutes later, Collins called for the Republican district attorney in Butler County, Pennsylvania, to “immediately file charges against Joseph R. Biden for inciting an assassination”.

Despite Trump’s difference in opinion to some of his base, he’s unlikely to face much difficulty in presenting a united Republican Party, even though political commentators in the US expect the convention to be fiery and full of anger.

Republicans unite behind their man

But Trump’s brush with death on Saturday is likely to remove any internal dissent against his position as the party leader.

Nikki Haley, his most successful opponent in the primary contests, was originally not expected to attend the convention. But after the events in Pennsylvania, Haley confirmed that she will not just attend, but speak at the convention.

‘Get well soon Mr President’: supporters signed cards at a prayer vigil for Donald Trump at Zeidler Park in Milwaukee ahead of the Republican National Convention.
EPA-EFE/Allison Dinner

This is significant. For many moderates, Haley remained the focus of any potential Republican opposition to Trump. Despite officially dropping out of the race to be the Republican nominee in March, she continued to gain votes in the primaries, including more than 150,000 votes in Pennsylvania.

There is also unlikely to be any opposition of the Trump campaign’s rewriting of the party’s stance on abortion. In response to Trump’s position that abortion legislation should be a state and not a federal issue, the Trump team has softened the language and has cut short on calling for a national abortion ban.

The campaign team’s decision was confirmed as the Republican Party’s platform by the Republican National Committee last week. In a move away from tradition, the decision was made behind closed doors and with no press access.

Religious conservatives immediately expressed their opposition to the decision. Chad Connelly, a former chair of the South Carolina Republican Party, stated that he had been contacted by more than 1,000 individuals who were disappointed with the decision. “The words I am hearing are shocked, betrayed, trampled, depressed, deflated,” he said.

While he said that most of those who contacted him “will still probably vote for Trump,” he argued that this disagreement “hurts the energy needed for those folks to do the things it takes to help elect a president”.

But that much of that opposition appears to have relented in light of Saturday’s shooting. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council told Associated Press: “More divisiveness would not be healthy.”

It’s unlikely that Trump will be able to stifle all of the delegates’ anger over this decision. But there’s no doubt that he will retain their support and this week’s convention will undoubtedly be Trump’s coronation.

However, the November election is still a long way off and it is far too early to categorically state that the attempted assassination has cemented his return to the White House. Läs mer…

Joe Biden’s extremely weak performance at the CNN TV debate last week, has prompted senior figures in the Democrat party to question whether he is fit enough to stand for the upcoming presidential election. Former speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said it was reasonable to ask: “Is this an episode or is this a condition?”

Ahead of an interview with Biden by ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos tonight, The Conversation’s Rachael Jolley asked Dafydd Townley, who studies US elections, what might happen next.

Are the Democrats considering replacing Joe Biden?

Following the Biden’s disastrous performance in the first presidential debate on June 27, an increasing number of Democrats and their financial backers that have suggested that it is time for him to step down.

A YouGov/Economist poll conducted after the debate suggest that Biden has slipped further behind Trump in November’s race for the White House. Although Biden is trailing Trump by only two percentage points with all voters, he is now facing an uphill battle to win a second term of office. Other polls should the gap widening faster since the debate.

While the majority of those within his party are still publicly supporting him, there have been some calls from party members and supporters for him to step down.

Although admitting that he “screwed up” the debate, which he claimed was due to travel and jetlag, Biden has not reassured party members with speeches at fundraising events.

At one event in New York, on June 29, Biden gave a 15-minute speech from a teleprompter before leaving without taking any questions. One audience member said that “doing that for the next five months is not going to be enough”.

Are senior figures still backing Biden?

The vice president, Kamala Harris, has maintained that Biden is still the person to lead the Democrats in November’s election. On July 3, she told her campaign team: “Joe Biden has devoted his life to fighting for the people of our country. In this moment, I know all of us are ready to fight for him.”

Read more:
Joe Biden could still stand down before the election – here’s how and what would happen next

However, Pelosi, a leading Biden supporter, called on Biden to speak to serious journalists to confirm to Americans that “he has a vision, he has knowledge, he has judgment, he has strategic thinking” and the ability to show the kind of leadership he has shown over the last four years in the White House.

Who are the key Democratic figures saying Biden should go?

The first public call for Biden to step down from within his own party came from Texan Representative Lloyd Doggett on Tuesday. Doggett said that Biden should “make the painful call and difficult decision to withdraw” from the campaign.

More worrying for Biden are the calls from major Democratic donors who are calling for an embargo on campaign donations until Biden steps down and are using multiple outlets to make their case.

One of the first of these to suggest that Biden needs to step down was Democratic donor Whitney Tilson, and former firm Biden backer, who said that while Biden had been “a great president”, the debate confirmed “sticking with Biden is not the answer”.

Abigail Disney, a major Democrat sponsor and heir to the Disney family fortune, told CNBC that she was convinced that “if Biden does not step down the Democrats will lose.” She warned that if Biden continued to lead the campaign she would withdraw her financial support.

Damon Lindelof, a long-term sponsor of Democratic campaigns, wrote in Deadline that withholding funding was the only way to get Biden to step down.

Who is in the frame to replace him?

Kamala Harris, the current vice president, is the obvious candidate should Biden decide to step down. But the Democrats are already divided over whether she would be a suitable replacement.

Many party figures are concerned that Harris would fare badly in a national election. She has been criticised heavily by both Republicans and Democrats for her management of the southern border with Mexico.

However, Harris has become more vocal and independent of the White House over the past 12 months, in particular on abortion and birth control rights, seen by many as a key issue in this election.

There has been a raft of Democratic governors touted as potential replacements. These include California’s Gavin Newsom, Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer and Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro.

In the recent Ipsos/Reuters poll, Harris does best against Trump trailing him by just 1%, while Newsom trails by 3%, and Whitmer by 5%. But none of them did as well as Biden. The only one who did was Michelle Obama, the former first lady, who led Trump by 11 points.

Similar figures for Harris were reported in a CNN/SSRS poll taken just after the debate. It showed Trump leading Biden by 6%, but places Harris just 2% behind Trump, with Harris gaining more support from women than Biden.

Biden’s family are encouraging him to stay in the race.

What could happen next?

Biden has told his closest allies that he has just days to save his presidential campaign, and the ABC interview tonight will be a big part of that. He has to be sharp and across the brief and impress viewers with a completely different performance to that of the debate. If not, trouble is not going away.

If he decides to step down, then his replacement will be decided by party members at the Democratic convention from August 19 to 22, which make the convention reminiscent of those in the 1960s.

In 1960, John F Kennedy emerged as the Democratic nominee at the party convention after the Kennedy camp worked the event and the party swung behind him, with Lyndon Johnson as his vice president.

What Democrats will hope to avoid is a repeat of the 1968 convention in Chicago where police clashed with anti-Vietnam war protesters in the streets and Democrats fought amongst themselves inside the convention. Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson’s vice president, emerged as the nominee and was subsequently beaten in the election by Republican candidate Richard Nixon.

If Biden refuses to step down then there is currently not enough opposition within his own party to remove him from the ticket.

But the next few hours, days, and weeks, will be crucial. Should the Democrats fail to unite behind a single candidate before the convention, then there might well be a chance of the Chicago event also turning into a major battle. Läs mer…