Brokered DNC Convention?

[seanD]

So far, this appears to be the plan. If you're high profile top democrat, openly feign like you still support Biden and everyone is crazy for thinking otherwise, so the money keeps flowing in, until convention, and then drop the dude like yesterday's news...

How Democrats could replace Biden as presidential candidate before November

WASHINGTON, June 28 (Reuters) - After President Joe Biden's shaky performance at the debate with former President Donald Trump on Thursday night, some Democrats openly questioned whether he should be replaced as their candidate for the 2024 election.

There is a process for doing so, but it would be messy.

For answers on how that would work, Reuters spoke to Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank, a Democratic National Committee (DNC) member, and author of the book "Primary Politics" about the presidential nominating process.

This explainer is based largely on interviews with her.

Q: WHAT OPTIONS DO DEMOCRATS HAVE?

A: The Democratic Party has had no real Plan B for Biden as its presidential candidate. He ran virtually unopposed for the party's presidential nomination this year.

He will not be nominated officially until later this summer, so there is still time to make a change and a handful of scenarios to enact one: Biden could decide himself to step aside before he is nominated; he could be challenged by others who try to win over the delegates he has accrued; or he could withdraw after the Democratic convention in Chicago in August, leaving the Democratic National Committee to elect someone to run against Trump in his place.

Q: SO WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

A: Right now, the process largely depends on Biden. He would have to agree to step down or face a challenger this late in the process who would try to force him to do so. So far Biden has shown no indications of wanting to step aside and no opponents have challenged him directly.

In fact some of his top potential replacements - Vice President Kamala Harris and California Governor Gavin Newsom - spoke passionately in his defense after the debate, serving in a surrogate role that showcased their support but also contrasted their smooth delivery with his faltering one on the Atlanta debate stage.

Q: WHAT HAPPENS IF BIDEN STEPS DOWN?

A: Biden has spent the last several months accruing nearly 4,000 Democratic delegates by winning primary elections in U.S. states and territories.

Those delegates would normally vote for him, but the rules do not bind or force them to do so; delegates can vote with their conscience, which means they could throw their vote to someone else.

If Biden "releases" his delegates by stepping aside, there could be a competition among other Democratic candidates to become the nominee.

[seer]

So far, this appears to be the plan. If you're high profile top democrat, openly feign like you still support Biden and everyone is crazy for thinking otherwise, so the money keeps flowing in, until convention, and then drop the dude like yesterday's news...

I don't think that will happen. Biden/Harris have something like 200 million in their war chest. But they could only use it if Biden or Harris remain on the ticket. And they can't tap Harris, she has worse numbers than Biden.

[seanD]

I don't think that will happen. Biden/Harris have something like 200 million in their war chest. But they could only use it if Biden or Harris remain on the ticket. And they can't tap Harris, she has worse numbers than Biden.

There seems to be a split in the democrat party about it, and I don't really see any other way this can be solved. The horse is out of the barn, and we know Joe ain't going to get any better.

[rogue06]

So far, this appears to be the plan. If you're high profile top democrat, openly feign like you still support Biden and everyone is crazy for thinking otherwise, so the money keeps flowing in, until convention, and then drop the dude like yesterday's news...

How Democrats could replace Biden as presidential candidate before November

WASHINGTON, June 28 (Reuters) - After President Joe Biden's shaky performance at the debate with former President Donald Trump on Thursday night, some Democrats openly questioned whether he should be replaced as their candidate for the 2024 election.

There is a process for doing so, but it would be messy.

For answers on how that would work, Reuters spoke to Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank, a Democratic National Committee (DNC) member, and author of the book "Primary Politics" about the presidential nominating process.

This explainer is based largely on interviews with her.

Q: WHAT OPTIONS DO DEMOCRATS HAVE?

A: The Democratic Party has had no real Plan B for Biden as its presidential candidate. He ran virtually unopposed for the party's presidential nomination this year.

He will not be nominated officially until later this summer, so there is still time to make a change and a handful of scenarios to enact one: Biden could decide himself to step aside before he is nominated; he could be challenged by others who try to win over the delegates he has accrued; or he could withdraw after the Democratic convention in Chicago in August, leaving the Democratic National Committee to elect someone to run against Trump in his place.

Q: SO WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

A: Right now, the process largely depends on Biden. He would have to agree to step down or face a challenger this late in the process who would try to force him to do so. So far Biden has shown no indications of wanting to step aside and no opponents have challenged him directly.

In fact some of his top potential replacements - Vice President Kamala Harris and California Governor Gavin Newsom - spoke passionately in his defense after the debate, serving in a surrogate role that showcased their support but also contrasted their smooth delivery with his faltering one on the Atlanta debate stage.

Q: WHAT HAPPENS IF BIDEN STEPS DOWN?

A: Biden has spent the last several months accruing nearly 4,000 Democratic delegates by winning primary elections in U.S. states and territories.

Those delegates would normally vote for him, but the rules do not bind or force them to do so; delegates can vote with their conscience, which means they could throw their vote to someone else.

If Biden "releases" his delegates by stepping aside, there could be a competition among other Democratic candidates to become the nominee.

The money that keeps flowing in goes to the Biden-Harris campaign.

FWIU, they will have to make old Joe the nominee at the convention and then have him step aside.

If they don't go with Harris, they'd need her to step aside as well.

Only then can they come up with a completely new ticket that can have access to the massive war chest that the Biden-Harris campaign has accumulated.

If he continues to refuse to step aside, the fight will be incredibly messy and uncontrollable.

[seanD]

It should definitely be entertaining.

[seanD]

This was an interesting NYT article back in February. It basically argues he should stay in, weather the storm, and wait to step down at the convention and let the chips fall where they may, only this was before the debate debacle and assumed Biden would do it voluntarily..

The Question Is Not if Biden Should Step Aside. It’s How.

Joe Biden should not be running for re-election. That much was obvious well before the special prosecutor’s comments on the president’s memory lapses inspired a burst of age-related angst. And Democrats who are furious at the prosecutor have to sense that it will become only more obvious as we move deeper into an actual campaign.
What is less obvious is how Biden should get out of it.

Note that I did not say that Biden should not be the president. You can make a case that as obvious as his decline has been, whatever equilibrium his White House has worked out has thus far delivered results largely indistinguishable from (and sometimes better than) what one would expect from a replacement-level Democratic president.

If there has been a really big age effect in his presidency so far, I suspect it lies in the emboldenment of America’s rivals, a sense that a decrepit American chief executive is less to be feared than a more vigorous one. But suspicion isn’t proof, and when I look at how the Biden administration has actually handled its various foreign crises, I can imagine more disastrous outcomes from a more swaggering sort of president.

Saying that things have worked out OK throughout this stage of Biden’s decline, though, is very different from betting that they can continue working out OK for almost five long further years. And saying that Biden is capable of occupying the presidency for the next 11 months is quite different from saying that he’s capable of spending those months effectively campaigning for the right to occupy it again.

The impression the president gives in public is not senility so much as extreme frailty, like a lightbulb that still burns so long as you keep it on a dimmer. But to strain the simile a bit, the entire issue in a re-election campaign is not whether your filaments shed light; it’s whether voters should take this one opportunity to change out the bulb. Every flicker is evidence that a change is necessary, and if you force Biden into a normal campaign-season role, frequent flickering (if not a burning out) is what you’re going to get.

Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt, and assume that Biden senses this, that he isn’t just entombed in egomania, but he feels trapped by his own terrible vice-presidential choice. If he drops out and anoints Kamala Harris, she’s even more likely to lose to Donald Trump. But if he drops out and doesn’t endorse his own number two, he’d be opening himself to a narrative of identitarian betrayal — aging white president knifes first woman-of-color veep — and setting his party up for months of bloodletting and betrayal, a constant churn of personal and ideological drama.

There is no easy escape from these dilemmas. But the best approach available to Biden is a distinctively old-fashioned one. He should accept the necessity of drama and bloodletting but also condense it all into the format that was originally designed for handling intraparty competition: the Democratic National Convention.

That would mean not dropping out today or tomorrow or any day when party primaries are still proceeding. Instead Biden would continue accumulating pledged delegates, continue touting the improving economic numbers, continue attacking Donald Trump — until August and the convention, when he would shock the world by announcing his withdrawal from the race, decline to issue any endorsement, and invite the convention delegates to choose his replacement.

Btw, to my knowledge, NYT has recently been relentless in calls for Biden to step down.

[Mountain Man]

I honestly don't expect the Democrats to allow their party to fracture. If Joe doesn't voluntarily step side, and every indication is that he won't, then they'll circle the wagons and do everything they can to protect him.

[seanD]

I guess it depends on whether or not the odd debate timing was intentional or not. It seems pretty clear to me it was, and that the party that planned it anticipated this situation.

[seanD]

Hmm...

Democrats' nomination of Biden in virtual roll call could come as early as mid-July

The Democratic National Committee is considering formally nominating President Biden as early as mid-July, two Democratic sources confirm to Fox News.

A potential date for Biden’s nomination is July 21, which is when the Democratic National Convention’s credentials committee meets virtually.

As has been reported for weeks, Democratic Party officials decided that the formal roll call would not take place at their convention, which kicks off on August 19th in Chicago.

The reason is that the Democrats' convention comes after Ohio’s ballot deadline of August 7th. Party officials, in a maneuver to allow Biden to appear on the Ohio ballot, said they would hold the roll call ahead of Ohio's ballot deadline.

[Starlight]

The problem seems to be:

1. Due to the party's processes, it's really not at all easy to simply replace a candidate who was elected in the primary without that candidate's consent.

Arguably: Fair enough. e.g. If Bernie had been elected in the primary with supermajorities of voters, and the party higher-ups behind the scenes had said "we personally hate Bernie because he wants to raise our taxes, so we're replacing him", nobody would think that was reasonable or that the process should allow that.

2. Nearly everyone around Biden has a job that's tied to Biden rather than tied to the Democratic candidate. i.e. they will immediately lose their jobs if Biden isn't the nominee. The Biden White House has the reputation for being the most insular ever - higher-ups in the party don't appear to have people on the inside who can talk to Biden, rather all the people around Biden are Biden's people.

This seems a big problem. Biden is essentially surrounded by yes-men, i.e. by people whose future job prospects and continued earnings seem to require Biden to continue to be the candidate. It's hard to see any of them saying he should drop out. So Biden isn't getting objective advice.

It seems like the problem is that Biden needs to voluntarily drop out, and that the people around him have conflicts of interest that mean they aren't advising him to drop out.

[seanD]

The problem seems to be:

1. Due to the party's processes, it's really not at all easy to simply replace a candidate who was elected in the primary without that candidate's consent.

Arguably: Fair enough. e.g. If Bernie had been elected in the primary with supermajorities of voters, and the party higher-ups behind the scenes had said "we personally hate Bernie because he wants to raise our taxes, so we're replacing him", nobody would think that was reasonable or that the process should allow that.

2. Nearly everyone around Biden has a job that's tied to Biden rather than tied to the Democratic candidate. i.e. they will immediately lose their jobs if Biden isn't the nominee. The Biden White House has the reputation for being the most insular ever - higher-ups in the party don't appear to have people on the inside who can talk to Biden, rather all the people around Biden are Biden's people.

This seems a big problem. Biden is essentially surrounded by yes-men, i.e. by people whose future job prospects and continued earnings seem to require Biden to continue to be the candidate. It's hard to see any of them saying he should drop out. So Biden isn't getting objective advice.

It seems like the problem is that Biden needs to voluntarily drop out, and that the people around him have conflicts of interest that mean they aren't advising him to drop out.

Would you agree that the people around him, his "yes-men," set up the debate before the convention, which everyone agrees was unusual? If so, why did they do that? The Dems have displayed to all the world an extraordinary level of delusion, but the insiders who saw Biden everyday and how he functioned couldn't possibly be THAT deluded.

[Starlight]

Would you agree that the people around him, his "yes-men," set up the debate before the convention, which everyone agrees was unusual?

Yes.

If so, why did they do that?

Apparently their belief was that when the American people see Trump again they'll remember how bad he is and how much they hate him. Their campaign strategy is to try and expose America to as much of Trump as possible between now and the election, in the belief that will drive voters to the polls to vote against Trump. Hence the idea of having an early debate to try and improve Biden's currently-bad poll numbers by reminding people Trump is his opponent.

[seanD]

Yes.

Apparently their belief was that when the American people see Trump again they'll remember how bad he is and how much they hate him. Their campaign strategy is to try and expose America to as much of Trump as possible between now and the election, in the belief that will drive voters to the polls to vote against Trump. Hence the idea of having an early debate to try and improve Biden's currently-bad poll numbers by reminding people Trump is his opponent.

In other words, your argument is basically that they really are THAT delusional. Fair enough. But why couldn't they stick with convention and just wait until after the convention?

[Mountain Man]

Yes.

Apparently their belief was that when the American people see Trump again they'll remember how bad he is and how much they hate him. Their campaign strategy is to try and expose America to as much of Trump as possible between now and the election, in the belief that will drive voters to the polls to vote against Trump. Hence the idea of having an early debate to try and improve Biden's currently-bad poll numbers by reminding people Trump is his opponent.

Considering that President Trump is currently doing everything he can to keep himself as highly visible as possible with frequent press interviews and massive campaign rallies across the country, and that he is almost constantly in the news thanks to the multiple lawfare operations being conducted against him, I fail to see why Joe's team would feel the need to try and make Trump even more visible with a high profile debate, especially when it guaranteed that Joe's own significant shortcomings would be put on display in way that even the most deluded liberals have found impossible to ignore. Joe's campaign literally had nothing to gain from this debate.

[seanD]

Considering that President Trump is currently doing everything he can to keep himself as highly visible as possible with frequent press interviews and massive campaign rallies across the country, and that he is almost constantly in the news thanks to the multiple lawfare operations being conducted against him, I fail to see why Joe's team would feel the need to try and make Trump even more visible with a high profile debate, especially when it guaranteed that Joe's own significant shortcomings would be put on display in way that even the most deluded liberals have found impossible to ignore. Joe's campaign literally had nothing to gain from this debate.

SL logic.