I mentioned in a previous post that whether it makes sense for Biden to withdraw depends on what we think the process of replacing him will look like and who the likely candidate would be.
Here are my thoughts about that first part.
To begin with, the only way the nomination is opened up is if luminaries like Obama and Clymer, along with Jill Biden can convince the president to withdraw. I think that’s unlikely.
If that does happen, then there is going to be a wide open process involving 6 or 7 candidates that will likely involve some debate as well as many meetings with groups of delegates over a six to eight week period.
I imagine that Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Gavin Newsome, and Gretchen Witmer will run. Josh Shapiro, Cory Booker, Amy Kobuchar and Elizabeth Warren may run as well. Who knows, maybe Bernie Sanders will jump in, too.
There are divisions among these candidates but the less ideological differences are probably less than four and 12 years ago unless Sanders jumps in. They will all be running left-center or center-left campaigns. So there isn’t likely to be a big split among the delegates unless a candidate emerges who is very critical of Israel. And while some of the candidates I mentioned may be more critical of Israel than others, I don’t think there is any one of them who seeks to exacerbate differences on this issue. They are all aware that dividing the party on Israel / Palestine will hur in November. But if none of the likely nominees raise the issue, there is likely to be another protest candidate running who is very anti-Israel. That person will create some noise and perhaps stir divisions. But I think very few delegates will be attracted to such a candidate and the threat of real division inside the convention is minimal.
There will certainly be division outside the convention. And, if the DNC does not prepare well, we could see another Chicago 68. But I can’t imagine that this will happen. The threat is too great for the DNC to be surprised.
So what happens with the seven or eight candidates in the race.
The short answer I that he nomination is going to be decided through multiple ballots on the floor of the convention by the delegates chosen by the Biden campaign and the superdelegates. Given that there will be no primary process to winnow the candidates, there is likely to be five or six candidates with the support of a substantial number of delegates. And that means there will be multiple ballots at the convention. And there could be a lot of ballots as the incentive to drop out first will not be great, unless the rules adopted by the convention create, for the first time, a process in which candidates with vote totals below a certain are forced off the ballot.
There is not going to be any back room deal made by “party leaders.” There simply are very few party leaders who control the votes of many delegates. The notion that there are such leaders is a fiction believe by people who have not paid much attention to how the party has changed since 1968.
To see this, let’s look at Pennsylvania. We are one of the few states that have still has at least one two cities with something of a Democratic machine in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh although the party in both of them, and especially Philadelphia, his highly factionalized and another one within Pittsburgh.
Are their party leaders in PA who can command large number of votes and deliver them to a candidate? Who would be the “kingmakers” or “queenmakers ” in Pennsylvania?
Well, to begin with, if Josh Shapiro runs, he may have the support of maybe perhaps 1/2 to 5/8 of the PA delegation for the first ballot or two. But I don’t think he will go very far beyond Pennsylvania. While he has high poll ratings in a critical state, he’s not that experienced yet, is a good but not extraordinary campaigner, and is totally unknown nationally–far less than Harris, Buttigieg and even Witmer and Newsome. And he has some baggage–his support of an education vouchers that will make him unacceptable to many labor and progressive delegates.
Because he’s popular in Pennsylvania, he might be a strong candidate for vice president especially if the presidential candidate is a woman, such as Harris. So I expect he would be tempted to make a deal to endorse one of the leading candidates likely to be nominated.
But will he bring a bunch of Pennsylvania’s 187 delegates. I very much doubt it. He just doesn’t have a lot of leverage on our delegates. He couldn’t even get State Committee to accept his choice of a party chair last year. My guess is that he would be able to influence 20 or so delegates mostly in his home base of Montgomery County and other nearby counties and a few pockets of 2 or 3 delegates in five or six place around the state where he has as strong relationship with a local leaders or state representatives or senators who have a few followers among the delegates.
So maybe Shapiro can influence 35 or 40 delegates of 187.
Beyond him, there are few other king or queen makers.
Bob Brady, Philly’s Democratic Chair who is influential in many respects probably can’t control more than 15 or 20 delegates as very few Philadelphia ward leaders or committee people are delegates. State Chair Sharif Street maybe has 10 people who will do what he says without question. SEIU may have 8 or 10 although whether they will try to direct their members is unclear. The new AFL-CIO president? Maybe 10 or 15 I’m not even sure of that as she is still new to office and labor is divided.
Add up my high estimates and there are 95 delegates controlled by five people who won’t necessarily agree with one and 92 mostly free agents. Some of the free agents may listen to the same person—say an influential member of Congress or State Senator or State Representative. But if half of them do, that leaves 51 king or queen makers in PA. And at the moment, no one really knows who more than 5 of them are.
This situation is replicated in every other state and in most of them the party establishment is even weaker than in our state. So if PA has 51 king and queen makers, the smoke filled room with all the king and queen makers will probably have to hold 450 people or a quarter of the delegates. And that means the nomination is not going to be determined by a deal made in private. It’s going to be determined on the floor of an open convention.
Who will win? I have no idea. I would think that since the Biden campaign picked or influenced the delegates in most states and Biden might have some loyalty to Harris, she would start at the top of the field. But I doubt that Biden will be that influential. A lame duck president who has essentially been asked to leave is not going to command the delegates. And his campaign team is composed of functionaries who have little independent influence and who will either quickly disperse to take jobs on other campaigns or, even more likely, hang back with the hope that whoever becomes the nominee will mostly take over the Biden campaign infrastructure.
People assume that Harris is the odds-on favorite because of loyalty to the administration and her own connections to the party. But again, there is no real party leadership for her to be connected to. And if one-third of the 189 Pennsylvania delegates have met her, I would be surprised. And for almost all of them who have met her it has been a momentary handshake at a large event.
So who wins is just unpredictable—one reason a bunch of candidates are going to jump in which makes it even more unpredictable.
The process is going to be exciting and, for reasons I mentioned above, not necessarily divisive. We political scientists have been looking forward to an open convention for years because we really wonder what one would look like now. I presume there will be some quickly held debates and they, as well as the convention itself will draw a lot of interest which will help the eventual candidate.
But there are three real dangers to this process.
The first is that the convention becomes interminable because no candidate can get to a majority. And then it becomes boring and the party looks disorganized. The convention would have to agree on rules to prevent this from happening by preventing new nominations after first ballot and removing candidates below a certain threshold from continuing to the next round.
The second is that the candidate chosen is not fully vetted the way they would be in a long campaign. The biggest disaster would be choosing a candidate who we find out in a few weeks has a problem. We really don’t need an Eagleton situation.
The third is the potential Kamala Harris problem. I’m very concerned that if the party does not nominate Harris, it will alienate the base of the party Black people and especially Black women. This issue could be finessed assuming a Black person, perhaps Harris herself, remains on the ballot and / or strongly supports the ticket. But, in the heat of contentious convention, it will not be easy to work things out smoothly. And while Black people have been for decades been remarkably understanding or / forgiving of Democrats waffling on issue critical to them, that’s less true in the past and there are signs that Black people have become impatient with Democrats not moving more quickly to reduce racial disparities. That’s a good thing on the whole but if Black support for the Democratic candidate drops, winning some of the seven critical states becomes more difficult.
There is more to be said about strengths and weaknesses of alternatives to Biden. But that’s for another post.