From ‘Democrats doomed’ to ‘Republicans face fight of their lives’ — presidential race upended overnight

Right up until Sunday afternoon, the feeling among many in America’s Democratic Party was that the cadre of the party’s elected officials was increasingly likely to be truly decimated in the upcoming November election. This would be especially true if its leader and standard bearer continued to be the man seen as the aged, frail, stumbling presidential candidate who was the incumbent, Joe Biden.

Then, quite suddenly, the whole US political landscape has been upended all over again. And this latest upheaval has come just one week after the attempted assassination attempt on Republican challenger and former president, Donald Trump, at an outdoor rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

From that moment, it seemed increasingly likely Trump had just about locked down the outcome of the election. But surprise; it may not be so, after all. For weeks, following a disastrous showing in the first presidential debate, Biden had been enduring weeks of a growing clamour for him to step away from the race and let a new generation of candidates come forward before it was too late — before the electoral tsunami struck. So far there had been his repeated denials of any plan to do so and the assurance he was in the race to win it, with no equivocations at all.

Read more: Scrambled and Messed up – Trump assassination attempt upends entire 2024 election dynamic

But then, after the weekend, supported by close family members at his house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and a medically enforced isolation because he had been diagnosed with Covid, Joe Biden did precisely what he had said he would not do.

In a message that showed grace and humility, as well as some obvious self-reflection, Biden announced he would withdraw from the presidential race and direct his full attention during his remaining time as president towards dealing with the country’s pressing issues, domestically and internationally.

Crucially, he endorsed his vice-president, Kamala Harris, as the person who should be their party’s candidate for president. Biden’s message was quickly followed by one from her, hoping she would gain the trust and support of the party’s members and office-holders. Biden’s decision reportedly came as a surprise to all but his closest advisers and friends.

These two messages were quickly followed by one of support from Bill and Hillary Clinton for Harris, along with a growing chorus of other Democratic Party figures. Another former president, Barack Obama, issued a message lauding Biden’s service to the nation but did not directly endorse Harris as the designated pinch hitter.

The clock is now running to see how many other leading Democrats will say directly they support Harris’s bid for the presidency — or if they will hang back just a bit to see how it all shakes out; if there are other possible names whose interest in the job catches the public’s attention.

Journalists, commentators, other politicians and the citizenry at large are now wondering just how quickly the usually fractious Democratic Party will — or can — coalesce around Kamala Harris. Or, will others from among the party’s crop of governors and senators delicately jockey themselves into a contending position, forcing some kind of “beauty pageant” for the nomination?

This might conceivably be some sort of ad hoc national party primary among all Democratic Party officials to be convened for potential nominees to slug it out for a national television audience before the party’s national nominating convention takes place in August.

Similarly, this sudden rearrangement of the electoral furniture has called up a whole battalion of election law and finance attorneys who work with the Democratic Party trying to sort out how campaign contributions already raised for the Biden-Harris ticket can, instead, be shifted over for use by a Harris+Mr/Ms X ticket for the campaign in the weeks and months ahead. (The argument being made in this regard is that since Harris was already listed as one half of the Biden-Harris ticket, this is a technical rather than a substantive issue, although this may still provoke court challenges by disappointed donors or others.)

Meanwhile, campaign contributors who had begun holding back as Biden’s circumstances faltered, now reportedly appear to have found a new burst of enthusiasm and willingness to open their cheque books, wallets and purses.

This will be particularly important for Democrats because the Trump campaign appears to have edged ahead in the race to assemble the funds needed for their campaign. As Kamala Harris’ political mentor, California state legislator and former San Francisco mayor Willy Brown had famously put it, “Money is the mother’s milk of politics.”

Trump, the new old guy

True to form, Republicans like Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, are already engaging in some “dog in the manger” behaviour, with Johnson arguing that if Biden has taken himself out of the running for reelection, he should also resign from being president.

Never mind that working at the job full time is clearly different from running for the office. There is no reason to assume Biden has, so far, been unable to perform the duties of the office of the president or that he could not do so for the remainder of his term.

Most usually, the argument against a Biden candidacy has been that he is working well enough, now, but the question is whether he will be able to do so in two, three or four years from now when he is even older than the man who stumbled in that debate on CNN.

In any case, it should not be the Republicans who decide whether Joe Biden chooses to run for president again. What probably really troubles Republicans and Trump’s campaign team the most is that the whole storyline of the presidential campaign has now been upended.

No matter who the Democratic Party’s candidate ultimately becomes, he or she will be a generation younger than Donald Trump. Thus their line of attack would be to point to the self-evident fact that many of Trump’s speeches and other public presentations are already dangerously close to nonsensical word-salad gibberish and meandering thoughts that go nowhere sensible. He, Trump, will now, going forward, be the doddering old guy instead of Biden in the eyes and ears of the public.

George Washington to Lyndon Johnson

While much of the public discussion so far has been that what has just happened is an unprecedented turn of events, a look back to 1968 is revealing.

In the spring of that year, with rising national discontent over the unending Vietnam conflict and the rising death toll among American military personnel, along with the increasing national discord from the civil rights struggle, President Lyndon Johnson suffered a near defeat in the New Hampshire primary to anti-war Senator Eugene McCarthy, and then, subsequently, to Senator Robert F Kennedy as well, also running as an anti-war candidate, in the California primary election. (Kennedy was assassinated on the day of his victory.)

With all this happening, Johnson decided to step back from a run for re-nomination and possible re-election, realising his very presence on the ballot would be an instigation for yet further national distress and discord. His vice-president, Hubert Humphrey, gained the nomination at a chaotic party convention in Chicago. Still, he then lost the election to Richard Nixon by about one percentage point in the popular vote, but decisively in the electoral vote tally. Humphrey had decidedly anti-war feelings himself but had remained loyal to his leader’s policies.

A generation earlier, President Harry Truman had decided not to run for a second full term of office in 1952 in the face of national anger over a conflict in Korea that seemed endless and massive popular support for World War 2 hero Dwight Eisenhower.

Earlier still, Republican President Calvin Coolidge had chosen not to stand for re-election for a full term in 1928. Some people believe he had a premonition that the wild economic ride of the jazz age was about to come crashing down, and it would do him no good to be there when it happened — just as it did in the autumn of 1929.

Back at the very beginning of the republic, George Washington chose not to be nominated for a third term, despite the public clamour for him to be president forever.

The Harris agenda

Looking ahead, the key question is whether Vice-President Kamala Harris can quickly mobilise wide, deep party support for a nomination for president by her party. Then the question becomes whether the administrative and legal processes can be set in motion with minimum difficulty to ensure her nomination in the August convention. Further, can funding for a campaign be raised in sufficient amounts to make it all happen?

Perhaps most important of all, will Harris be able to articulate a compelling vision — on domestic and foreign issues — about why she is the obvious president, by contrast to that crazy old man in the other party, and how her vision dovetails with the Biden administration’s successes, even as she defines herself as her own person and candidate. These are all big asks, but they are the tasks ahead for her now. DM