Photo: Kevin Mohatt/Reuters
President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the 2024 presidential election and endorse Vice-President Kamala Harris as his successor occurred just as Democrats were beginning to finalize arrangements for their convention in Chicago. Here’s a guide to how these new developments will affect Democrats’ plans as they gear up to take on Donald Trump in November.
The DNC runs from Monday, August 19, to Thursday, August 22.
No. Unlike Republicans, Democrats do not legally bind delegates; they merely have a moral obligation to honor pledges as long as their candidate is in the field. Fourteen states have laws requiring that delegates honor pledges, but they all have provisions for releasing delegates when a candidate withdraws, as Biden has done. And in any event, there is Supreme Court precedent for national party rules superseding state laws with respect to convention delegates.
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson has made noises about launching lawsuits to prevent Democrats from “switching out” a nominee after primaries have ended, but no credible legal expert thinks the idea has merit. Biden was never any more than the “presumptive” nominee for 2024, and any ballot access for the general election depends purely on formal nomination by Democratic delegates.
Normally, major parties make presidential and vice-presidential nominations via a “roll call of the states” held at a regular session of their conventions (though uncontested nominations can happen quickly and without much fanfare, as occurred on the first day of the 2024 Republican convention when Donald Trump and J.D. Vance were rubber-stamped before most media coverage began). In 2020, however, Democrats chose to deploy a “virtual roll call” — really just a series of video presentations of each state’s vote — after abandoning most live-convention activities because of COVID-19 precautions. In May of this year, the Democratic National Committee chose to move forward with another “virtual roll call” to make the presidential and vice-presidential nominations prior to the Chicago convention, for reasons ranging from concerns about protests in Chicago to a ballot-access law in Ohio that required nominees be certified by August 7.
On July 19, before President Biden’s decision to withdraw from the race, the Democratic National Convention’s Rules Committee met and confirmed that it would proceed with a “virtual roll call” at some point between August 1 and August 7 (despite a new law enacted by Ohio’s Republican legislature that would retroactively move the deadline to September 1). The same committee will meet again on July 24 to finalize plans for the “virtual roll call.”
Technically, the “virtual roll call” could be revisited at the convention to change the nominee, but that’s not going to happen barring some development even stranger than those we’ve already witnessed this year.
The convention’s current rules provide that any person willing to announce a candidacy and show evidence of support from 300 delegates (no more than 50 from one state) can have her or his name placed into nomination and secure votes. At this point, Kamala Harris will easily qualify (she’s already been endorsed by all 50 state-party chairs). It’s much less likely that the other announced candidate, Marianne Williamson, can reach the delegates thresholds, and other candidacies (including the rumored possible run by Joe Manchin) remain possible but not at all certain. So technically this will be an “open convention,” but it probably won’t be at all competitive.
3,949 delegates were chosen in the Democratic presidential primaries and subsequent deliberations. An additional 749 “automatic” delegates — better known as “super-delegates” — will attend in recognition of the offices they hold (or held). They include members of the DNC, members of Congress, governors, and former presidents and vice-presidents. Technically, the super-delegates are barred from voting on the first ballot, but a loophole will allow them to do so since a candidate (Biden) had already won a majority of the pledged delegates before the determination was made about their participation. Unless that determination is reversed by the Rules Committee or Credentials Committee prior to the balloting, a majority of all the delegates (2,350) will be required for the nomination.
The same way as the presidential nomination and probably without controversy once the presumptive presidential nominee (most likely Harris) indicates a choice of running mate. Some sort of celebratory ratification of the new ticket will almost certainly occur at the convention in Chicago.
Though Republicans may try any number of public-relations and legal initiatives to draw attention to what they are calling the “coup” to replace Biden at the top of the ticket, the only one likely to have much traction is a challenge to the ability of Harris to utilize funds raised when Biden was the presumptive nominee. Democrats argue the money was raised on behalf of a Biden-Harris renomination campaign, of which she was obviously an integral part, but the controversy could go before a deeply divided Federal Election Commission and then into the courts.
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