This is meant as an unofficial thread for the Daily Kos Elections crowd to discuss what is going on with Biden and efforts to get him to step down from the Presidential nomination. This is because very wisely talk over who should be the nominee aka primary talk is forbidden because it tends to drown out all other talk. All I ask for in this thread is that we keep it to electoral politics (how it will affect the election) rather than policy.
I felt this was necessary with the most recent release of "internal Democratic polls." I heard yesterday that the Biden campaign was passing around polls to calm congressional Democrats that showed Biden behind and other potential nominees polling nearly the same as Biden undercutting themselves . Which seems like political malpractice or worse. And more alarmingly for me is Biden's lack of a forceful response to these rumors.
For the record I still stand behind Joe Biden and think he is our best candidate moving forward but that is for us to discuss.
I am going to start with what I forgot and got wrong in the diary I published a few days ago. As I did forget one thing minor and one thing key.
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First on the minor end Democratic delegates unlike Republican delegates are not bound on the first ballot. That is procedural.
Second something I completely forgot about that was discussed a few months ago. Due to ballot access laws (specifically Ohio) delegates will be doing the formal role call vote for president in July before the convention. The reason being that the Olympics forced a late convention and this was necessary to ensure we are on every state ballot. Meaning the actual August convention will not just be functionally meaningless but literally meaningless.
This and a few other points I'll mention are discussed at around minute 40 in the July 2nd episode of The Bulwark podcast. As you can see they have a very different view on whether Biden should be the nominee than I do.
- The nominee will be selected virtually. Assuming Biden remains in the race he obviously wins the type of victory he earned in the primary season. Otherwise as many votes will occur as necessary until a nominee gets a majority. Due to deadlines any change after this become highly risky.
- Super delegates are restricted on the first ballot but will increase in number on the second ballot. Whether these elected officials and bigwigs serve to bring the party together or the opposite we will see.
- The money and organization of Biden’s campaign is actually that of the Biden / Harris campaign. This means only Joe Biden and/or Kamala Harris can use the money and organization that has been painstakingly built. Anyone else as the nominee would have to start from scratch. Which besides other factors would make Kamala a very attractive nominee if Biden were to step aside. What happens if Kamala stays as VP and someone else steps in as President? Not sure. Would she even want to in such a scenario?