The “knives” came out after their poor performance Joe Biden in the first 2024 presidential debate with Donald Trump. As the November election approaches, Democrats are in a panic over the president’s condition.
A Texas congressman has become the party’s first elected official to asks him to resign.
Could Biden step back now? And who could replace him? The short answer is that If he doesn’t agree to step away, things will get bad.
Let’s look at the scenarios.
Can Joe Biden retire?
Yes, if—and this is a big “if”—Biden decides to retire, it would be relatively simple to find another candidate.
The party’s candidate will be officially chosen in Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago from August 19 to 22.
Democrats plan to nominate Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris well ahead of the convention to meet the deadline for certifying the vote in Ohio.
There, a candidate must win the support of a majority of “delegates”—the party officials who officially select the candidate. Delegates are allocated to candidates proportionally based on the results of each state’s primary election.
This year, Biden won nearly 99 percent of the nearly 4,000 delegates. Under DNC rules, those delegates are “pledged” to support the incumbent president. If Biden voluntarily withdraws, that could turn into a free vote.
Democrats would be left with an open convention where they would nominate potential candidates and continue voting until someone received a majority of delegate votes. That could trigger a frantic race among Democrats vying for the nomination.
Biden he has so far given no indication that he would consider leaving.
But if he decides to drop out of the race, “that opens up a whole different slate,” political historian Leah Wright Riguer told BBC News.
“I think if he were to be replaced, part of the negotiation for his departure would be that he would have final say on who replaced him,” she said.
Could he be forced out?
If he doesn’t want to leaveThis is where the process gets really complicated.
However, the DNC rules have some loopholes that could, in theory, make it possible to impeach Biden.
The rules allow representatives to “reflect in good conscience the feelings of those who elected them,” meaning they can turn to someone else. “It could be an incredibly bad scenario,” Wright Riguer said.
Experts told BBC News they doubted there would be a rebellion among party delegates. But the DNC can change the party’s rules at any time. Wright Riguer recalled 1968, when President Lyndon B Johnson decided not to run for re-election. The party went from an open convention process, where delegates could vote for whoever they wanted, to a tied process, where a delegate was tied to a candidate based on the results of the primaries. “At any time, the rules committee can change the rules on how the presidential candidate is selected,” he said. “Nothing is out of the realm of possibility,” he added.
Even if Biden suddenly drops out of the race, conservative groups have vowed to file lawsuits challenging the legality of any Democratic replacement’s eligibility to be on the ballot.
Will Kamala Harris replace Biden?
Vice President Kamala Harris will automatically take over for Biden if he resigns during his presidential term.
But the same rules do not apply if Biden withdraws as a candidate in November’s election, and there is no mechanism that gives the vice president the upper hand in an open convention.
Instead, Harris would have to win a majority of delegates, just like any other candidate.
In the Democratic race, Ms. Harris could certainly be the favorite. But her relatively low popularity among the American public could mitigate that advantage.
His net approval rating is now lower than both Biden and Donald Trump, according to FiveThirtyEight.
Could the 25th Amendment be invoked?
O 25th Amendment to the Constitution allows the US vice president and a majority of the cabinet to declare the president unfit for office.
In the event of a call, power is transferred to the vice president to act as acting president.
This never happened before.
But after the debate, top Republicans in Congress called on Biden’s cabinet to consider invoking that provision.
With information from BBC
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