Harris-Trump race pits ex-prosecutor vs. recently convicted felon
Democrats across the party announced their support for Vice President Kamala Harris after President Biden shook up the 2024 campaign by ending his bid.
Conviction looks imminent
Vice President Kamala Harris opens the first full day of her campaign for president on Monday as she seeks to consolidate support within the Democratic Party to secure the nomination to take on former President Donald J. Trump in the fall.
A day after President Biden announced that he would drop out of the race and endorsed her, Ms. Harris faces the daunting task of taking over his campaign structure, fending off opposition to her rise to the top of the ticket and defining herself for the American public before Republicans do.
She starts off with a tremendous burst of excitement from Democrats willing to put aside past doubts about her, out of an anxious desire to end the divisions that have torn the party apart in the three weeks since Mr. Biden’s halting debate performance persuaded many that he should not remain in the race.
Governors, lawmakers, state party chairs, union leaders and incoming convention delegates rushed to offer Ms. Harris their support late into Sunday night, including Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, once seen as a possible candidate if Mr. Biden were not in the race. More endorsements came on Monday, including from Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, often talked about as a possible running mate for Ms. Harris, and from Representatives Katherine Clark and Pete Aguilar, two members of the Democratic leadership in the House. An ally of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan said she would not run, and no other candidate jumped in.
Donald Trump has spent months trying to fend off Democrats’ attacks over Jan. 6 and his lies about election fraud by labeling Biden as a threat to democracy, mostly by falsely claiming the president was leading the criminal investigations that produced Trump’s four indictments. Now, he’s pivoted to arguing that the Democratic Party is anti-democracy, saying on Truth Social this morning that the party “stole the race from Biden after he won it in the primaries.” President Biden decided to abandon his re-election campaign on Sunday after weeks of pressure from his party.
Kamala Harris spent more than 10 hours on the phone yesterday at the vice presidential residence building support for her bid for the Democratic nomination, according to a person familiar with her schedule. She called more than 100 party leaders, members of Congress, governors and activists including labor leaders and civil rights advocates, the person said.
Vice President Kamala Harris raised $49.6 million in the hours after President Biden endorsed her yesterday afternoon, according to her campaign. That’s an enormous sum, approaching the nearly $53 million that Donald Trump raised in the 24 hours following his criminal conviction. Biden’s fundraising had fallen off a cliff this month as major donors stopped giving following his poor debate performance.
In the hours and days to come, many political observers will say that President Biden was backed into a corner and had no choice but to end his re-election campaign. His limitations had been laid painfully bare. He’d lost the confidence of the Democratic Party. And he was staggering toward an increasingly ugly revolt within it or a potentially harrowing defeat by Donald Trump. Bowing out wasn’t an act of grace. It was a saving of face.
All correct. But that’s not the whole truth. Not the full story. It misses the bigness of what Biden just did — its historical rarity, its emotional agony, its fundamental humility.
Biden’s withdrawal is a remarkable reckoning and a historical anomaly. It runs counter to human nature, or at least to the nature of humans who have known the exhilaration of being on top. Rulers cling to their gilded stations. When they’re threatened, they cling tighter. History is lousy with guests who wouldn’t leave, not once they’d experienced the fluffiness of the pillows and the fawning of the help.
How many senators, Mitch McConnell among them, have minimized their physical declines and their inability to work as forcefully as they once did? How many Supreme Court justices? How many presidents, for that matter? At various points, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan — to name just three — faced very real questions about their fitness. They or the people around them made excuses, made do and muddled through.
Those are imperfect analogies. Biden isn’t saying — nor is the principal complaint against him — that he struggles to do the job of president in real time. He’s accepting that four more years, or at least voters’ willingness to grant him that, are a wager too risky, an ambition too grand. And those other presidents could more easily veil their vulnerabilities and mask their flaws; they didn’t inhabit a media environment as intrusive as today’s.
“My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as president for the remainder of my term,” he said in a social media post on Sunday afternoon. In a separate post, he wrote: “It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your president. And while it has been my intention to seek re-election, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and focus entirely on fulfilling my duties as president for the remainder of my term.”
None of Biden’s predecessors in the White House provide a point of reference that tidily illuminates or presages current circumstances. Only a minority of American presidents didn’t seek another term for which they were eligible.
Someone who’d waited so long to realize a destiny that admirers began speaking of and he began dreaming of more than five decades earlier. Someone who’d known enough heartbreaking loss to thrash against the suggestion that he part with something so dear to him and so affirming. Someone diminished not by errors within his control but by biological dynamics beyond it. Someone being asked to acknowledge frailty in a milieu and at an altitude where that infrequently happens. Someone prodded to humble himself in an unhumble era.
He will not be the guy leading the Democratic ticket in November, and that’s cause for renewed optimism in a party that has many talented comers and the opportunity, as it chooses among them, to grab voters’ attention, demonstrate that it isn’t hostage to any one leader and emphasize its forward-looking gaze. Biden is the guy allowing that to happen, by ceding the stage in a manner as exceptional as it is imperative.
Republicans freak out;
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) criticized Biden’s decision to step down, claiming the Democrats might “run into legal impediments” if Biden isn’t at the top of the ticket. On ABC, he said: “It would be wrong, and I think unlawful, in accordance to some of these states’ rules, for a handful of people to go in a back room and switch it out because they don’t like the candidate any longer. That’s not how this is supposed to work.”
HuffPost pointed out that Johnson failed to cite a legal doctrine to back this up.
And so far, there’s not much of a legal case to be made by Republicans, as Biden had not been officially selected as the Democratic Party’s 2024 presidential nominee.
There doesn’t seem to be anything in the U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 1, concerning presidential elections, that is violated by Biden stepping aside. There’s nothing in the 12th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would make this illegal, either.
