By Megan Schumann, Rutgers Office of Communications

The Democratic Party is quickly lining up to support Kamala Harris after the bombshell news this weekend that President Biden will not seek re-election.

President Biden has endorsed her for the top of the ticket, along with many other prominent party leaders, and she has quickly amassed enough delegates to earn the party endorsement.

But what are the next steps to place her at the top of the ticket? Can Republicans throw a wrench into the Democrats' plans?

David Greenberg, a professor of journalism and media studies and of history and an expert on American political and cultural history, including the presidency, answers some pressing questions that have come out of this landmark moment.

Since Biden is no longer running, can you explain the mechanics of how the convention works? What will happen to the delegates he accumulated during the primary and how will the Democrats go about picking their nominee at the convention?

The delegates are pledged to Biden, but he will “release” them, enabling them to vote as they choose. Almost all will vote for Harris because Biden has endorsed her and because everyone is rallying around her. There’s a small chance that one or more other candidates may jump in the race, but that seems very unlikely at this point.

The Republicans are crying foul right now, but do they have any legal grounds to stop the Democratic nominee from getting on the ballot in all 50 states? 

I don’t think so. A party is allowed to nominate whoever it wishes. Biden had won the primaries, but he hadn’t yet been nominated. That happens at the convention. So, there’s no law that was violated.

This is the first time since 1968 that we’ve seen a sitting president drop out of a race. That year, which was marred by the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy and shaped by the conflict over the Vietnam war, was considered the most volatile presidential election in history. Richard Nixon won over a divided Democratic party. What parallels and lessons can we draw from that year? Is history working against the Democrats this year?

No, we can’t draw any such neat lessons. Yes, it’s true at a very basic level that if a party’s candidate feels pressured to drop out, whether in March (Lyndon Johnson in 1968) or July (Biden this week), that indicates some weakness in the party. But all indications suggest that Biden was, even in his diminished state, still competitive with Trump, and Harris will likely be competitive, too. The danger of choosing Harris, as opposed to, say, a governor, is that she will be tied to Biden’s policies, which have not been extremely popular. So, apart from age and mental acuity, she will face many of the exact same obstacles and criticisms that Biden faced.

Do you think a shortened timeline for the race benefits or hurts a new nominee? 

It’s hard to say. Traditionally, the key moments of the campaign occur in the fall. That’s when many swing voters – those who have no strong partisan loyalties and take time to make up their minds – will decide. 

Is there anything else you can share to help put this historic moment in context?

In an ordinary year, Biden would not have stepped aside. Although we know from the debate that he’s not as quick and strong as he used to be, he has been a good president and can do the job and he might have been able to win, despite being down in the polls. But Democrats consider a second Trump term to be intolerable and when they saw in the debate that Biden’s condition was worse than they had supposed or known, millions of them decided on the spot that he should surrender the nomination lest he lose to Trump. If he’d been running against 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney, the stakes would not have seemed so high.

Learn more about the Journalism and Media Studies major on the Rutgers School of Communication and Information website. 

Photo: President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris at the White House on Monday, October 30, 2023. Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz.

This article was originally published in Rutgers Today on July 23, 2024.