NEW DELHI: Democratic Party members of the US Senate and House are aware that July is probably the final month to avoid serious electoral damage because of the Biden candidacy.
Information received from US Congressional districts across the country indicate that as early as the close of July, key members of the Democratic Party in both US Senate as well as the House of Representatives may be planning to meet President Joe Biden privately and say that their patience has run out. Rather than face an embarrassing revolt against his candidacy as the Democratic nominee for the US Presidential polls, they want Biden to graciously bow out of the race soon in favour of another nominee before they are forced to revolt. The greatest level of support within the party as successor to Biden is for Vice-President Kamala Harris.
In choosing her to be his successor in the Presidential race, President Biden would avoid a messy contest for the nomination. Such a contest could prove disastrous and divisive for a Democratic Party already sharply divided over the Biden candidacy. In contrast to her outstanding performance as US Senator for California from 2017 until 2021, when Kamala Devi Harris assumed office as the Vice-President of the US, she withdrew into the shadow of the White House. Among the qualifications enumerated by Presidential nominees when they nominate an individual as their running mate is their presumed belief that the choice would be an able President, were the incumbent to pass on or be incapacitated. Once elected as President, incumbents usually get ignored by the White House when policy is being made. As had happened often with Vice-President Biden, including when he opposed the approval given by President Obama in 2011 for a team of US military commandos to “take out Bin Laden”, a mission successfully carried out on May 1, 2011.
Vice-President John Nance Garner once described his job as “not worth a pitcher of warm spit” during the wartime Presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who replaced Garner with Harry Truman before the 1944 elections. Soon after, Roosevelt passed, and Truman became the lawful occupant of the White House. Had Garner been more discreet, Roosevelt would have retained him rather than an individual whose views were wholly different from the President’s in several matters. Roosevelt was an All-American in his thinking, while Truman was a committed Europeanist. President Abraham Lincoln made the same error in choosing Andrew Johnson as his VP, who was opposed to giving equality of treatment to Black Americans. Lincoln’s assassination soon after his new term began saw the US slide back into segregation and racial injustice, a trend abetted by the new President. It took another President, Lyndon Baines Johnson, to enact the Civil Rights Act in 1964, a full century after the Civil War.
The Act wrested back from race supremacists in the US rights that Black Americans had been promised by the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863
As for Vice-President Kamala Harris, the White House has mostly kept the Vice-President from public prominence, confining her to impossible and unpopular tasks such as devising a border policy for the Mexican border that would pass muster with both the radical wing of the Democratic Party, which favours such migration, as well as US voters, many of whom would like a stop to illegal immigration from the southern border. At the same time, some loyalists of the White House have been giving unflattering portraits of Harris off the record in order to show that there is no alternative to Biden as the Democratic standard bearer.
Were President Biden to step aside from the Presidential contest due in November, in favour of VP Harris, she would immediately get access to nearly $430 million that has been raised by the Biden campaign so far. Over the past ten days, fundraising for Biden has slowed to a trickle, a slide which began soon after his debate with Donald Trump, who is on course to be chosen the Republican nominee during the mid-July Republican National Convention.
Melania Trump is expected, after a long pause, to be by his side during the event. In almost every poll after the debate, Kamala Harris leads Donald Trump while Biden trails the candidate he defeated in 2020. Senator J.D. Vance is a likely Vice-Presidential pick on the Republican side, and a Trump-Vance ticket would so balance the Republican ticket as to make them a formidable pair of opponents even for a new Democratic Party nominee.
California Governor Gavin Newsom and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer have been featured as alternatives to Biden, should the President accept the inevitable and quit the race. Both are clear that if VP Harris is the substitute candidate, they will not contest against her. Doing so would annoy several constituencies that are critical to the overall Democratic Party vote. A political strategist who has had success in the past in ensuring that politicians picked by him as winners do emerge as such, and he claims that the time has come for the first-ever All Women candidates for the Presidency and the Vice-Presidency. He argues that a Kamala Harris-Gretchen Whitmer ticket would be “impossible for Trump to beat”. Kamala Harris is the first person of colour to be elected to office as the Vice-President of the US in 2020. Should she defeat Trump in November, she would be the first woman of colour, indeed the first woman, to ever make it to the White House. All that is standing in her way as the Democratic Presidential nominee is President Biden.
Democratic Party members of the US Senate and House are aware that July is probably the final month to avoid serious electoral damage because of the Biden candidacy. Should the inevitable happen and Biden drop out later, the new nominee would have less than three months to campaign. Such a delay would give an advantage, including to a Republican Trump-Vance ticket
Republicans are hoping that Biden will continue to remain the nominee at least until the close of August, for they see him as the easiest candidate for Donald Trump to defeat in November. Which is why Democrats are looking towards President Biden to do what is right for the party and “quit gracefully within days before being pushed out”. Hence the reason why they are looking towards the option of publicly pushing Biden to quit should August begin without an announcement from the US President that he is stepping down. Should he do so, President Biden would show the same grace shown by former Speaker Nancy Pelosi in November 2022, when she said that she would no longer be standing for the House Speakership after being in that position for 20 years (2011-2017 and 2019-2023).
She is now Speaker Emerita, and has gained in stature since her decision not to contest for the Speakership once again. Biden is known for his obstinacy, which is why Trump is banking on his staying on until all of August at least, until finally getting pushed out by Democratic grandees. More and more Democrats are looking towards just a few days ahead for Biden to announce that he is stepping down in favour of Vice-President Kamala Harris. Visibly, the US President is going downhill, hardly a quality voters may find acceptable in an individual who would assume in 2025 the most powerful job in the world until 2029.