Biden Steps Down, Now Who Will Replace Him? One Detail Shows That Kamala Harris Has an Uphill Battle

Joe Biden might have survived a poor showing in the debate with Donald Trump and the problems related to his agebut not to the Democratic Party’s increasingly pressing campaign to have him withdraw from the race for a second term as president of the United States. And so announced his retirement.

At that point, the plan announced in all the backstage reports was triggered: the same people who treated Biden as if he were no longer capable of understanding and willing, began to celebrate him: a great president capable of putting the interest of the nation before his own. Nancy Pelosi84, long-time Democratic speaker of the House, for example, immediately tweeted that “Biden is an American patriot.” Bill and Hillary Clinton they applaud old Joe and encourage Kamala Harris, the vice president who at this point becomes at least informally the candidate for the White House. So it will be Harris against Trump. But the details count in this story that has always had a procedural dimension.

“Biden launches Kamala Harris”, the headline immediately reads New York Times. In the very concise letter with which Biden announces his withdrawal from the race, there is not exactly an endorsementwhich is instead reserved for a tweet from the president, where he speaks of “full support” for Kamala. In the letter there is only a thank you to Harris as vice president. Because in the Democratic Party they know that there is a problem in managing the transition: Biden formally won the primaries, so there are delegates associated with Biden’s name who should have confirmed his nomination as candidate at the Democratic convention in Chicago. Biden can suggest that they vote for Harris, but he can’t force it. The fear of an “open” convention, that is, with multiple candidates competing for the vote not of the electors but of the delegates indicated by the primaries in recent months, has been at the center of a thousand political analyses in recent weeks.

With his move, explicitly renouncing the nomination and endorsing Kamala Harris, Biden should have created the political context to prevent this scenario of maximum uncertainty. The united reaction of the Democratic world also goes in that direction, but for once the passage of the Convention will not be merely formal. Biden could have made Kamala Harris’s path even easier if he had resigned as president: at that point Harris would have taken office as president and would have truly led the challenge as Biden’s heir and as president in office. The first woman, and a dark-skinned one at that, in the Oval Office. If Biden’s health conditions are inadequate for an election campaign and a second term, it is legitimate to ask whether they are adequate to continue governing the United States for another six months, until a new administration takes office in January. And never like in this vote will the management of the electoral process and the transfer of power be as crucial, whether Donald Trump wins or loses: the precedent of the attempted coup d’état of January 6, 2021 is certainly not forgotten. Biden, however, did not resign; in fact, in his resignation letter he makes no mention of his health problems. He says he will explain his reasons better this week, but explains that giving up his candidacy will allow him “to focus on fulfilling my duties as president for the remainder of my term.” No one – at least in the Democratic camp – will raise any more objections about Biden’s health until he leaves the White House with all the honors, possibly handing over to Kamala Harris.

There are at least two problems now. The first is that In the polls so far, Kamala Harris did not seem to have much better chances than Biden of beating Donald Trump in November: critics say – or said – that Harris did not work as vice-president, she did not impose herself on any issue, she was crushed in the shadows; her supporters think that she has not yet had the opportunity to build her character, and that she has learned from her mistakes in the 2019-2020 presidential campaign when she had left the primaries quite early, only to be recovered by Biden. The second problem is that the entire Democrat campaign has been built so far on the Biden-Trump challenge, as the second round of 2020 and with American democracy as its theme. Biden saved her once, he had to save her again. The attack on Trump on July 13 and Biden’s exit from the scene force the Democrats to make a drastic decision: insist on that line, but with a different face for the campaign, or change course? Kamala Harris can shift the discussion to some issues that are troubling Trump, like abortionso as to at least shift some of the female vote, and then there’s the issue of a black woman versus two white men. There’s no guarantee that changing everything a few months before the election will get any results, but the Democrats have put themselves in this situation, first by pretending not to see Biden’s problems and then by bullying him into a last-minute surrender, and now they have to deal with a problem that they — not Trump — created.