Biden drops out of 2024 presidential race. Whats next for Democrats?

The words “unprecedented” and “historic” have been used so often to describe the state of American politics in recent years that they have become a devalued currency — until Sunday that is, when President Biden sent a lightning bolt through the country with his decision to stand down from the 2024 campaign.

This milestone will stand indelibly in the annals of politics, a sitting president pressured by fellow leaders of his party to give up his candidacy. The script for 2024 continues to be rewritten at warp speed, an election year of twists and turns that seem never ending. This has left the electorate fearful and reeling, from Donald Trump becoming the first former president convicted of a felony to the assassination attempt against him and now, just eight days later, the decision by Biden to withdraw. What next?

Biden’s shock announcement marks the end of a remarkable personal story, a nearly 52-year career in national politics that saw him rise from being elected to the Senate at age 29, through multiple family tragedies, through two failed campaigns for the White House, eventually to the vice presidency and ultimately to the prize he had set his sights on as a young man with his victory over Trump in 2020. Now almost in an instant, it is over. He will go out with praise and thanks from his fellow Democrats, the same ones who forced this moment upon him, but he has denied himself a chance at winning a second term.

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Biden’s statement, coupled with his endorsement of Vice President Harris to lead the party into the fall election, sets the Democrats on an uncertain course, even if it is one that many of them were almost demanding. The party has rules to guide them to making Harris — or perhaps someone else — the nominee. But there are no rules for a candidate to go from playing the secondary role, loyally promoting and defending Biden, to suddenly being the leader, making a case for herself. Harris has to have been thinking about this, but this pivot will test her in ways nothing else in her life has tested her.

No person or party is ever fully prepared for a moment like this. What might have looked simple and sensible in the abstract — swapping out Biden for someone new — now becomes a series of concrete challenges, for Harris, for what has been the Biden-Harris campaign staff, for party leaders who quietly and not so quietly called on Biden to quit the race, and, not least, for rank-and-file Democrats who will be called upon to marshal their efforts on behalf of the ticket with more strength and enthusiasm than they have shown for Biden.

Democrats had pressed Biden to step aside ever since his faltering performance in the June 27 debate in Atlanta. They feared he could not defeat Trump and that his weakened candidacy could lead to Republicans controlling the House and Senate as well. After last week’s Republican convention in Milwaukee, where a party remade in Trump’s image fully united behind its nominee, those worries only increased, as did the pressure on the president.

So, Biden yielded and took the decision so many wanted, painful as that must have been for someone as proud, stubborn and resilient as he has been. Now the big questions are whether Harris, whose 2020 campaign for the White House collapsed before the starting line in Iowa, can fully consolidate Democrats behind her and, more critically, whether she will prove to be a more compelling leader and effective candidate than Biden against Trump.

On this, there is no guarantee, only the nervous aspirations of a party that seems to have gotten its wish and now must live with the consequences. Preliminary polling on Harris vs. Trump suggests she runs slightly better than Biden did, but she has not been through the rigors of a campaign in which she is the principal actor or faced the kinds of criticism that will be heaped on her by Trump’s operation, all in a compressed time frame never seen in the modern era.

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There are other questions for Harris, too. For obvious reasons, she has not yet been able to suggest any deviation from Biden. On policies and politics, she has had to be in lockstep throughout. What might be different about a Harris presidency, other than that she would be the first woman elected, which is no small thing to consider? Will she come forward with a fresh vision, or will her calling card simply be that she is younger and more vigorous than the man who selected her as his running mate four years ago?

The Democratic National Convention, which begins Aug. 19 in Chicago, will be her moment to define herself as standing on her own. But much is still to be determined before delegates get there. Will there be any challengers to her for the nomination? Many prominent Democrats, led by Biden, are doing as much as they can to anoint her, but it takes only 300 signatures from the roughly 3,900 delegates for others to offer themselves as potential nominees. Conversations will be ongoing this week in some state capitals about whether to challenge Harris.

The dilemma for the Democrats now is how they elevate Harris in a process that is seen as open and fair, rather than a railroading, but does not devolve into chaos and division. Already Republicans are accusing Democrats of undemocratically forcing Biden to the sidelines — ignoring the will of the voters in the primaries who overwhelmingly said they wanted Biden as the nominee, though no one of stature stood up to oppose him. Meanwhile, Trump slammed Biden in the wake of the announcement.

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The convention’s rules committee will meet again soon to decide whether to proceed with a virtual roll call in early August, which some Democratic National Committee officials believe is necessary to assure that the nominee qualifies for all state ballots. If that virtual roll call is held Harris could be the nominee weeks before the Chicago convention.

Harris also will have to select a running mate, a process that normally takes months of careful vetting, the winnowing of a long list to a short list, and then the agonies for the nominee to pick from a few finalists the person they want as their closest confidant. Harris must do that in a matter of weeks, along with everything else involved in accepting the baton from Biden and moving the campaign against Trump forward. Some people she will be considering, mainly Democratic governors, could be among those who could challenge her for the nomination, if they dare take the risk.

Biden’s statement carried echoes of the surprise Sunday night announcement by President Lyndon B. Johnson in March 1968 in which he said he would not seek or accept the Democratic nomination for another term. Both Johnson and Biden said they did so to concentrate their full energies on the duties and responsibilities of being president for the duration of their term.

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Johnson’s decision came in the middle of the Vietnam War, with student protests gaining power and Johnson’s position politically weakened. Biden’s came in a year in which the already deep divisions in America’s politics have intensified. The year of 1968 was marked by violence, including the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. This year, just a week ago, was marked by an assassination attempt against Trump, who was injured but survived.

When Democrats met in Chicago in August 1968 to pick Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey as their nominee, the convention was spoiled by violence and discord. No one expects quite that to happen next month when Democrats convene ironically again in Chicago, but Biden’s withdrawal will make for a convention unlike any other in the modern era and for a fall campaign that no one a year ago, even a few months ago, had any expectation of coming to pass.

Summer Sundays are supposed to be for quiet time, for outdoor activity and family gatherings, for relaxation and time away from the news. Not this Sunday. On this Sunday, politics intruded into the life of the country, dealing another shock to the system and rerouting the path of the presidential campaign. No matter how this campaign ends, this day will be remembered as both unprecedented and historic.

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