Who would replace Joe Biden and what would the process look like?

The President of the United States, Joe Biden, increasingly cornered by Democratic Party leaders to abandon his re-election campaign, he has said he intends to see it through to the end. But what options do Democrats have if Biden buckles under the pressure?

While two past U.S. presidents (Harry Truman in 1952 and Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968, both Democrats) have decided not to run for re-election in March of the year the vote was held, Biden’s withdrawal will be the first time anyone has done so so late in the electoral process.

No time To open a new primary process, the new candidate for the White House must be chosen during the election Democratic National Convention which will take place in Chicago from August 19 to 22.

Despite all these obstacles, the Democratic National Committee, which is responsible for organizing the convention, has rules in place to replace Biden.

1.- Joe Biden must formally communicate his decision to withdraw to the Democratic National Committee.

2.- The Democratic National Committee would hold an emergency meeting in which its Rules and Regulations Committee would determine the process for making the replacement. From here, the process gets complicated, depending on Biden’s stance.

3.- If Biden decides to withdraw after being nominated at the Democratic Convention in August, the Democratic National Committee could decide to hold a special convention to nominate a new candidate for president, or appoint the person directly after consulting with Democratic leaders.

4.- If Biden withdraws before the August convention, the replacement will be decided there. Biden would have a great deal of leverage to determine his replacement, since he currently controls 3,908 of the 3,939 delegates. Each state’s laws determine how these delegates are to be chosen, and fourteen of them initially force a vote for the candidate who won the state’s primary.

Biden could also give his delegates the freedom to vote freely on potential candidates who present themselves. The winner would be the candidate who received the support of at least 1,976 delegates.

The other possibility, unlikely if not nearly impossible, is that Biden decides to maintain his candidacy, against the wishes of the Democratic National Committee. In this case, which would be a real Democratic civil war, 95% of the Democratic Convention delegates would be forced to vote for Biden.

In this case, however, the Democratic National Committee could use the “nuclear option”: rewrite the convention rules to allow delegates to vote for a different candidate.

Who will be the candidate?

At this point in the party, few are considering any name other than Vice President Kamala Harris to try to win the November election against Donald Trump.

The former California senator and former attorney general may be the person most prepared to take charge of a campaign that is currently going off the rails.

Harris is well-known, the polls favor her more than Biden, though also behind Trump, and she is the only one who can use the 91 million (as of May 31) that the now president’s campaign has in the bank.

Moreover, as the current vice president, she is also the only one who can quickly gain broad support within the party to avoid a divisive image at the convention in Chicago.

If not Harris, then who?

The Democratic Party currently has a group of governors who were looking ahead to the 2028 White House election in an attempt to make the jump, but who may see their moment unfold as a result of Biden’s eventual withdrawal.

These include Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. California Governor Gavin Newsom also sounded like a future presidential candidate. Within Biden’s cabinet, his Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg tried his luck during the 2020 primaries and continues with presidential ambitions.