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      Sotomayor says immunity ruling makes a president ‘king above the law’

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      In a stark dissent from the conservative-majority US supreme court’s opinion granting Donald Trump some immunity from criminal prosecution, the liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor said the decision was a “mockery” that makes a president a “king above the law”.The court ruled Monday that Trump cannot be prosecuted for “official acts” he took while president, setting up tests for which of the federal criminal charges over his attempt to subvert the 2020 election are considered official and sending the case back to a lower court to decide.“Today’s decision to grant former Presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the Presidency,” Sotomayor wrote in dissent. “It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law.”Sotomayor, writing in a scathing tone, said the court would effectively allow presidents to commit clear crimes without punishment, an expansion of presidential powers that puts democracy at risk. She and fellow liberal justice Ketanji Brown Jackson lay out hypothetical ways the court’s ruling could create crises in the US.“The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution,” Sotomayor wrote.“Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.“Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the majority’s message today.“Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and I pray they never do, the damage has been done. The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”Until now, presidents have operated under the assumption that their actions were not immune from criminal prosecution if they used their office, and the trappings of their office, to commit crimes, she writes. But going forward, presidents won’t be so concerned.“With fear for our democracy, I dissent,” she concluded.Jackson wrote a separate dissent, though noted that she “agree[s] with every word of her powerful dissent,” and wanted to lay out the “theoretical nuts and bolts of what, exactly, the majority has done today to alter the paradigm of accountability for Presidents of the United States”.The ruling changes the balance of power among the three branches of government and gets rid of the ability to deter presidents from abusing their power, “to the detriment of us all”, Jackson wrote. The “practical consequences” of the majority decision “are a five-alarm fire that threatens to consume democratic self-governance and the normal operations of our Government”.In a footnote in her dissent, Jackson games out the “oddity” of deciding whether a president is immune from prosecution based on the character of a president’s powers.“While the President may have the authority to decide to remove the Attorney General, for example, the question here is whether the President has the option to remove the Attorney General by, say, poisoning him to death,” Jackson wrote. “Put another way, the issue here is not whether the President has exclusive removal power, but whether a generally applicable criminal law prohibiting murder can restrict how the President exercises that authority.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhile the majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, claims it hems in presidential immunity in some ways, Sotomayor takes that idea to task. The majority opinion is an “embrace of the most far-reaching view of Presidential immunity on offer”. No one has claimed that purely private acts would be immune from prosecution, she writes, making their exclusion an “unremarkable proposition”.The court effectively expanded what is considered an official act in a way that will capture events beyond a presidential’s core duties and ensnare unofficial acts, she claims. And a prohibition on bringing up these official acts during a prosecution of unofficial acts “deprives these prosecutions of any teeth”.She lays out an example: “For instance, the majority struggles with classifying whether a President’s speech is in his capacity as President (official act) or as a candidate (unofficial act). Imagine a President states in an official speech that he intends to stop a political rival from passing legislation that he opposes, no matter what it takes to do so (official act). He then hires a private hitman to murder that political rival (unofficial act). Under the majority’s rule, the murder indictment could include no allegation of the President’s public admission of premeditated intent to support the mens rea of murder. That is a strange result, to say the least.”The majority wrote that immunity is necessary because it allows the nation’s top elected official to execute his duties “fearlessly and fairly” and take “bold and unhesitating action” without the threat of looming prosecution. But, Sotomayor hits back, it’s more dangerous for a president to feel empowered to break the law.“I am deeply troubled by the idea, inherent in the majority’s opinion, that our Nation loses something valuable when the President is forced to operate within the confines of federal criminal law.”The testy dissent was replete with digs at the conservative-dominated court, which, aided by justices Trump appointed when he was in office, now counts just three liberal justices and has moved the country further to the right in recent years as a result.Sotomayor directs readers to “feel free to skip over those pages of the majority’s opinion” about one area in the conservatives’ arguments. She said the majority “invents an atextual, ahistorical, and unjustifiable immunity that puts the President above the law”. The conservatives relied on “little more than its own misguided wisdom”, she wrote. She added that “it seems history matters to this Court only when it is convenient.”“In sum, the majority today endorses an expansive vision of Presidential immunity that was never recognized by the Founders, any sitting President, the Executive Branch, or even President Trump’s lawyers, until now. Settled understandings of the Constitution are of little use to the majority in this case, and so it ignores them,” she wrote. More

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      Republicans hail Trump immunity ruling as Democrats warn ‘we will not have a democracy’

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      While Republicans applauded the supreme court’s decision to grant Donald Trump immunity for official acts undertaken as president, Democratic leaders expressed outrage over a ruling that legal experts warn could undermine the foundations of US democracy.The court’s six conservative justices ruled that presidents have “absolute immunity” for official acts but no immunity from unofficial acts. The distinction could hamper the federal case against Trump over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, and makes it even less likely that the case will go to trial before election day in November.Trump celebrated the ruling as a “big win for our constitution and democracy” – a view echoed by the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson.“Today’s ruling by the court is a victory for former President Trump and all future presidents, and another defeat for President Biden’s weaponized Department of Justice and Jack Smith,” Johnson said.“As President Trump has repeatedly said, the American people, not President Biden’s bureaucrats, will decide the November 5 election.”Jim Jordan, the Republican chair of the House judiciary committee, weighed in as well. “Hyper-partisan prosecutors like Jack Smith cannot weaponize the rule of law to go after the administration’s chief political rival, and we hope that the left will stop its attacks on President Trump and uphold democratic norms,” Jordan said.Democrats, meanwhile, condemned the decision as a disgrace, describing it as an attack on the separation of powers and a black mark on the supreme court’s reputation.“This is a sad day for America and a sad day for our democracy,” said Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader.“This disgraceful decision by the Maga supreme court – which is comprised of three justices appointed by Mr Trump himself – enables the former president to weaken our democracy by breaking the law. This decision undermines the credibility of the supreme court, and suggests that political influence trumps all in our courts today.”Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, said the ruling “sets a dangerous precedent for the future of our nation”, adding: “The Framers of the constitution envisioned a democracy governed by the rule of law and the consent of the American people. They did not intend for our nation to be ruled by a king or monarch who could act with absolute impunity.”Legal experts voiced similar concerns about the ruling’s implications, highlighting liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor’s warning that the decision could enable a future president to claim immunity for blatantly illegal acts such as ordering the assassination of a political rival or organizing a military coup to stay in power.“Scotus’s immunity decision will in time rank as among the court’s worst decisions in its many year history,” Claire Finkelstein, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said. “Any US president can now violate the law to remain in power as long as he cloaks it in the trappings of his office.”Joyce Alene, a law professor at the University of Alabama, concluded: “It’s up to American voters. We held Trump accountable at the polls in 2020 [and] must do it again in 2024. Because the supreme court won’t.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJoe Biden’s campaign team agreed that the ruling only heightened the stakes of the presidential race, and they urged voters to reject Trump in November to avoid a repeat of the violence seen on 6 January 2021.On a Biden campaign press call, the congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, a Texas Democrat, said the ruling underscored how Trump’s re-election would endanger Americans’ fundamental freedoms.“We’re talking about reproductive freedom, freedom to access the ballot box, freedom to love who you want, freedom of press, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom to live the life you want to live,” Crockett said. “We can’t underestimate Donald Trump’s threat or his dark vision for our future.”Harry Dunn, a former US Capitol police officer who working during the January 6 insurrection, told reporters that the ruling amplified Trump’s status as “the single greatest threat to our democracy”.“We don’t need nine supreme court justices to tell me that Donald Trump was responsible for January 6,” Dunn said. “I was there. Those people that attacked us, they attacked us in his name on his orders.”Congressman Dan Goldman, a Democrat from New York who previously served as lead majority counsel in Trump’s first impeachment inquiry, went even further by framing Trump’s re-election as “far and away the biggest threat since the civil war”.Goldman said: “If Joe Biden is not elected in November, we will not have a democracy that we have known for 250 years.” More

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      Biden’s family reportedly tell him to stay in presidential race as blame shifts to advisers

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      Joe Biden’s family have urged him stay in the race after a disastrous debate performance last week, according to reports in the US media, as senior democrats and donors have expressed exasperation at how his staff prepared him for the event.The president gathered with his family at Camp David on Sunday, where discussions were reported to include questions over his political future. It came after days of mounting pressure on Biden, after a debate in which his halting performance highlighted his vulnerabilities and invited calls from pundits, media and voters for him to step aside.During the meeting at Camp David – which included the president’s wife, children and grandchildren – Biden’s family told him he could still show Americans that he is capable of serving another four years, according to the New York Times.While his family was reportedly aware of how poorly he performed, they also continue to think he’s the best person to beat Donald Trump.The Associated Press reported that the strongest voices imploring Biden to resist pressure to drop out were his wife, Jill, and his son Hunter, who last month became the first child of a sitting president to be convicted of a felony after a jury found him guilty of lying about illegal drug use when he bought a handgun in 2018.The Camp David trip had been previously scheduled, in order to accommodate a photoshoot with Annie Leibovitz for the upcoming Democratic National Convention.The president’s relatives were also said to be critical of the way his closest advisers had prepared him for the debate.During the debate, a hoarse-sounding Biden delivered a shaky, halting performance in which he stumbled over his words on several occasions and at times was unable to finish sentences. His opponent, Donald Trump, made a series of falsehoods, including claims that he actually won the 2020 election, which Biden failed to refute.On Sunday, a narrative blaming the rigorous debate prep calendar which saw Biden sequestered at Camp David for six days, began to build.View image in fullscreen“It is my belief that he was over-coached, over-practiced,” said John Morgan, a Florida-based attorney and major Biden fundraiser.Critics of Biden’s performance also said that the preparation should have focused on the bigger vision he needs to sell to the country.“My only request was make sure he’s rested before the debate, but he was exhausted. He was unwell,” one person who said they appealed to Biden’s top aides in the days before, told the Reuters news agency. “What a bad decision to send him out looking sick and exhausted.”The drumbeat of calls for Biden to step have grown louder since a post-debate CBS poll showed a 10-point jump in the number of Democrats who believe Biden should not be running for president, to 46% from 36% in February.Biden’s approval rating has been weakening since he took office and concerns about his age and handling of crises both at home and abroad after Thursday are under more scrutiny than ever.On Sunday, prominent Democrats blanketed the talkshows, conceding that the president’s performance had been subpar, but continued to throw their support behind him.House of Representatives Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, acknowledged that Biden had suffered a setback, but said this was “nothing more than a setup for a comeback.”Senator Raphael Warnock, a Georgia democrat and Baptist minister, said there had been “more than a few Sundays when I wish I had preached a better sermon,” relating the experience to Biden’s debate performance.“But after the sermon was over it was my job to embody the message, to show up for the people that I serve. And that’s what Joe Biden has been doing his entire life,” Warnock said.Not all Democrats appeared to be in agreement however. Asked on Sunday whether the party was discussing a new 2024 candidate, Maryland congressman Jamie Raskin told MSNBC: “There are very honest and serious and rigorous conversations taking place at every level of our party, because it is a political party and we have differences in point of view.”“Whether he’s the candidate or someone else is the candidate, he’s going to be the keynote speaker at our convention. He will be the figure that we rally around to move forward,” Raskin said.Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report More

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      The Guardian view on Joe Biden: Democrats must seize the wheel, not drift to disaster | Editorial

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      The Democrats have no good options. The question now is which is the least dangerous of the bad ones. Democratic voters did not want Joe Biden to run again. Almost 70% judged him too old to serve another term as president when polled last year. Privately, many senior Democrats and donors shared their qualms. But with Mr Biden determined to stand, the consensus was to rally round. Now, after last Thursday’s catastrophic debate, the party is panicking. Only four months from the election, there is frenzied discussion of potential replacements.That would almost certainly require Mr Biden’s agreement. His wife, Jill, seen as key to his decision, seems to be urging him on. He is said to believe that only he is capable of beating Mr Trump again. Few agree. The lack of a formal mechanism to remove him does not preclude the effects of political gravity. Slumping polls, drying up funds and private, or even public, demands for his departure from senior Democratic figures could yet change his mind. A growing chorus of previously supportive media figures is urging him to quit.Mr Biden has achieved far more than even many sympathisers expected, despite merited internal criticism over his handling of Israel’s war in Gaza, and immigration. It is true that he has not received sufficient credit. It is also true that his debate performance was far worse than even pessimists had anticipated. It went beyond fumbling words, looking frail and sounding feeble. On abortion rights, his answer was incomprehensible. No confident rally appearances will erase this disaster.Though Mr Trump’s own rally addresses have been increasingly rambling, incoherent and vengeful, he was – by his standards – disciplined in delivery on Thursday. But what he delivered was a stream of lies. His first term, culminating in his attempt to overturn the will of the people in the 2020 election and his supporters’ storming of the Capitol, was profoundly damaging to the US. Far from any hint of repentance, his own words show that a second term would be far more destructive, and this time he has a cohesive and determined team to effect his plans. His rhetoric has become increasingly fascistic. The world is demonstrably less safe than before his tenure: look to North Korea, Iran, or any one of its emboldened autocrats from Vladimir Putin onwards. He would pull out of the Paris climate accord again. None of this lowers the bar for the Democratic candidate. It raises it, because it is essential that Mr Trump is defeated.Replacing Mr Biden at this late stage would be risky. There is no obvious candidate for a coronation, even if contenders could be persuaded to put personal ambition and political differences aside. Kamala Harris, the vice-president, has similarly dismal poll ratings. Though August’s convention would offer a stage for contenders, the party would be going to the nation with a relatively unknown and largely untested candidate.Yet Mr Biden is known and disliked. He was tested again on Thursday, and failed. He saved his country by standing in 2020. But the debate has forced many to conclude that the best way for him to save it in 2024 is to stand aside. Those closest to him must advise not in his interests, but the country’s. The Democrats are caught between Scylla and Charybdis. Whatever their choice, they must grasp the wheel before it is too late. If the vessel founders, it is not merely the party that is in danger, but American democracy itself. More

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      Biden meets with his family amid pressures to step down after debate

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      Joe Biden was meeting with his family on Sunday, a discussion believed to include talk about his political future even though it was already scheduled to take place before his calamitous presidential debate on Thursday with Donald Trump.The meeting at Camp David came as pressures mounted on Biden following the vast fallout of the debate, in which his halting performance highlighted his vulnerabilities in a close election and invited calls from pundits, media and voters for him to step aside.Insiders told NBC News that it would ultimately be the president and first lady Jill Biden making any pivotal decisions about his candidacy for a second term of office, although the couple’s children and grandchildren were present at the weekend retreat.“Any discussion about the campaign is expected to be informal or an afterthought,” a source told the network, seeking to dampen speculation over the purpose of the gathering.Similarly, an administration official also sought to dismiss reports that the Biden family summit was set to discuss him potentially standing down.“The premise of the [NBC] story is not accurate,” the official told a media huddle at New Jersey’s McGuire air force base.The Camp David meeting, he said, “was public in our guidance before the debate. It’s been on the schedule for weeks. There is nothing more to it.”The official, however, did not deny the subject would come up. NBC, meanwhile, reported that Biden’s mood in private was “humiliated” and “devoid of confidence” following the debate, and that he was leaning heavily on his family for support.So far, at rallies and events following the Thursday debate, the Bidens have shown no sign of changing course, painting the debate as a one-off bad day and doubling down on 2020 election success against Trump.“I don’t walk as easily as I used to, I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to, I don’t debate as well as I used to,” Biden said at a more energetic North Carolina rally on Friday, addressing the widespread criticism of his Thursday performance. “But I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth.” He highlighted Trump’s long litany of lies and misinformation during the debate.His campaign has similarly brushed off criticism of Biden’s debate performance as a media frenzy.“It’s a familiar story: Following Thursday night’s debate, the beltway class is counting Joe Biden out,” Jen O’Malley Dillon, chair of the Biden campaign, said in a memo. “The data in the battleground states, though, tells a different story.”The Associated Press reported a fraught call among Democratic National Committee members and his campaign staff.“I was hoping for more of a substantive conversation instead of, ‘Hey, let’s go out there and just be cheerleaders,’ without actually addressing a very serious issue that unfolded on American television for millions of people to see,” said Joe Salazar, an elected DNC member from Colorado, who was on the call.“There were a number of things that could have been said in addressing the situation. But we didn’t get that. We were being gaslit.”While some Democratic lawmakers have privately expressed concerns and hope Biden will drop out of the race during the convention, they have largely remained steadfast in public support for Biden’s campaign.A number of senior party allies spread across Sunday’s political talk shows to defend him, including former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, Congressman Jim Clyburn, and New York governor Kathy Hochul.“You can have a rough night, you can have a bad night, but the morning after defines you. And what I saw less than 24 hours after the performance the night before was Joe Biden himself at his best, energetic, fully alert,” Hochul told MSNBC’s The Weekend, referring to Friday’s North Carolina rally.Pelosi, also speaking on MSNBC, turned her criticism on Trump, while conceding that “it was not a good night” for Biden.“How can you have a legitimate debate when somebody is totally lying? You have to completely dispel their falsehoods,” she said.“Why do we talk all about Joe Biden? [Trump] is old, he doesn’t have a stream of thought that is logical, and nobody says anything about that. You saw on one side of the screen integrity, concern for people. On the other side, you saw dishonesty and self-serving lies.”In other events over the weekend, Vice-President Kamala Harris also sought to reiterate support for Biden, and nix rumors that she would be seeking to replace him.“In the Oval Office, negotiating bipartisan deals, I see him in the situation room keeping our country safe,” she said during a speech in Las Vegas on Friday. And at a fundraiser in California on Saturday she sought to assuage donors, who have reportedly been shaky in their support of the president since Thursday.“Because we’ve been in this fight before, I say with full confidence, we will win,” Harris said. “We will know what we stand for, so we know what to fight for.”And Biden himself appealed to his donors this weekend in an array of events in New York and New Jersey. “I promise you we’re going to win this election,” he said.Meanwhile, in flash polls conducted after the debate on Thursday voters have continued to show low confidence in the president and his future. Biden’s approval rating has been weakening since he took office and concerns about his age and handling of crises both at home and abroad after Thursday are under more scrutiny than ever.The path forward for Democrats is riddled with uncertainty. None of Biden’s possible replacements have proven to have more support than the president himself, and the threat of a Trump presidency and its impact on key issues of domestic and foreign policy leaves little room for error.Sunday’s internal meeting comes on the back of calls with Biden’s senior leadership team. But the conversation he has with Jill Biden and his children and grandchildren could hold more insight on the future of this election year. More

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      Should Democrats stay the course or replace Biden? | Robert Reich

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      If anyone were to doubt the menace of Donald Trump, they had only to watch his performance in Thursday night’s debate.His bullying lies were not just lies – they were frightening opposites of the truth, uttered with the vigor and certainty of someone who has now mastered the dark art of demagoguery.Joe Biden had good and often detailed answers to the questions put to him, but the debate was never going to be about the president’s answers. It was always going to be about his age.Sadly, Biden’s stiff, halting, withered delivery, coupled with his slack-jawed expression and frozen stare when not trying to form sentences, made him seem not just old but on the decline.In the wake of Biden’s performance, many Democrats are in a panic. Some believe it’s urgently necessary to replace Biden with another candidate.But there are many problems with trying to replace Biden at this point.For one, Biden would have to willingly give up the nomination in order to release delegates already pledged to him.I have a hard time seeing how this could happen, unless Jill Biden, along with others of his closest and most trusted advisors, and Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and Hakeem Jeffries, all teamed up and told him he must exit the race.A second problem is the public doesn’t know any other Democrat nearly as well as they know Biden, and it would be difficult to introduce someone to the public at this late date without them being defined by Donald Trump, the Republicans and Fox News in the worst possible ways.The only people I can think of as possible nominees are Kamala Harris, Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro, Wes Moore, Gavin Newsom and (my personal favorite) Sherrod Brown.Out of all of them, Harris is obviously best known because she’s vice-president, but if the criterion is who can beat the former president, it’s far from clear she’s the best choice. Yet, if it’s not Biden, a failure to nominate Harris might upset lots of Black people, women and younger voters.The Democratic national convention is only seven weeks away. An open convention, in which potential candidates duke it out, would be a chaotic mess (anyone remember 1968?), particularly in comparison to what’s expected to be Trump’s seamless and worshipful inauguration by the Republicans.There are also not-so-pesky details about money and organization. All of the money now lodged in Super PACs dedicated to Biden would have to be redirected. All of the national, state and local party machinery, advertising, and internet capacity now designed to get out the vote for Biden would have to be totally redesigned.I’m not saying it’s impossible to replace Biden at this juncture, only that it would require extraordinary deftness and collaboration on the part of the leaders of the Democratic party, who are not always known for their deftness and collaboration.I give it ten days. By then, we’ll know whether Biden will be replaced.In the meantime, you can bet that his campaign, his advisors and Jill Biden are doing whatever damage control they can – which centers on showing Biden to be vigorous, energetic and on top of his game.On Friday, at a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, surrounded by cheering supporters, Biden nearly shouted:
      I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious. I don’t walk as easy as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to. But I know what I do know: I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong. And I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done. And I know, like millions of Americans know, when you get knocked down you get back up.
      Watch the clip, if you can. In it, Biden shows the kind of energy and vitality he lacked in the debate. These are not the words or actions of a candidate contemplating an emergency exit from the race.But nor does Biden’s behavior in Raleigh explain what the hell happened in the debate. And frankly that’s what troubles me more than almost anything else.Biden is smart. He can show energy and vitality, as he did in Raleigh and at the State of the Union.But he can also reveal something else, as he did at the debate – a man who in many respects seems older than 81 years, who has trouble walking and speaking, and who, at least in those times and moments, doesn’t seem to stand much chance of being re-elected president of the United States – even when his opponent is a twice-impeached convicted felon, pathological liar and dangerous sociopath.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      If Biden drops out now, how do the Democrats choose a new candidate?

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      Joe Biden gave no indication on Friday that he planned to drop out of the presidential race, even as his widely panned performance in his debate against Donald Trump attracted censure from many fellow Democrats.Some commentators had called for replacing Biden as the nominee even before the debate, largely citing the president’s age as a potentially decisive vulnerability in the election. (Biden is 81, and Trump is 78.)Biden’s dismal showing on Thursday transformed those conversations from scattered whispers to a full-blown shouting match, with many in Washington openly speculating about who might step in for the president.With all of the presidential primaries over, the process for replacing Biden would be complicated and politically volatile. Biden has already won far more delegates than he needs to secure the nomination, and the Democratic national convention, which will bring a formal end to the primary process, is less than two months away.Here’s everything you need to know about the process for replacing Biden:Have Democrats already officially named Biden as their nominee?No. Democrats will convene in Chicago from 19 to 22 August to formally select their presidential nominee, so Biden is still considered the presumptive nominee at this stage. The Democratic national committee plans to virtually nominate Biden before the convention to meet an Ohio ballot deadline of 7 August, but no date has been announced for that vote.However, Biden has amassed 3,894 pledged delegates through his victories in state primaries, so he already has more than enough delegates to secure the nomination.What will happen to Biden’s pledged delegates if he withdraws from the presidential race?If Biden drops out of the race, his pledged delegates would arrive in Chicago uncommitted to any specific candidate, which would likely kick off a frenzied fight to win their support.“Candidates who step into the breach hoping to take the place of the fallen candidate will find out who these delegates are and woo them in as many ways as they can. The outcome will be a convention where the result may not be known ahead of time,” Elaine Kamarck, a member of the Democratic national committee rules committee and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote in January.Democrats have not seen a floor fight for the presidential nomination since 1968, when their convention was coincidentally (and infamously) held in Chicago. In a potentially eerie parallel to 2024, then president Lyndon Johnson decided against seeking re-election just months before the election. The assassination of Robert F Kennedy left Hubert Humphrey, Johnson’s vice-president, as the main opponent against Eugene McCarthy, the anti-Vietnam war candidate.The fraught nominating process was overshadowed by the violence on Chicago’s streets, as tens of thousands of police officers and national guard officers confronted anti-war protesters. In the end, Humphrey won the nomination – even though he had never appeared on a state primary ballot – but he went on to lose to Richard Nixon in the general election.Would Kamala Harris automatically win all of Biden’s delegates if he dropped out?No. Because the delegates would be uncommitted if Biden withdraws, they could theoretically vote on the floor for any candidate. In the hours after the debate on Thursday, a number of names – including California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer – were floated as possible replacements for Biden.But Harris would probably go to the convention as a strong favorite for the nomination. As the vice-president, she has the largest national profile of any potential candidate, and Biden’s pledged delegates are mostly party loyalists who would be looking for the safest possible choice if he stepped aside.How would a nominee be chosen on the floor?On the first ballot, a winning nominee would need to secure the votes of a majority of Democrats’ roughly 4,000 pledged delegates. If no candidate won a majority on the first ballot, Democrats would continue on to a second ballot, in which so-called “superdelegates” would have an opportunity to vote.Superdelegates are mostly senior Democratic party leaders, and they would go to the convention not pledged to any candidate. With the roughly 700 superdelegates added to the voting pool, the winning candidate would then need to secure about 2,300 delegates to capture the nomination.Although superdelegates would make up a relatively small share of the delegate pool, they could play an important role in choosing the nominee. Their support for a particular candidate would speak volumes and could sway fellow delegates.How likely is any of this to occur?It appears highly unlikely at this point. Biden and his top advisers insist he will continue on to November, and Democrats do not have a mechanism to force Biden out of the race. Unless Biden undergoes a radical change in thinking or suffers a major health setback in the next few months, he will be the Democrats’ nominee in November. More

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      Could Kamala Harris be a winner for the Democrats if Biden steps aside?

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      Joe Biden’s stumbling debate performance left Democrats so panicked some are searching for an alternative to replace the 81-year-old president as the party’s standard-bearer.Biden has given no indication that he intends to exit the race, and his campaign has flatly dismissed the suggestion. But that has done little to silence critics who are openly questioning whether Biden is the right person to take on Donald Trump, a figure the president – and his party – view as a grave threat to American democracy.In the unlikely scenario Biden decides not to run, the most obvious choice to replace him would be his 59-year-old vice president and running mate, Kamala Harris. But it would not be automatic – and other candidates would likely challenge Harris, who has suffered her own low approval ratings, for the nomination.Already some Democrats are looking past the vice-president at other possible contenders – Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, Illinois governor JB Pritzker, California governor Gavin Newsom and Maryland governor Wes Moore.It’s a sign that Democrats have yet to fully embrace Harris as Biden’s heir apparent.“To even discuss Biden stepping down while COMPLETELY IGNORING THE VP … is a serious look into how we see the importance, capacity and seriousness of women of color,” writer Tanzina Vega, said on X.Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, is the highest-ranking female elected official in US history and the first Black and first Asian American to serve as vice president.Democrats, traumatized by Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump in 2016, rallied behind Biden in 2020 over a younger, more diverse and progressive field of candidates that included Harris. As a candidate, Biden promised to be a “bridge” to the next generation of Democratic leaders, which many interpreted as commitment to serve one-term and before passing the baton to Harris.But when the time came to make a decision, Biden argued that he was still the Democrat best-positioned to beat Trump.For the past three and a half years, Harris’s barrier-breaking vice-presidency has divided Democrats. Negative press, some of it self-inflicted, compounded by sexist and racist attacks, and a challenging policy portfolio weighed on public perception of the former California senator. Nearly 50% of voters have an unfavorable view of Harris, according to 538’s polling average, compared with the roughly 40% who view her favorably, figures that are comparable with Biden’s.Despite a rocky start to her tenure, Harris has eased into the role, especially since becoming the administration’s leading voice on abortion rights. On Monday, Harris marked two years since the second anniversary of the US supreme court decision that overturned Roe v Wade with a fiery warning that Trump would not hesitate to further restrict women’s reproductive rights in a second-term.Nodding to her background as a prosecutor, the vice president declared: “In the case of the stealing of reproductive freedom from the women of America, Donald Trump is guilty.”Harris’s clear defense of abortion rights, by far Democrats’ strongest issue, stands in stark contrast to Biden. During Thursday’s debate, Biden fumbled an attack on Trump over Republican bans on the procedure, pivoting bizarrely to immigration and raising the case of a young woman murdered in Georgia.Moments after Biden finished the debate, it was Harris who came to his defense first in a pair of interviews. On CNN and MSNBC, Harris spun his performance, saying voters must look at the last three-and-a-half years of accomplishments and not just at the 90-minute debate. Harris conceded that Biden had a “slow start” but insisted he finished “strong.”“I’m talking about the choice for November,” she said on CNN. “I’m talking about one of the most important elections in our collective lifetime.”In a sharp back-and-forth, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper pressed Harris about calls for Biden to step aside.“I’m not going to spend all night with you talking about the last 90 minutes when I’ve been watching the last three-and-a-half years of performance,” she said, emphasizing his legislative and executive achievements he’s pulled in his first-term.At a rally in Las Vegas the following day, Harris doubled down on her support.“In the Oval Office, negotiating bipartisan deals, I see him in the situation room keeping our country safe,” she said, adding that the election would not be decided by “one night in June”.The Atlanta debate was the first of the election cycle, with a second scheduled in September. The Biden campaign has agreed to a vice-presidential debate between Harris and Trump’s eventual running mate, but the terms have not yet been to confirmed.In a hypothetical matchup against Trump, Harris performed roughly on par with Biden, trailing the former president by six points in a February Times/Siena poll. Biden trailed Trump by five points in the same poll. Meanwhile, the poll found Harris ran stronger than Biden with Black voters, though worse with Hispanic voters and men.Biden’s age has long been an electoral challenge. But his shaky debate performance shocked even his staunchest supporters. At a rally on Friday, Biden acknowledged his stumbles, but insisted he was still the best candidate to defeat Trump.“I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious,” he said at a post-debate rally in North Carolina. “I know I don’t walk as easy as I used to, I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to, I don’t debate as well as I used to, but I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth.”But mounting concerns about Biden’s mental acuity have drawn even greater scrutiny of Harris, particularly from the right. Republicans have sought to make Harris a boogyman, with Nikki Haley warning during the GOP primary a vote for Biden was a vote for “a President Harris”.With the convention scheduled for mid-August in Chicago, and the formal nomination process to take place virtually at some point before that to meet an Ohio ballot deadline, many Democrats have said there is not enough time to replace Biden at the top of the ticket.Former South Carolina lawmaker and Democratic commentator Bakari Sellers, who endorsed Harris in the 2020 primary, said wishing for an alternative to emerge at this stage was futile.“You’re not nominating Gretch or Gavin or Wes over Kamala. Stop it,” he wrote on X, adding: “Choice is Trump, Biden or couch. I choose Joe.” More