/tag/andrew-cuomo/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener” title>Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) outperformed the Biden-Harris ticket, but Biden still edged Trump by more than 3 points on Election Day in 2020.
Data for Progress Executive Director Sean McElwee warned that “a majority of Democratic voters — that’s not rank-and-file, but majorities — not just want a different nominee, but they want someone other than President Biden.” He credited unhappiness with the current administration for “the desire of fleeting ideological change” beforehand without the “understanding of why it is that Democrats are in a particular set of circumstances in order to win.”
McElwee disputed the notion that replacing Biden would be a “messy process” and declare Harris the victor.
“Let me be clear: Replacing Joe Biden with Kamala Harris or another potential nominee is how we win,” he said.
Stephen Zunes, professor of politics and coordinator of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco, acknowledged the “legitimate concerns about whether Biden can win” but decried the push to swap out Harris or senior figures to help him.
“The arrogance and duplicity of some elements within the Democratic Party establishment who are seeking to manipulate the process to further their own presidential ambitions, should Biden not prevail, is troubling,” Zunes told the Washington Examiner.
“Their willingness to replace him with someone like Harris or to use her standing, if the backroom deals were to put in peril the public’s trust, is deeply troubling,” he added.
As Trump, who has not declared it, has loomed over another presidential run, the Republican National Committee last month overwhelmingly voted to name him the GOP’s “presumptive nominee” for 2024 should he make a White House bid.
The former president, now residing at his New Jersey golf club, leads the 2024 field in Republican primary polls. He has personally endorsed since his loss on Nov. 3, 2020.
Democrats hoping to replace President Joe Biden as their party’s nominee after last week’s debate may be running out of time, money, and options.
Not only are Democrats poised to nominate their standard-bearer through a virtual roll call as early as this month before their August convention, even if the party could coalesce around a replacement mere months before November’s election, it would encounter fundraising and organizing disadvantages compared to former President Donald Trump.
Days after last week’s debate, the responses of Biden, the campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and other party leaders have not provided comfort to all their rank and file.
Biden should “take himself out of the race,” according to former Democratic strategist Christopher Hahn, a onetime aide to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
“Thursday night was not just a bad debate; it reaffirmed what undecided voters fear most about the president,” Hahn told the Washington Examiner. “I believe that there are many other Democrats that will have a better chance at defeating Trump.”
But the likes of Northeastern University political science professor and Chairman Costas Panagopoulos contend replacing Biden is “complicated, both structurally and politically.”
“First, Democrats would need a viable alternative projected to fare better than Biden against Trump in November,” Panagopoulos told the Washington Examiner. “At the moment, such an option is not apparent. Polls in the coming weeks may shuffle the deck of Democratic contenders, but that has not happened yet.”
“An open convention could also backfire for Democrats, and campaign finance rules prevent Biden from simply transferring his campaign war chest to another contender,” he said, though Vice President Kamala Harris would have easier access to some of the $84 million they have on hand. “He could transfer his funds to a super PAC or to a party committee, like the DNC, however.”
In a fundraising email with the subject line “7 Things To Tell Your Friends After The Debate,” Biden deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty argued the “bedwetting brigade” calling for the president’s replacement is “the best possible way” for Trump “to win and us to lose.”
“Joe Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee,” Flaherty wrote. “Voters voted. He won overwhelmingly. And if he were to drop out, it would lead to weeks of chaos, internal foodfighting, and a bunch of candidates who limp into a brutal floor fight at the convention, all while Donald Trump has time to speak to American voters uncontested.”
“All of that would be in service of a nominee who would go into a general election in the weakest possible position with zero dollars in their bank account,” he said. “You want a highway to losing? It’s that. And at the end of the day, we’d switch to candidates who would, according to polls, be less likely to win than Joe Biden — the only person ever to defeat Donald Trump.”
Flaherty cited Data for Progress polling in which Trump had a 3-point edge over Biden and Harris in head-to-head matchups among likely voters, 48%-45%. Only Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) polled more closely to Trump, but more respondents were undecided when surveyed about them.
NEW POST-DEBATE POLL: In a new survey, 45% of likely voters choose Biden and 48% choose Trump in a head-to-head matchup.
Whitmer was quick to downplay speculation she could replace Biden, but the problem for the president is that Flaherty did not cite the liberal polling firm’s other findings, specifically that 51% of Democrats told pollsters that Biden should remain the party’s nominee, a 12-point decrease from March, and that 53% of voters more broadly are more concerned about Biden’s age and health, in comparison to 42% who are more concerned about Trump’s criminal charges and threats to democracy.
Only 51% of Democrats say that Joe Biden should remain as the Democratic nominee for the 2024 presidential election.
This represents a 12-point drop among Democrats since Data for Progress asked the same question in early March. pic.twitter.com/BYVpOKtpB9
Sixty-seven percent of voters say that Biden is too old to be president, while 35% the same for Trump.
Fifty-three percent of voters are more concerned about Biden’s age and health, while 42% are more concerned about Trump’s criminal charges and threats to democracy. pic.twitter.com/OKskO2JeQz
Polls currently being conducted will uncover the debate’s “true impact” on Biden and “any enduring effects,” Panagopoulos added.
“Until then, it may be premature to conclude Biden is not still Democrats’ best shot against Trump in November,” he said.
Aside from fundraising, Colby College government professor emeritus Sandy Maisel asserted, “as significantly,” that Biden’s “entire campaign infrastructure that has been set up is not easily transferred.”
“He is in a very precarious position,” Maisel, a former Democratic strategist and candidate, told the Washington Examiner of Biden. “Oddly, I am more confident in his ability to govern — because he has very competent, talented men and women around him — than I am in his ability to campaign to win. If that is true, smarter people than I would have to find a way to work through all of this.”
Those same aides have been reportedly criticized by the Biden family, who blame them for overpreparing the president for the debate. But Democratic strategist Stefan Hankin defended the staffers, including former White House chief of staff Ron Klain and longtime senior adviser Anita Dunn.
“If the player doesn’t execute on any level of the game, it’s probably not the coach’s fault,” Hankin told the Washington Examiner. “The only thing I don’t quite understand is how did you not have the contingency plans for a great night, a nothingburger night, and a terrible night? Those game plans should have all been laid out and ready to go.”
Regarding replacing Biden, Hankin repeated it would only happen if the president himself decides he has become “too much of a distraction,” continuing that “as a country, we’d be in a much better place” if neither Biden nor Trump had announced their reelection campaigns.
“But then the back end of that, if they’re going to hand over the keys to the VP, what do they get? How do you do any of this?” he said of the Biden campaign. “It does not seem like a feasible, actual option.”
That reality was exacerbated Monday amid reporting Democratic convention delegates could take part in a virtual roll call as early as July 21 to nominate Biden after Ohio’s Republican-controlled legislature earlier this year declined to accept the event’s late August date under its ballot access laws, though it later passed a measure, alongside a bill that prevents green card holders from contributing to state ballot campaigns, that would have permitted Biden on its ballot.
“We’ve said for weeks that the DNC would hold a virtual roll call in the lead-up to our in-person convention as a result of the OH GOP’s bad-faith attempts to keep Joe Biden off of their general election ballot,” DNC communications director Rosemary Boeglin wrote on social media.
Meanwhile, the Biden campaign launched 30- and 60-second ads on Monday amplifying the president’s reaction to the debate during a rally in North Carolina the following day.
“Folks, I know I’m not a young man,” he said. “But I know how to do this job. I know right from wrong. I know how to tell the truth. And I know, like millions of Americans know, when you get knocked down, you get back up.”
Aides have similarly underscored that following the debate, the campaign has raised $33 million, hosted more than 1,500 events, including the North Carolina rally, and experienced a campaign job application and volunteer signup rate “more than three times as much as an average day.”
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