Kamala Harris wins qualified backing as frontrunner for tilt at top job
Kamala Harris has better claims politically and legally to the hundreds of millions of dollars of campaign funds the Biden-Harris team has raised. She also polls betters than other candidates.
Kamala Harris’s coronation as the Democratic Party’s nominee was by no means certain in the hours after Joe Biden finally succumbed to pressure to stand aside.
Unlike Bill and Hillary Clinton, former president Barack Obama, very pointedly, declined on Sunday (Monday AEST) to endorse the Vice-President, expressing hope for “a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges”, that is, an “open convention”.
Similarly, Democratic powerbroker Nancy Pelosi, the former veteran Speaker, didn’t mention Ms Harris in her public statements that praised Mr Biden.
Veteran Democrat strategist David Axelrod argued that Ms Harris should be nominated only after an open nomination process, a move that would guarantee weeks of internal turmoil.
West Virginia senator Joe Manchin, 76, once considered among the most politically centrist Democrat members of congress, has teased re-registering as a Democrat to run for the party’s nomination himself, “even just to have the discussion of bringing the party back to the centre”, one source close to him told Fox.
“I think we have a lot of talent on the bench, a lot of good people,” Senator Manchin told CNN earlier in the day, pointing to governors Andy Beshear of Kentucky and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania.
Mr Shapiro, the centrist governor of a critical battleground state the Democrats must win to hold on to the White House, moved quickly to endorse Ms Harris on Sunday, amid speculation she would pick him as her vice-presidential running mate.
The 51-year-old first term governor was the bookies’ favourite to take on Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance.
California Governor Gavin Newsom has also backed Ms Harris, although Michigan’s governor Gretch Whitmer declined to mention her as she praised the outgoing president.
Perhaps some will wait to listen to Mr Biden’s promised address to the nation later this week. It’s a complex calculation for ambitious Democratic governors; challenging Ms Harris early would cruel their chances of being her vice- presidential running mate if she emerges as a forgone conclusion in coming days.
Before Mr Biden dropped out, the party had been scrambling to try to wrap up his formal nomination as soon as August 7, nearly two weeks before the nominating convention starts on August 19 in Chicago. Expect that effort to continue as party grandees frantically try to stitch together a new ticket in order for their convention to be a show of unity.
Critically for her case, Ms Harris has better claims politically and legally to the hundreds of millions of dollars of campaign funds the Biden-Harris team has raised. She also polls betters than other candidates, but Harris critics will rightly argue such polls matter little
The party will need to balance political, legal and moral considerations as it weighs up whether to back Ms Harris. Would, for instance, Mr Biden campaign as readily for a party that didn’t take his advice on his successor?
Mr Biden had been hitting the phones in recent weeks to ensure support among the thousands of Democratic Party delegates he won in the primaries would still back him at the party’s nominating convention, amid relentless attacks on his competence.
In hindsight, what he needed wasn’t personal support but loyalty to his recommendation that Ms Harris should succeed him as the party’s presidential nominee.
Mr Biden won 3904 delegates, over 99 per cent of the total, in a practically uncontested primary contest. Now they can vote for whomever, creating a potential headache for Ms Harris and a major threat to Democratic Party unity less than four months out from the presidential election.
If the party snubs Mr Biden’s recommendation, it would be a double humiliation
History isn’t kind to what Democrats are facing. Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson both chose to bow out of the race; subsequent nominees Adlai Stevenson and Hubert Humphrey.
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