Susan Walsh/AP Photo
President Joe Biden speaks to the media as he arrives to board Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, July 15, 2024.
The Prospect can confirm that the Democratic National Committee is aiming to nominate Joe Biden as their presidential candidate early, in a virtual roll call process that would begin Monday, six days from today.
Both Axios and The New York Times have reported that the virtual roll call would go forward, with the timeline set on Friday morning at a meeting of the Rules Committee. Axios says that voting for the presidential nomination by delegates would begin July 29; the Times says it would start July 22.
A source tells the Prospect that the July 22 date is correct. That would mean that voting by more than 4,000 delegates, the overwhelming majority of which were pledged to Biden, would begin almost immediately after the Republican National Convention, giving the now-underground process of trying to persuade Biden to step aside a very narrow window for success.
UPDATE: DNC chair Jaime Harrison said in a comment on social media that “We will have this vote by August 5th.” That would imply that the voting process, scheduled to take a week, would begin no later than July 29, aligning with the Axios timeline. Politics often involves “trial balloons,” where certain actions are floated to monitor for public response. Given the response here, a reasonable interpretation that the DNC is backing off the quickest possible vote, but not backing off the concept of a virtual roll call and early nomination.
The virtual roll call was established in late May, with the ostensible reason of ensuring that Biden got on the Ohio ballot. Ohio had a deadline for candidate filing that was earlier than the Democratic National Convention’s late-August date, so plans were made to nominate Biden early.
But as the Prospect has reported, Ohio changed their law to accommodate the DNC’s later date. There is no legitimate reason to accelerate the nomination process. An internal DNC email to committee members in June acknowledged this, stating that Ohio passed “last-minute legislation adjusting the deadline.” The Ohio secretary of state has said that “the issue is resolved.”
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There’s been some chatter about other state deadlines. A sheet that has been circulating in Democratic circles was obtained by the Prospect, and it cites other ballot deadlines in California, Virginia, Montana, and Oklahoma. But the California deadline is on the last day of the convention, August 22; Virginia’s is the day after the convention ends; and Oklahoma and Montana have historically accepted provisional certifications before the convention is over, as have other states.
One state, Washington, has a ballot deadline of August 20, the second day of the convention. However, the director of elections has already said that the state would accept provisional certification at that time.
There’s no question that Republicans have made feints toward suing over ballot access for a new nominee, no doubt with these deadlines or other requirements like signatures of the nominees in mind. The sheet warns that “In this litigious atmosphere, with the RNC and Heritage bragging that it will bring every conceivable challenge to the Democratic ticket, relying on [past] practices would be unwise.”
But the scenario of a protracted nominating fight that spills past scheduled convention dates and threatens ballot access doesn’t necessarily justify a virtual roll call kicking off nearly a month before the convention, at a time when delegates and party leaders are balking at moving forward with nominating the president for re-election after his disastrous debate performance, questions about his ability to face the rigors of a campaign and another four-year term that would end when he was 86, and slippage in key polls.
“There really is no convention,” said Larry Cohen, former president of the Communications Workers of America and a DNC member. “There is one item at the convention [who to nominate] and that’s set by the virtual roll call.”
IF THE DNC NOMINATES BIDEN EARLY, starting as soon as six days from now, it becomes extremely difficult to get him off the ballot, and at that point legal battles would surely flow. The only clean way to replace him would be before any formal nomination is conducted.
Meanwhile, Biden has shown no indication that he would consider leaving the race, including in an interview with NBC News on Monday.
While most of the discussion about replacing Biden has revolved around the sentiment of donors, The New York Times editorial board, and top Democratic Party leadership, the actual decision lies formally with the delegates tied to Biden. Delegates include some elected officials, but primarily party loyalists from the rank and file.
Though delegates are all chosen for their loyalty to the president, the Times quotes unnamed Democratic insiders as predicting “as many as 80 percent” support Biden, a rather low number considering that practically all the delegates are pledged to Biden and were chosen as loyal supporters of the president.
Behind the scenes, there have been ongoing deliberations among delegates about whether Biden is the best nominee for the party following his debate performance. However, party leaders have explicitly tried to tamp down any unofficial conversation about this on Zoom calls and in Facebook groups.
Once Biden is set as the nominee by the virtual roll call, delegate objections at the convention would largely be symbolic.
Many delegates are still backing the president’s re-election, but scores of delegates contacted by the Prospect across numerous states have decided that replacing the candidate they’re pledged to is a better bet for the party. A handful of California’s 496 delegates, the largest state contingency, are even planning to object at the convention if it comes to that, and are organizing a campaign to rally other delegates to do so.
Based on the DNC rules, delegates can abstain from voting if it goes against their conscience. This would be more symbolic than tactical, unless a mass wave of objections spread denying Biden the nomination.
“He needs to be replaced because otherwise we’re going to get killed; the path we’re on is totally unsustainable and we’re trying to raise alarms any way we can,” said one California delegate who is leading the campaign. The goal is to exert pressure on the party to call for Biden to step aside in the few weeks before the convention, rather than resorting to an open revolt in Chicago. In the eyes of these delegates, objecting is a last-resort effort to avert what they anticipate as an electoral disaster for the party.
“I have the same feeling I did when I was campaigning in Michigan for Hillary in 2016; everyone is acting like we’re winning but it really feels more like we’re losing,” said another California delegate who plans to withhold his vote for Biden at the convention if necessary.
The objection push aligns with a letter from Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) to cancel the virtual roll call and have the nomination process go on at the convention. If that is successful, delegates would have more time to organize and pressure the president.
WHILE THERE’S BEEN LITTLE ROOM for any grassroots voice to be heard in the party’s civil war over Biden, delegates are accountable in their respective districts to the voters who elected them. Since the June debate debacle, delegates say they’ve been inundated with messages from the voters in their districts, overwhelmingly expressing disapproval for Biden remaining the nominee. That’s in part what motivated the campaign to object at the convention.
The other reason is that delegates have been shut down from voicing dissent or just holding an open discussion about the party’s prospects with Biden. Though reports suggest that long-standing delegates with ties to the party have been contacted by the Biden campaign to shore up support, others haven’t been reached out to at all.
Directly after the debate, one delegate posted in an official Facebook group for the California delegation about his apprehensions about Biden’s age and ability to campaign. A moderator of the group immediately made a post suggesting that these kinds of concerns would not be tolerated in the group and were unhelpful. “We have decided to prohibit any organizing for a new candidate for president in this group,” the message read, which was shared and reviewed by the Prospect.
Last week, the Biden campaign and its delegation held a phone call with all delegates. Many hoped that this would be a venue to get some information from the campaign about the future and potentially gauge whether other delegates were feeling the same as they were. There are limited avenues for delegates to actually reach each other, even within the same state.
As relayed to the Prospect, the call featured campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez and head of operations for the campaign’s delegation team Eli Seo. Comments were shut off for the Zoom call and there was no question period at the end. The campaign officials who spoke tried to laugh off the mayhem since the debate, but the message was clear, similar to the post in the Facebook group.
“The idea was to tell us to sit down, shut up, and fall in line like schoolchildren,” said one delegate on the call who was dismayed by the lack of candor and transparency from the campaign.
The tenor of that call is in line with the party’s strategy to now move up the virtual roll call to next week, shutting down any effort to boot Biden from the ticket, critics say. “This DNC plan is undemocratic and denies our party the time we need to have this necessary conversation while delivering a massive ‘F you’ to the growing majority of Democrats who are unhappy with Biden’s candidacy,” said Aaron Regunberg, who’s leading a new organization called Pass the Torch, which has a petition campaign to select a new nominee.
The sentiment is widespread among delegates. Many say they’ll still vote for Biden at the convention if he’s set as the nominee but want a change before then.
“I would like to see an open convention,” said one Massachusetts delegate, though he was not willing to object at the convention. However, he does believe that if the California objection campaign reached a critical mass at the convention it would open up a broader discussion among other states and could spread the movement. “At this point I wouldn’t put that out of the realm of possibility,” he said.
Once Biden is set as the nominee by the virtual roll call, as soon as early next week, delegate objections at the convention would largely be symbolic with little real sway on the nomination process. But it would be a sign of a party that’s turned its back even on the party’s most loyal soldiers.
