As President Joe Biden faces mounting pressure to drop out of the 2024 presidential race while isolating in Delaware with Covid-19, former House speaker Nancy Pelosi is reportedly looking to prevent the vice president from automatically taking the nomination.
The California representative hopes to avoid Kamala Harris automatically becoming the Democratic candidate if Biden drops out, Politico and The New York Times report. Earlier this week, reports emerged that the influential Democrat told Biden privately he can’t beat Donald Trump in November.
Pelosi is not against a Harris-led ticket, according to the Times. Instead, Pelosi is advocating for an open nomination process at next month’s Democratic National Convention, arguing that Harris — or any other potential candidate — would be strengthened by earning the title, the Times reports.
Representative Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, made a similar argument on Friday. “Should he make that decision, there will have to be quick steps,” Lofgren said on MSNBC. “I don’t think we can do a coronation, but obviously the vice president would be the leading candidate.”
And representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said this week on a widely discussed social media post: “If you think that there is consensus among the people who want Joe Biden to leave…. that they will support Kamala, Vice President Harris, you would be mistaken.”
Harris hit the campaign fundraising circuit on Saturday in breezy Provincetown, Massachusetts, and picked up a nod from the state’s prominent Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, who said before the visit that if Biden were to step aside, his vice president is “ready to step up”.
At the event, which organizers said raised $2m and was attended by 1,000 guests, Harris did not mention the calls for Biden to leave the race or for her to replace him, instead repeating one of her regular campaign lines: “We’re going to win this election,” she said. “Do we believe in freedom? Do we believe in equality? Do we believe in the promise of America? Then are we ready to fight for it?” she called to a cheering crowd. “When we fight, we win.”
An open convention could happen if Biden drops out of the race, as he would surrender the delegates he won during the Democratic primary and leave them free to back someone else at the convention.
In an open convention, new candidates would have to try to convince delegates who were previously pledged to Biden to back them for the nomination.
Pelosi isn’t the only one reportedly urging Biden to not run. Thirty Democratic lawmakers and several influential public figures have called for the president to step down from the ticket.
On Friday, Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts said the president “didn’t seem to recognize him” at a D-Day event in Normandy, France in a recent op-ed for The Boston Globe.
“Of course, that can happen as anyone ages but, as I watched the disastrous debate a few weeks ago, I have to admit that what I saw in Normandy was part of a deeper problem,” Moulton wrote.
Meanwhile, at least three 6 January congressional committee members joined the growing number of Democratic officials urging Biden to bow out. These members include Representatives Adam Schiff and Jamie Raskin.
Schiff warned in a statement this week that a “second Trump presidency will undermine the very foundation of our democracy, and I have serious concerns about whether the President can defeat Donald Trump in November.”
In a recent four-page letter to Biden, Raskin also told the president that “everything we believe in is on the line in the next four-and-a-half months” and that “we have an overriding obligation to defeat the forces of resurgent monarchy and oppression.”
“Everything else pales in comparison to this struggle,” he added.
Meanwhile, one Democratic strategist told The Hill that Biden’s campaign has yet to present a clear plan for victory in November.
“What everyone has said is we need to see more and, frankly, the last two weeks has been worse than the actual debate in a lot of ways because they haven’t put a plan together and haven’t executed it,” the anonymous strategist told The Hill.