Biden’s debate meltdown has Democrats scrambling, but they no longer have an excuse for holding a virtual nomination.
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has been planning a virtual, videocast, online convention like that occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic. In another carefully stage-managed event, the pro forma nomination of Joe Biden and the party platform approval was to take place prior to the terrestrial convention, avoiding any sort of disruption that might somehow make it inside the doors of Chicago’s United Center between August 19 and 22.
Indeed, anyone who actually bothered to watch the videocast would likely see no point to watching another big boring rubber stamp broadcast from Chicago.
The excuse for holding this event virtually, in advance of the terrestrial convention, was that the delegate-rich state of Ohio had an August 7 deadline for filing a candidate’s name to appear on the ballot. However, lost in all the news of the Democratic Party’s post-debate chaos is one detail—that this excuse for holding a virtual convention no longer exists. On June 2, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) signed a bill into law moving the state's filing deadline to September 1, 2024.
That development was little reported, and three weeks later, on June 24, the DNC voted to go ahead with the virtual convention, with 360 members voting yes, five no, and two abstaining. Why? What could be the reason aside from total control of a top-down process?
Democrats, meaning anyone willing to identify as such, are invited to submit “platform testimony,” meaning statements as to what they’d like to see in the party platform, online. They have no way to talk to one another and no way of knowing whether their “testimony” is shared by others or whether it’s ever even seriously considered. If the composition of the platform committee is anywhere on the convention website, it’s very difficult to find.
There’ll be nothing like the messy vote on a resolution to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel at the 2012 convention.
That resolution required a two-thirds vote in the affirmative, but “yes” and “no” votes sounded at least equally divided on a voice vote, and the “no” votes were arguably louder. However, instead of calling for a roll call vote, Antonio Villaraigosa, then Mayor of Los Angeles and Convention Chair, announced that the “yes” votes had prevailed, and resounding boos rang out in Charlotte, North Carolina’s Spectrum Center.
There’ll be none of that this year.
Could Biden’s debate disaster force a real convention?
Three days after the Democrats voted to nominate and approve the platform virtually, Joe Biden stumbled through a debate with Donald Trump, often seeming to lose his train of thought and turning the Democrat Party nominating process inside out and upside down.
So what now for the virtual convention and the subsequent terrestrial convention in Chicago?
Bloomberg reported that the Democratic National Committee may arrange Biden’s virtual nomination as early as July 21, a month before the terrestrial convention, “to stamp out intra-party chatter of replacing him after last week’s poor debate performance.” Once again, the goal seems to be total, top-down control.
However, although only Biden can choose to step down, it’s harder and harder to imagine that he and his family can withstand the din of high profile voices, beginning with the New York Times, and now more and more editorial boards, all calling on him to step down. Voices accusing Jill Biden and Biden’s other advisors of elder abuse are an undercurrent, not only on social media.
Short of an uprising of his pledged delegates, which is technically possible, but practically all but impossible, only Biden can step down.
Nevertheless, creating a “dignified exit” is now being widely discussed, and the New York Times reported it as a real possibility:
“While the campaign has forcefully rejected advice that Mr. Biden step aside for another candidate just weeks before the roll call vote to formalize his nomination, many Democrats, including some working for the president, said they did not think the door was yet closed on that possibility.
“But Mr. Biden is a proud man, and they said they believed that the odds of him trying to gut it out were still 4 or 5 to 1. The only way they said they could imagine him reversing course was if he could be afforded a dignified way out in which he could claim credit for ousting Mr. Trump in 2020, restoring the country and serving as a transition to the next generation.”
Would Biden step down before or after the virtual nomination roll call? No telling, but either way, the names of a slew of possible contenders are being bandied about every day, including California Governor Gavin Newsom, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and of course Vice President Kamala Harris.
Distressed donors and high profile Democrats have even gone so far as to inquire about what will become of Biden’s $91 million war chest if he steps down. Some say Kamala Harris will be able to use it, but only if she is the nominee.
Some writers and pundits are suggesting that there’ll be a real, contested convention in Chicago, with competing candidates, maybe even a good old-fashioned floor fight, as in conventions of old. However, there are no possibilities representing a populist surge, as Bernie Sanders did in 2016 and 2020. There’ll be nothing like the walkout that Bernie Sanders delegates staged in 2016 after their standard bearer called to nominate Hillary Clinton by acclamation, thus denying them the voice they would have had in a roll call vote.
The Democrats will nominate a Zionist, corporatist, militarist however this shakes out, but something closer to a real convention will at least give television viewers a drama to watch. They may even see the mass pro-Palestinian, anti-genocide protests planned for outside the convention, as social media users most undoubtedly will.
Ann Garrison is a Black Agenda Report Contributing Editor based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region. She can be reached at ann@anngarrison.com. You can help support her work on Patreon.
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