It had been in the air for some time, but President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the White House race puts everything back on the table. Vice President Kamala Harris was pitched by Biden himself almost simultaneously with his retirement so that he could offer the Democrats a solution right away. But his inauguration is by no means a foregone conclusion, because the Democratic Party convention that was supposed to make Biden’s candidacy official is scheduled for Aug. 19 in the presence of some 4,000 delegates.
The clock is ticking fast and there are about three weeks to choose who will be the Democratic Party’s nominee for the White House. According to leaks from the staff, the vice chairwoman has been making phone calls since the beginning to seek the support of party leaders, including former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, to secure support at the convention and mount a campaign against Donald Trump in four months.
The president’s decision to drop out of the race was reportedly made over the weekend while he was at his estate in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where he was spending a few days waiting to recover from Covid-19. The decisive reasons that convinced him were allegedly the lack of support from some Dem leaders, due to a race already given up as a loser according to some, and the consequent poor donation receipts that would jeopardize the campaign’s progress.
The clock is ticking, and it appears that after the endorsement of Biden and some Dem leaders to Kamala Harris, already there is talk of papayas to serve as vice president, including North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg who is considered among the best communicators in government.
This new scenario forces a change of strategy in Donald Trump’s campaign, which has reacted by calling for Biden’s resignation from the White House. Meanwhile, the former president has been fully rehabilitated from mainstream social media where he was banned after the January 6, 2021 assault on Capitol Hill. In any case, these last months of campaigning will be very intense and there is still a segment of the electorate undecided despite the fact that the tycoon is still ahead even over Kamala Harris.
The article Presidential election: second half comes from TheNewyorker.
