Jul 15, 2024 By Kent James 5 min read

Many observers have suggested that if President Biden’s performance in the June 27 debate is any indication of his cognitive abilities, he should withdraw from the race. Biden stepping down is risky, but even before the debate, in spite of being an incumbent presiding over a booming stock market and low unemployment, polls have shown Biden is in danger of losing to a convicted felon running a campaign of vengeance and retribution.

While former President Trump seems to have a firm grip on one-third of the country, it is not hard to believe that other Democratic candidates might do better against such a deeply flawed opponent.

Polls, even when accurate, are only a snapshot of the race, and things could change before November. But Trump has demonstrated that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose his base. In a race this tight, any of a number of things might swing the election to Biden. But a strong Democratic candidate should be able to get a historic victory against a politician as disliked as Trump is by such a large swath of the public.

If Biden were to step down, who could replace him? For better or for worse, there is not a clear successor. Kamala Harris, as the vice president, would be the logical choice, but her campaign for president in 2020 faltered, and Biden selecting her as vice president shouldn’t mean that the Democratic Party must accept that choice. She was selected to help Biden win, not to run on her own. Had she run strongly in the Democratic primaries, then a case could be made for her to simply step in for Biden and she could immediately access his war chest, easing logistical concerns about creating a campaign from scratch.

There will be some voters who won’t vote for her because she’s Black or because she’s a woman, but there are others who are attracted to her candidacy by those characteristics, so they should not be disqualifying politically. As a presidential candidate, she failed to connect to voters as the most successful candidates do, which has made party leaders and liberal pundits wary of simply anointing her as Biden’s replacement.

Some argue that it is undemocratic to replace the elected candidate with anyone, or at the very least, anyone other than Harris. This is not a good argument for a few reasons: first, very few people vote based on who the vice president is; and second, no serious candidate challenged Biden in the primaries because they did not want to damage him politically. Biden won the Democratic primary because most Democrats feared that challenging an incumbent president would divide the party and allow Trump to be elected.

People who cite Harris’ weakness as a candidate to justify Biden remaining in the race should recognize that because of the president’s age and debate performance, Republicans are already arguing that Harris is on the ballot in November because they claim Biden won’t finish a second term. While Harris should not be crowned as Biden’s successor, neither should she be sidelined just because many Democratic leaders don’t think she can win; that decision should be left to the selection process.

Treating Harris unfairly would not just be wrong, it would risk alienating the backbone of the Democratic Party – Black women. But if she won through the selection process instead of simply being given the nomination, she would be a much stronger candidate, and given the majority of the electors are committed to Biden, it would not be surprising if they picked Harris.

In addition to Harris there are a plethora of governors who could conceivably be good presidential candidates: Gavin Newsom of California; Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan; J.B. Pritzker of Illinois; Wes Moore of Maryland; Roy Cooper of North Carolina; Andy Beshear of Kentucky; Jared Polis of Colorado; and our own Josh Shapiro.

Other possibilities include Pete Buttigieg, a 2020 candidate and current secretary of transportation, and U.S. Sens. Raphael Warnock of Georgia and Cory Booker of New Jersey, though Democrats can’t afford to lose Warnock, since that would flip a hard-won Senate seat to the Republicans. Newsom is probably the most seasoned politician – he is excellent under pressure, and reminds me of Bill Clinton, both positively and negatively, in terms of how smooth he is. He has successfully governed the most populous state in the union, and while Republicans will attack him on California’s problems, such as homelessness, and the fact that he was the mayor of San Francisco, the bastion of the “coastal liberal elite”, I have seen him address those issues in a hostile environment and he handles himself impressively. Buttigieg and Harris are similarly adept debaters, being able to think on their feet and respond eloquently and incisively.

Beshear was elected governor in a red state, and Cooper has governed a purple state, so they may be attractive to Biden’s centrist Democrat delegates. Polis and Shapiro are both popular governors in states with mixed electorates; while Shapiro does not have much experience, he gained a lot of street cred (sorry) for how quickly he was able to get the I-95 bridge near Philadelphia repaired after it collapsed. Whitmer took a state that was trending Republican and put it back in the Democratic column. Being governor of a large state is probably the best job preparation for being president, though governors don’t get much practice in the foreign policy arena.

Only Harris – and to a lesser extent, Buttigieg and Booker – has been exposed to the high pressure and close scrutiny of a national campaign, so it will be risky to have these relatively untested candidates subject to the Republican smear machine as their first exposure to national politics, but fortune favors the bold. A strong new Democratic candidate would restore hope to a lot of the electorate.

Kent James is a member of East Washington’s borough council.