From Biden to Harris
Joe Biden’s decision to drop his bid for re-election in favor of Kamala Harris brings to mind a joke the comedian Will Rogers used to tell in the 1930s: “I’m not a member of any organized political party - I’m a Democrat.” Rogers humorously alluded then to the Democrats’ tradition of combining very different kinds of voters under the same partisan umbrella, who at times clashed loudly, and unpredictably. In Rogers’ day, the Dems were an unlikely combination of the cities (almost all of them in the North) and the South (which was mostly rural). While that Democratic coalition has faded over the last sixty years, its successor likewise contains a somewhat unlikely mix of upper-middle-class college-educated professionals, working-class black people, immigrants, and middle-income Americans of all races, creeds, and colors who mostly live in the nation’s major metros. Coming up with presidential candidates and party platforms that appeal to all of those kinds of people is a constant challenge, which often produces friction, and sometimes sudden, disorienting changes in personnel and policies.
Thus, Biden’s decision to withdraw from the 2024 presidential contest fits within a longer pattern of Democratic party history. In his lifetime, two other incumbent Democratic presidents decided to drop their bids for re-election: Harry Truman in 1952 and Lyndon Johnson in 1968. The two big differences between Biden’s decision and theirs has to do with motive and timing. Truman and Johnson were compelled to quit because their mishandling of unpopular wars (Korea and Vietnam, respectively) turned too many voters against them, and both did so during the primary season. Biden, in contrast, had to leave the race because his advanced age (81) and the problems it was creating made the prospect of another four-year term untenable. In some ways even more important is the difference in timing: Biden left the race after all of the primaries were over, leaving no easy way for rivals to enter the race thereafter.
Even Biden’s decision (while dropping out) to endorse his Vice President is in keeping with past Democratic practice. While Truman declined to take that step (because his VP, Alben Barkley, was elderly and experiencing cognitive decline), Johnson did just that, endorsing his Vice President, Hubert Humphrey, and urging delegates pledged to Johnson to support Humphrey instead. Humphrey actually entered the race so late that he didn’t compete in a single presidential primary in 1968, but still won the nomination that year due primarily to Johnson’s strong backing. Joe Biden, who turned 26 in 1968, still has vivid memories of that election and voted for Humphrey that fall.
But while there are similarities between the Truman and Johnson precedents and Biden’s, there are also differences. Due in part to the heavy-handed way party leaders pushed through Humphrey’s nomination, the Democratic party changed its nomination process afterward, increasing the number of primaries and reducing the power of party leaders. The goal was to increase the legitimacy of the party’s presidential nominees in the eyes of the Democratic base. Should Vice President Kamala Harris become the party’s nominee this year, she will be the first one to by-pass the primaries since Humphrey in 1968, which would make claiming a real mandate from rank and file Democrats hard to do. (Her weak performance in the 2020 nomination contest would make claim that even more difficult.) And the sense that she lacks a legitimate claim to the nomination would be even more of a problem today that it was back in 1968.
Another key difference has to do with the path-breaking nature of Harris’s candidacy for the presidency. Unlike Humphrey, a fairly conventional middle-class, white, male, career politician who had been nationally known for twenty years prior to his nomination, Harris is the daughter of a Jamaican immigrant father and an Indian immigrant mother who emerged onto the national political scene when she was elected to the U.S. Senate from California in 2016. Given her unusual background and relatively recent rise, it isn’t clear that Harris’s appeal to Democrats of various kinds will be as broad as Biden’s (or Humphrey’s) was.
What could help Harris the most to overcome those obstacles is if her rivals in the party quickly coalesce around her candidacy, which seems to be happening. Unlike the 1952 and 1968 Democratic party conventions, where delegates fought over who should be the incumbent president’s successor, all the signs so far are that this time no realistic alternatives will emerge, in part because Biden has dropped out so late in the process as to make mounting a challenge to her seemingly unworkable. Harris could also help herself by choosing a running mate who appeals to the kinds of Democrats who might finding relating to her difficult, such as white male heartlanders without a college education.
If Kamala Harris manages to unite her party behind her sudden, unexpected candidacy, she will have a decent chance at winning in the fall. But the odds, historically speaking, are against her. The last two times incumbent Democrats exited the presidential race, their Republican opponents ultimately won.