Voters and Democratic elites are concerned about President Biden's decision. age and ability to perform duties, as well as its lackluster vote against former President Trump. A move to register discontent with Biden in Tuesday's Michigan primary only magnified misgivings.
Some have even gone so far as to suggest that the party elect a new standard-bearer at this late date, perhaps through an old-fashioned “negotiated convention” that ignores the results of the primary elections. But replacing the presumptive nominee now would be bad for Democrats and democracy.
Biden will not officially become the nominee until he receives a majority of delegates' votes at the Democratic National Convention in August. But although only a few states have voted and less than 1% of delegates have been allocated, it is already too late for a new candidate to challenge Biden by entering the primary. Filing deadlines for most states' ballots have already passed, and states that didn't do so are not claiming enough delegates to win the nomination.
One question I have heard a lot is whether delegates could “go rogue” at the convention and elect another candidate. They could, but they won't.
From Democratic delegates are committed but not legally bound to their candidates, they could vote for someone else. But the delegates will be loyal Biden supporters chosen by his campaign and sent to the convention to vote for him. They will not abruptly decide to shift their allegiance elsewhere.
The only way Biden's delegates will abandon him is if the president decides not to run and encourages them to vote for someone else. For an ambitious incumbent to make that decision would likely take at least a lot of persuasion from party icons like former President Obama and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, along with a clearer sense that it's more likely to lose in November than any other Democrat. .
However, it is not obvious who that other Democrat would be. The most obvious choice would be Vice President Kamala Harris, but she is getting worse results than Biden, which makes it a risky and unlikely scenario. In the absence of any other clear alternative than one, instead of dividing the party, that includes a diverse coalition of voters and factions, it is unlikely that Democrats will be able to agree on a different candidate. The delegates could lead to chaos and all-out fighting at the convention, which certainly wouldn't improve the party's chances of winning in November.
Before embarking on this path, Democrats should take note of their own history. Delegates used to routinely determine nominees without direction from voters in primaries and caucuses.
In 1968, the Democrats nominate Vice President Hubert Humphrey for president at their convention in Chicago. Humphrey was not the choice of Democratic voters; He couldn't have been, because he didn't participate in a single primary. When he was nominated at the behest of party elites and delegates, protests broke out on the streets of Chicago and police and National Guard troops clashed violently with protesters.
Humphrey lost to Richard Nixon, and Democrats, recognizing the internal fissure as a threat to the party, took swift and significant steps to repair it. The McGovern-Fraser Commission overhauled the party's presidential nominating process, removing power from the “smoke-filled rooms” of party elites. The commission's recommendations reinforced the connection between voters' preferences and the eventual candidate.
Since then, the Democratic Party has remained committed to giving voters a voice. As recently as 2016, when the party established the Unity Reform Commission Following the nomination battle between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, Democrats sought to increase turnout by encouraging primaries instead of caucuses and increasing confidence in the fairness of the nomination process.
Having this year's delegates vote for someone other than Biden would undermine these goals, returning the Democratic Party to the decidedly less democratic era when voter preferences didn't make much of a difference.
I have argument that the parties retain more influence in the nomination process than is normally recognized, including by setting the rules of the contests. It can also be argued that the parties should have further say, an argument that was particularly prominent in 2016, when Republicans sought to retain Donald Trump to win the nomination.
But if either party wants to shift the balance of power back toward partisan elites, they should do so deliberately and transparently (as the Democratic Party has repeatedly done), not after voting has begun.
Maybe Democrats could use a different candidate for 2024. But it's too late for that. Primary voters had no meaningful choice in the matter, not because any serious candidate could come forward to run against Biden, but because none did. Delegates and the party should not decide to go in a different direction after several potential challengers refused to face voters.
When Democrats return to Chicago for another convention this summer, they should keep in mind that while their nominating process is not perfect, it is more democratic than ever. They have good reasons to keep it that way.
Caitlin E. Jewitt is an associate professor of political science at Virginia Tech and author of “The Primary Rules: Parties, Voters, and Presidential Nominations.”
