Kamala Harris 'obvious candidate to replace' Biden should he bow out
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00:00For some analysis let's bring in Richard Johnson. He's Senior Lecturer in US Politics at London's
00:05Queen Mary University. Thank you so much for being with us on the programme this morning.
00:11Firstly, we saw some of the press conference there in that report. Any missteps really from
00:18Biden at this point? They're taking on a huge importance, aren't they? What did you make of
00:22this latest performance during that highly anticipated press conference?
00:26That's right. Ever since the debate, every action that Biden takes is under the microscope.
00:32And I have to say, in the last couple of weeks, he has done a reasonable job of trying to say
00:38and do the things to try his best to reassure people that he should be the nominee. He's gone
00:43out and done campaign events. He's done interviews. He's had elected officials speak out on his behalf
00:51and he held this press conference. But I'm afraid that even in doing that, mistakes and
00:57cracks emerge. And actually, I thought Nancy Pelosi put it quite well when she said,
01:02is this an episode, speaking of the debate, or a condition? And if the condition is ageing, then
01:10it's very difficult to reassure people otherwise, because ageing is not something that stops
01:16or goes away. And every little slip up, the calling Zelensky, President Putin, calling
01:22Kamala Harris, Vice President Trump, on their own, they could be excused as this is a gaffe-prone
01:28politician who's made verbal slip ups his entire political career. But seen in the light of a
01:35concern about an ageing president, they take on a very weightier meaning.
01:42And Richard, the press conference itself, it largely played to Biden's strengths,
01:46focused a lot on foreign policy. But all the immediate attention, really,
01:51it is honing in on those slip ups, isn't it? It is. And Biden is trying to frame this. Again,
01:58he's getting good advice. He's trying to frame this as, in almost populist terms, he's saying
02:05the media is against me, the elites are against me, but the American public are with me.
02:11But unfortunately, that isn't actually accurate anymore. The proportion of Democrats who believe
02:17that he should stand down has shot up since the debate. The proportion of Democrats who think
02:23that he is too old for the job has shot up. We've gone from four years ago, you'd find about 40%
02:30of Americans would say he's too old to the job. Overwhelmingly, there were Republicans.
02:34That's about doubled. And that's because Democrats now think that he's too old for the job.
02:40We have the Republican convention coming up. That, I think, buys him a little bit of a reprieve.
02:46But also, I think it's important to say that the conversation for the last two weeks has not been
02:50really about Donald Trump or scrutinising Donald Trump or holding Trump to account from the
02:53Democrats' perspective. It's been about Joe Biden. It's two wasted weeks of a campaign.
02:59And I just don't see this story really going away, because Joe Biden will not stop ageing
03:05over the course of the campaign. Is it inevitable, then, Richard,
03:08that he will have to eventually bow out? It's not inevitable, because it ultimately is mostly
03:14going to be his choice. Biden is not the Democratic nominee, but he has 99% of the
03:214,000 delegates at the upcoming Democratic convention next month pledged to him.
03:27And so, if Biden does nothing, then we can expect those delegates to vote for him. So,
03:36if he — the path of least resistance is, in effect, Biden just to stay in place,
03:42and his delegates will nominate him at the convention. There are more extreme measures
03:46that could be taken, but those would involve, in effect, removing him from the presidency itself,
03:52invoking the 25th Amendment. And this is, I think, also one of the problems that Biden has.
03:57If Biden is saying that he's not up to the job from January, then questions are raised about,
04:03is he up to the job now? And that could be quite an awkward thing for him to navigate,
04:09even if he was willing to contemplate standing aside as the nominee.
04:14Yeah, and amid all this ongoing speculation, some media outlets in the U.S. are this morning
04:19reporting that the Biden campaign is also quietly assessing the viability of a Kamala Harris
04:25candidacy. Do you think, if Biden does step aside or is even forced to do so, that she's the obvious
04:30candidate to replace him? And who are the other contenders?
04:34She is the obvious candidate to replace him because she has — she is the only other person
04:40in the country who has a kind of national mandate in the sense that she was elected on the ticket
04:45in 2020. I think that an open convention or some kind of open process at this stage
04:54is too messy and too difficult. And ultimately, the selectorate at the convention is not like
05:00the old open conventions of, say, 70 years ago in the Democratic Party, where you had delegates
05:06from all different kinds of ideological persuasions in the party, and they would hear the speeches,
05:11and there would be debates and bartering and so on. These are all Biden delegates. So these are
05:18— this is — they're not representing a broad cross-section of the Democratic Party.
05:22And so I think that any other candidate other than Harris who has that legitimacy as vice
05:29president, as the person who's already first in line to the presidency, I think any other
05:34candidate, whatever process they came up with, would lack legitimacy. And I think that the losers
05:41would potentially question that individual who was selected. And the risk of that is that it
05:47puts Democrats off in November and turnout is depressed. And this is an election where the
05:52Democrats cannot afford to have depressed turnout because it really is on a knife edge, especially
05:58in those swing states. So I think that the most straightforward thing is for Biden to instruct
06:05his delegates to vote for Kamala Harris at the convention. And then there could be a contest
06:10for vice president, or Harris might decide to choose someone who helps to balance the ticket,
06:15maybe someone like Governor Shapiro of Pennsylvania or Governor Whitmer of Michigan,
06:23a Midwesterner. I think that might be a wise choice. People talked about Gavin Newsom,
06:27but I think having two Californians on the ticket might not be the best in terms of thinking about
06:33the electoral map. So if I were Kamala Harris and I was the nominee, I'd be looking at probably
06:40a Midwestern candidate or a candidate from a swing state like Georgia or Arizona to help balance off
06:48the ticket for the Electoral College. Finally, Richard, you referred to it earlier. Democrats
06:52will be hoping the attention will turn towards Republicans from next week. Their due to hold
06:57their national convention gets underway on Monday. Trump all the while is largely going
07:01under the radar, isn't he? Exactly. Trump has been very canny in a sense. I think he recognises
07:09from the debate night itself, there were rumours that after the debate, Trump was going to go into
07:14the spin room himself and talk to the press in the post-debate wash up. And he decided not to. And I
07:22think he knew that basically he didn't need to say anything because Joe Biden had said all that
07:29needed to be said from Trump's perspective. And indeed, that has mostly been the case for the
07:36last couple of weeks. It'll be interesting now in the upcoming week with the spotlight put on
07:43the Republicans. Will there be a bit more scrutiny? But I think we'll expect a repeated
07:51reinforcement of this message that Joe Biden isn't up to it, that Joe Biden is past it.
07:58And this is safe ground for the Republicans to be on because now a lot of Democrats in their
08:03hearts of heart and indeed openly agree with that. If I were the Democrats, I'd let the
08:08Republicans have their convention and then quite soon after the Republican convention, I'd have
08:12Biden come out and give a statement and say that he's going to not accept the nomination and
08:18therefore he will endorse his Vice President Kamala Harris to be the nominee. We'll see how it plays
08:24out, Richard. Thank you so much for joining us. We'll have to leave it there for now. That is
08:28Richard Johnson, Senior Lecturer in US Politics at London's Queen Mary University.