Could Democrats replace Joe Biden at an ‘open convention’?

Were Joe Biden to bow to intense pressure to drop out of the 2024 race, the question of who would take on Donald Trump in his place would probably be decided at a potentially explosive Democratic convention next month.

Democrats had hoped the event would be a moment to show unity behind their candidate. But after the US president’s shaky performance in last week’s debate, many in the party are calling on Biden to drop out only months before election day in November.

Here is what could happen at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on August 19 if Biden steps aside.

What is an open convention?

An “open convention” is when there is no pre-determined nominee because no candidate has a clear majority of delegates.

It means that, unusually, “the actual voting at the convention is going to matter”, said Hans Noel, a professor of government at Georgetown University.

By contrast, a “contested convention” refers to when a frontrunner is not guaranteed a first-ballot win, and another candidate tries to peel delegates away for their own support before the initial round of voting.

The last gruelling Democratic floor fight was in 1980, when Senator Ted Kennedy mounted a challenge to President Jimmy Carter.

A “brokered convention” was more common before the modern primary system, when the failure to nominate a candidate on the first ballot would lead to party power brokers presiding over smoke-filled backroom negotiations. The last brokered convention took place in 1952.

What could happen in Chicago?

There are 3,937 pledged delegates at the DNC, with 1,976 needed to win. Biden has 99 per cent of those pledged delegates. Were he to drop out, they would be free to vote for whichever candidate they wanted.

On the first ballot, “we would see if anybody gets a majority, and then if nobody gets a majority, there would be another round of voting”, said Derek Muller, a professor at the University of Notre Dame Law School.

After the first ballot, so-called superdelegates — more than 700 party figureheads including members of Congress, state governors and DNC officials — would start voting as well.

Delegates would keep voting on successive ballots until a candidate gets a majority and is declared the winner.

A big question would be “how that whole process of negotiating, and bargaining, and trying to bring together different factions of the party would play out unless there was some consensus that emerged before the convention about who the alternative candidate ought to be”, said Richard Pildes, a constitutional law professor at New York University School of Law.

Should the party come to a consensus ahead of the convention, chaos could be avoided.

Who could become the nominee?

Given her status as Biden’s running mate, vice-president Kamala Harris would be a favourite, despite her own low approval ratings.

“I would presume vice-president Harris would receive the bulk of those votes, but maybe not necessarily. And there might be others who throw their names into the ring,” said Muller.

Other potential contenders include California governor Gavin Newsom, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro and Illinois governor JB Pritzker, along with other long-shots.

Harris would “start off, certainly, with a lot of political weight”, said Pildes. “My speculation would be that major figures in the party would try to co-ordinate in advance of the convention on who the alternative might be.”

Biden could endorse a candidate, which could carry significant political weight, especially among all of his pledged delegates, who by definition were chosen for their loyalty.

“I don’t know if he would make an endorsement,” said Noel. If Biden made a clear statement, his delegates might follow his cue. “But how much [weight] I don’t know,” Noel added. Biden’s endorsement might not give a new candidate a majority of delegates immediately.

Would this be risky for the Democrats?

Yes.

“I think it’s really risky,” said Noel. Biden “probably knows that there would be a lot of chaos, which there would be, and so he doesn’t want to invite that”.

One of the biggest dangers of pushing Biden out is that the ensuing nomination battle would lay bare all the fractures within the Democratic party, particularly on topics such as US support for Israel in its war in Gaza. Biden and the rest of the party would need to weigh the risk of losing with a damaged nominee against turning off voters with convention mayhem.

It would “be really ugly, right at the same time that you’re trying to get everyone excited about building from the ground up”.

There would also be a procedural wrinkle to sort out: right now, the official roll call — when state delegations announce their nominee selection — is scheduled to take place virtually weeks before the DNC begins on August 19.

Party veterans still shudder at the memory of 1968, the most famous example of what can go wrong on the floor. Then-president Lyndon B Johnson shocked the nation by dropping out of the race amid tanking popularity and opposition to the war in Vietnam.

Robert F Kennedy, who hoped to be the nominee, was assassinated that June, leaving Hubert Humphrey to win the party’s backing at a Chicago convention marred by protests over the war. Humphrey lost to Richard Nixon in the general election.

Could there be a convention coup if Biden does not drop out?

This is possible but extremely unlikely.

Though delegates are pledged to vote for a candidate at the convention, “they’re not actually bound by the party rules to do that”, said Pildes. DNC rules simply state that delegates “shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them”.

If a lot of delegates bound together to switch from Biden, and if “they all jumped, and they had the coup there, then everybody in the party would go along with it”, Noel said.

But in reality, “it’s a strange thing to imagine that would happen”, Noel added, particularly since delegates have been selected because they think Biden should be the nominee.

“I don’t think it’s likely that this is just going to happen because a handful of delegates oppose him,” Muller said.

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