Is Kamala Harris the presumptive Democratic nominee? Not quite.
Despite being rumored about for weeks, President Joe Biden's decision this past weekend to drop out of the presidential election still came as a shock to most political observers. And while some of the questions were answered on Sunday — will he really do it? (Yes.) Will he endorse Vice President Kamala Harris? (Also yes.) — many other questions remain. Given that we have no precedent for this in the modern era, it's understandable if you're a bit confused right now. Here are the answers to some of the FAQs swirling around right now, with help from some expert sources, to help you get your bearings as we embark on a new political frontier.
Is Kamala Harris now the Democratic nominee for president?
No — at least not yet. It's true that Biden endorsed Harris, his campaign funds have been transferred to her campaign, a huge wave of Democratic lawmakers and party elites have formally endorsed her candidacy, and a majority of Democratic Party delegates have said they will back her. But until those delegates vote to make her the nominee, she's still just a candidate. She also isn't the "presumptive nominee," as Biden was (and as her campaign has taken to calling her): That's a term used to describe a candidate who has won the support of the majority of delegates through primary elections and is thus expected to become the party's nominee at the convention, presuming those delegates honor their pledged votes.
Wait, weren't the delegates already pledged to Biden?
Through the primary elections, Biden won the pledged support of a majority of delegates. Before he dropped out, 3,886 delegates had pledged to support Biden to become the nominee (nearly all of 3,949 possible pledged delegates). Since the delegates who say they will back Harris weren't elected to do so through a primary election, they are free to vote for whomever they choose, even if they've informally pledged to support Harris. This is different from a so-called "faithless elector," who is pledged to vote for a certain candidate and has the opportunity to do so, but instead votes for someone else. Since Biden is no longer in the running, they won't be considered faithless.
Also notable is the fact that, unlike the Republican Party, where delegates are "bound" to a candidate, the Democratic Party rules simply state that a delegate must "in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them." Caitlin Jewitt, a political science professor at Virginia Tech, said that language means, technically, the delegates could always vote for someone other than Biden.
And now that Biden has dropped out, those electors have even more standing to choose a new nominee, especially since there wasn't a competitive primary process. "[Delegates must] 'reflect the sentiments of those who elected them,' [but] that didn't even happen to begin with," Jewitt said. "These delegates don't have instructions from voters via primaries that they're ignoring." In other words, it's not as if voters chose Biden over Harris in a primary election this year (as they did in 2020). If that were the case, it would be a lot dicier for delegates to turn around and vote for a candidate voters had rejected. Instead, Biden was unopposed by any serious candidates in the primary, so for delegates to back Harris now arguably wouldn't violate the rules. (You might even argue that would most closely honor the rules, since Biden — whom voters chose — endorsed Harris, and she was on the ticket as his running mate.)
As of July 23 at 2:09 p.m. Eastern, 3,004 delegates had said they now plan to back Harris — well over the threshold of 1,976 votes that she would need to secure the nomination.
So, does that mean Democrats will confirm their nominee at the Democratic National Convention next month?
While they won't convene in person until the Democratic National Convention takes place in Chicago on Aug. 19-22, DNC officials signaled Monday night that the party plans to move forward with a virtual roll call vote to confirm their nominee as early as Aug. 1, and no later than Aug. 7. While this move is obviously beneficial for party officials hoping to provide certainty and avoid chaos at the convention, the plan to hold a virtual vote was actually already in place before Biden dropped out. It was originally planned in an attempt to avoid running up against state deadlines for naming a nominee to appear on the ballot in November.
That concern initially arose because Ohio's deadline for a party to certify its presidential candidates would have fallen on Aug. 7 (90 days before Election Day), before the Democratic convention. In May, Ohio lawmakers passed a law that moved the deadline to 65 days before Election Day, which this year falls on Sept. 1, well after the DNC. However, that law doesn't come into effect until Sept. 1, meaning this year's deadlines fall in a window where, technically, the new law is not yet in effect. Rick Hasen, a law professor and election law expert at the University of California, Los Angeles, said there's no reason to think Ohio wouldn't honor the later deadline, but that gray period did leave some Democratic Party leaders feeling squirrely about getting the nomination shored up sooner. The same thing goes for a handful of other states whose deadlines fall sometime during the week of the convention, including Washington state, where the deadline for parties to transmit their candidate to appear on the ballot is Aug. 20, the second day of the convention.
Some critics claimed the DNC was using concerns over ballot access timelines as an excuse to speed up the nomination process in order to secure Biden's status amid growing pressure for him to step down. But now that he actually has stepped down, moving forward with the virtual roll call will help preempt the same questions of ballot access for Harris or any other nominee, according to Derek Muller, an election law professor at the University of Notre Dame. "It's obviously a deadline that Democrats don't want to fool around with," Muller said. "The plan is to resolve this all in the next couple of weeks. I think that would be the most straightforward approach."
What about lawsuits? Will there be any legal challenges to all this?
Even before Biden's withdrawal from the race, conservative activists had raised the threat of legal suits challenging Democrats' ability to "replace" Biden on state ballots, but experts say his withdrawal came safely before that would have become an issue. Nothing in this process is likely to attract a challenge, according to Hasen and Muller, except for the fact that the Biden campaign transferred its funds to the Harris campaign. The rules around that, considering Harris's name was on the same ticket, are a bit fuzzy, and both experts told me they wouldn't be surprised if a Republican campaign or group decided to bring a legal challenge around that. However, considering how slow the Federal Election Commission is to deliberate on these kinds of issues, it's unlikely to have a significant impact on the race at this juncture.
OK, but it's definitely going to be Harris, right?
Surely you've learned by now that there's no such thing as "definitely" in 2024 electoral politics. Another candidate could still put his or her name forward, and delegates are free to vote for whomever they choose, so nothing is set in stone until that vote happens (virtually or in person). However, given the quick and widespread support Harris has already garnered among pledged delegates and from fellow Democrats — including from most of the names that had been bandied around as potential challengers to the vice president, such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer — she and her campaign are understandably feeling pretty confident so far.
This is all uncharted territory, and the story is evolving at a breakneck pace. (It's been just 48 hours since Biden dropped out!) DNC officials plan to meet virtually on Wednesday to discuss next steps in the nomination process, and we should have more clarity in the next week about who the nominee will be and how the Democratic Party plans to move forward. Until then, all the average voter can do is sit back, grab some popcorn (and maybe a coconut water?) and watch what happens next.
