By Pascal Ibe
President Joe Biden just announced he is dropping out of the presidential race, a seismic moment not only for this year’s presidential election but American history.
So … now what?
It isn’t totally unprecedented for an incumbent president to not seek another term, but the particularities around Biden — both concerns about his fitness to hold the office of the presidency and the sheer size of a modern campaign apparatus that he controls — pushes the country into uncharted waters. And it comes after he had already dominated the primaries to become the presumptive nominee.
There are a lot of questions — and a lot of unknowns — about this unique moment. Here’s what we know so far.
Is Biden still the president?
Yes. While Biden announced that he was stepping off the Democratic ticket, that doesn’t remove him from office. He remains the country’s commander in chief until either the next president is inaugurated in January, or he chooses to step down at a later date. He said in his social media statement announcing his decision that he would finish his term.
“And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term,” he wrote.
Almost no Democrats who called for Biden to step off the ticket have also called on him to resign from office early, although some Republicans in Congress have raised that prospect.
Theoretically, Biden could also be removed from office by his Cabinet via the 25th Amendment — the same amendment that was frequently discussed but ultimately not invoked for then-President Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 riot in 2021 — if they feel he can no longer serve. So far, no cabinet official has indicated that.
So who is the next Democratic nominee?
Biden’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris gives her a major leg-up in the fight for the nomination, but that doesn’t mean it’s a slam dunk. Although Biden faced only nominal opposition in the Democratic primary and won nearly every contest, he was not yet the party’s official nominee, and he cannot make a unilateral decision.
Broadly, when Americans vote in primaries, they are not voting directly for a candidate but kicking off a process that will ultimately send delegates to the party’s national convention. Those delegates are the ones who officially pick the nominee — and the Democrats’ convention hasn’t happened yet.
The convention is scheduled for Aug. 19-22 in Chicago — although party leaders were considering a “virtual” roll call to name the nominee earlier in the month. The DNC must now decide if it wants to carry through with its plan.
All of those nearly 3,800 Biden delegates have now become free agents. Even with Biden’s endorsement, the delegates who were pledged to him are under no obligation, according to the Democratic National Committee’s rules, to follow his lead and support his chosen successor.
Who can run for the nomination?
Anyone who can garner enough signatures to have their name placed in nomination. Candidates need signatures from at least 300, but no more than 600, delegates — and delegates can sign only one candidate’s petition. Additionally, a candidate cannot submit more than 50 delegates from a given state — a provision to ensure that all candidates placed in nomination earn support from a broad swath of the country.
There are roughly 4,700 delegates, capping the number of possible candidates at around 15. But functionally there will be far fewer: The pressure to avoid a messy nomination vote will be enormous.
Who are the delegates, and how does the roll call vote work?
Of the 4,700 convention delegates, just under 4,000 are “pledged” delegates awarded according to the results of the presidential primaries earlier this year. Biden won roughly 95 percent of them, according to The Green Papers, a website that tracks the arcane process of delegate selection.
There are another roughly 750 “automatic” delegates — the group once known as “superdelegates.” They are elected officials, party leaders and former luminaries, like former presidents (Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter) and former DNC chairs.
After the 2016 campaign, these “automatic” delegates were stripped of their role in the first round of voting and only get to vote for the nominee in subsequent rounds if no candidate earns a majority on the first ballot — or if that rule is waived, as was the case in 2020, when Biden had the support of a majority of pledged delegates.
There are questions about whether the DNC will continue with that plan now that Biden has ended his campaign. If the vote instead occurs on the convention floor, DNC rules provide 20 minutes of nominating speeches for every certified candidate prior to the first ballot.
If no candidate earns a majority of the vote on that first ballot, automatic delegates join the voting for the second round — and voting continues until a majority of eligible delegates have voted for a specific candidate.
That candidate officially becomes the nominee “upon the conclusion of their acceptance speech,” according to DNC rules.
What about the vice presidential nominee?
Functionally, the presidential nominee selects their running mate. But there is still a DNC process, and it’s essentially identical to the presidential nominating procedure with one major difference: Automatic delegates get to vote on the first ballot.
What happens to Biden’s campaign infrastructure … and the money?
As of the end of June, Biden’s campaign had $96 million in the bank, and staffers — and field offices — across the country. That’s a massive amount of infrastructure … who gets it now?
There is no real precedent for a ticket switch in this era of big money elections. But many campaign finance experts have argued that as long as Harris remains on the ticket — potentially as the presidential nominee, but also if she is nominated for vice president again — she can fairly seamlessly assume control of that bank account. The money, after all, was given to a Biden-Harris committee registered for both of them, not just the president.
This view is not universally held; Charlie Spies — a prominent Republican election lawyer who briefly worked as the Republican National Committee’s chief counsel earlier this year before reportedly being chased off by Trump and his allies — argued in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that Harris was not entitled to that money, raising the specter that somebody would try to block that handoff in court.
Campaigns can also make unlimited transfers to their respective party committees, so perhaps the cleanest outcome — especially if Harris is not on the ticket — would be the Biden campaign giving his cash to the Democratic National Committee, which could then spend it on the upcoming elections.
But all of this is unprecedented territory.
Has this ever happened before?
Most modern presidents have sought a second term — with Lyndon B. Johnson as a notable exception. After assuming the remainder of John F. Kennedy’s term and winning a full term outright in 1964, Johnson was planning on running again in 1968.
But he was dragged down by the unpopular Vietnam War, and only squeaked out a win in the New Hampshire primary. A vulnerable Johnson — facing the anti-war Eugene McCarthy and a late entrance from Robert Kennedy — announced to a shocked nation in March 1968 that he would no longer seek his party’s nomination for president.
Soon after, Hubert Humphrey — his vice president — would launch a campaign of his own. The assassination of Kennedy changed the dynamics of the race, and Humphrey won the nomination on the first ballot at a convention in Chicago that turned violent around a debate over the Vietnam War and the party platform.
Humphrey went on to lose to Richard Nixon that November.
