What Happens Now?

As I’m sure you’ve heard, President Biden has dropped out of the 2024 race, and has endorsed Vice President Harris as his successor.

This does NOT mean that she will be the candidate, only that he WANTS her to be his replacement. And remember, we have heard nothing yet (as of this writing) from Vice President Harris.

First, let us stop for a minute and honour Joe Biden: for his lifetime of service, for the most productive presidency in decades, for doing something completely counter to his personality of “you ain’t seen nothing yet, you have underestimated me” and for being a remarkable public servant for more than 50 years.

So what happens now? This is a great unknown because this has never happened before. No one is “the candidate” until the delegates vote. The plan HAD been to hold a virtual roll call starting 1 August, perhaps that will still occur. That would be a good thing given Ohio’s requirement for ballot access, which says candidates must be certified by 3 months prior to the election, which is 7 August. There would still be 10 days to “sell” Vice President Harris to the delegates prior to a virtual roll call.

However, there are some in the chattering class that want to see an open convention. The Rethuglican response to “anointing” Vice President will be a whole campaign that the “Democratic Elite” went behind the backs of the primary voters. Plus, while President Biden endorsed Vice President Harris, he has not (as of this writing) released his delegates.

So, we don’t know what the process will be. Things will become clearer over the next several days. We all need to wait to see what the DNC does. Ignore the chatterers, listen to the endorsements, and hold your breath.

Then there’s the money issue. While it appears that Harris could spend “Biden-Harris Campaign” monies, there are Republicans who have already indicated that WILL sue, and while there will likely be a stay as things wind through the courts, we’ll all need to get out our checkbooks as soon as there is a new candidate.

Bottom line for the next several weeks as things shake out: TALK TO VOTERS — no matter who the eventual candidate is, we are still fighting against this…

We must all get behind Democratic ideals, programs, policies and issue positions. We must hang together as people say (as I’ve heard recently) “A black person cannot win the US presidency” - last time I heard that was during the Obama-Clinton primary battle.

As I said at the start: the issues have not changed, we still must save democracy.

Floor is open for questions.