Joe Biden withdraws candidacy and endorses Vice President Kamala Harris, 'a much stronger candidate'

FRANCE 24 English

Visit our website: http://www.france24.com  Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English  Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/France24_en

Transcript

00:00I do want to stay on this story and cross over to speak to Stephen Daferis,

00:03a former prosecutor and former president of the International Association of Lawyers.

00:09It's great to have you on the programme, Stephen. Obviously, this comes after weeks of mounting

00:14pressure on Biden. What do you think finally broke the camel's back here, so to speak,

00:19and got Biden to step aside? I don't think anybody knows,

00:24although paradoxically, it may have been a gift to him to have COVID and be required to

00:31isolate and sit without public events, without campaigning, and have an opportunity to reflect

00:39with those closest to him, with his family in particular. But as a practical matter,

00:46it's not possible to believe that he did not himself recognise his physical limitations,

00:55and it must have been extraordinarily frustrating to him to know what he wanted to say and not be

01:02able to communicate it effectively as he has done effectively throughout his whole career.

01:07So I think that, even more than perhaps the pressures of the

01:13of the leading Democrats, may have made the difference. He's a very stubborn man. He still

01:22has a great deal of bitterness about the manner in which he was pushed out of the

01:29nomination by President Obama in 2016 in favour of Hillary Clinton. And I think that he was

01:38resistant because he's always, as he always puts it, been a fighter and the comeback kid and all

01:45that. But I think he finally realised that he was going to lead his party to defeat,

01:52and that Kamala Harris would be a much stronger candidate.

01:59Stephen Dreyfuss, do stay with us because I do want to cross back to you. I want to bring in

02:03our international affairs editor, Ketavan Ghorjasdani again. Ketavan, walk us through

02:07what's next for the Democratic Party now. Well, look, there are two options, really. One is to

02:14sort of follow Joe Biden's lead and go full force on Kamala Harris as the top of the ticket and

02:22figure out the logistics of getting her confirmed at the Democratic Convention, which is going to

02:28start on August 19th. That would be the logistically, as we heard our previous guests talk about,

02:35logistically the easiest, but also in a way politically, because think about the image

02:41in the United States within the Democratic Party of setting aside the vice president,

02:48the first woman vice president, the first African-American woman vice president in

02:55favour of somebody else, likely a white male, when she is, on top of that, the vice president and

03:03endorsed by the sitting president. It would be very complicated politically, so they'll have to

03:08make that decision, but it's not necessarily completely a done deal. It does help her a lot

03:14that Joe Biden came out very quickly after his announcement to say that he was endorsing her,

03:20and you've seen some Democrats following his lead, but there could still be some voices within the

03:25Democratic Party that say, look, this is not the top of the ticket that we had voted for,

03:30we need to give others a chance. In that case, it would be an open convention, which would be a

03:36sort of mini-primary, if you will, and then there would be different candidates. The question is

03:43who right now in the leading Democrats around the US, whether they're senators or governors,

03:50who have potentially down-the-road presidential plans, maybe for 2028, risking going against the

03:58vice president right now in this short of a time, could be complicated. So I think the

04:06balance right now is tipping in Kamala Harris's favor. We'll see in the next few days who comes

04:11out in supporting her, and I think the more you see sort of big figures of the Democratic Party

04:17endorsing her, the likelihood that she's going to get the top of the ticket is going to increase

04:23with that. But then there's another question that comes with, is it her? Who is her running mate?

04:31Because she's going to have to make that decision much, much quicker than any other presidential

04:37candidate in history. And the idea, the general idea, is that she would need someone to balance

04:44her weaknesses, and that doesn't necessarily represent the same demographics from the

04:51Democratic Party. She's a black woman from California, so she likely maybe will be aiming

04:58for potentially a white man from maybe one of the swing states. Some of the names that are popping

05:05out are the governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro. There's also Mark Kelly of Arizona.

05:12There's maybe also the governor of Kentucky, Andy Beshear. Kentucky is a red state, but he's

05:18managed to be re-elected. So there are plenty of options. The question is, what targets,

05:25what demographic targets are they going to be looking for when she decides who to choose? And

05:31of course, everyone is going to have an opinion as to who would be the best candidate. But I think

05:37in the next few days, there's going to be a lot of discussions going on within the Democratic Party

05:42to figure out which road they take, Kamala Harris or an open convention. And then if they do go

05:50full force behind her, who is she going to pick and who is going to be the best running mate to

05:55give them the best chances to beat Donald Trump in 2024? And to go back to what Fraser was saying

06:03at the very beginning, this has really flipped completely the campaign on its head. And Donald

06:09Trump can say that she will be easier to beat as much as he wants when you listen to what the

06:14Republicans were saying during the whole Republican convention, was that they were pretty happy to

06:19have Joe Biden because they felt that it was going to be an easy win for them. So those comments by

06:24Donald Trump don't really align with what the Republicans were saying. Well, let's cross back

06:29to Washington and speak to Fraser Jackson, our correspondent there. Fraser, Ketavan Ghojasani

06:34just hinted at those questions that are going to be surrounding who Kamala Harris could potentially

06:40pick as vice president. Yeah, let me tell you, this is something that we've been discussing

06:47amongst us as journalists for quite some time. And also something we've been discussing with sources

06:52in the government and on the Hill and various different places. There are a couple of big names

06:56that people have been bandied around as to who could potentially replace Joe Biden. Obviously,

07:00now Joe Biden says he wants it to be Kamala Harris. And when you look at people like Gavin

07:05Newsom, the governor of California, he could not be vice president because he's also from

07:10California and you can't have the vice presidential pick and the presidential pick being from the same

07:16state. So it's unlikely to be him. It's also you have to think about somebody like Gretchen Whitmer,

07:20somebody who's been pushed as a potential future presidential candidate. Would they want to almost

07:25waste that inertia, that momentum on being a vice presidential pick and just rather go for

07:31a 2028 nomination? Or would they think that maybe being VP first would be a great shoo-in to maybe

07:38then take over the top of the ticket themselves? So that is also a question that people could be

07:42weighing. And if that's the case, you also have to look at people like Ketavan Ghojasani,

07:46Josh Shapiro, who people have been putting forward and is somebody that has quite a lot

07:52of support within the democratic infrastructure. There's also, interestingly, the governor of North

07:58Carolina, Roy Cooper, who might be a bit of a somewhat of a long shot, but we were watching

08:02him when Kamala Harris went recently to North Carolina to do a campaign event. And he was

08:07extremely flattering towards Kamala Harris, was really pushing her record and what she'd done

08:14while she was VP. So a lot of ears got pricked at that time as to whether he was potentially

08:20setting himself up for a vice presidential run if Kamala did indeed become the presidential

08:25nominee, which she now could well become given that Joe Biden has given her endorsements.

08:30So there's also people like Chris Murphy, the senator from New Jersey, which would really secure

08:35the eastern part of the United States vote. But I think Ketavan is correct. It would be

08:40probably a good idea to choose somebody from one of the key swing states to try to lock one of

08:46those down. So somebody like Josh Shapiro would be a great choice, I believe, for the Democrats.

08:53But at the moment, it is a wide open discussion, but we're going to have to find out very soon

08:58because the nominations for the presidential election needs to be done in just the next

09:04couple of weeks. There's a quirk in Ohio state law which says that whoever is going to be the

09:08democratic nominee has to be on the ticket and locked in by the 7th of August. That means that

09:14all those delegates that were pledged to Joe Biden are going to have to choose who is going to be

09:19his replacement candidate between August the 1st, which is when the voting will start,

09:23and August the 7th. And that is before we get to the Democratic convention, which is in mid-August.

09:29So there isn't much time now, really, and we are really in uncharted waters when it comes to

09:35presidential history. The last time there was an open convention was in 1968. And since then,

09:41we've not really had this kind of uncertainty this close to election day. So it really is a

09:46fascinating time in American politics. And there's also questions over whether Joe Biden will remain

09:52president. He says he will. The White House that I've spoken to says that he will remain on as

09:56president. But that is not going down well with Republicans, who argue that if he decides that

10:01he's not good enough to run for the nominee and for the next election, 2024, that he's therefore

10:08unfit to hold office in the next four months. The Democrats don't believe that, and neither does Joe

10:13Biden. So they're trying to hush that and to push that away. But that is likely to be a lot of noise

10:17coming from Capitol Hill over the next few months until we get to election day in November.

10:23Fraser, thank you so much for that. Let's bring in Stephen Dreyfuss once again. He's a former

10:27prosecutor and former president of the International Association of Lawyers. Great to have you again,

10:33Stephen. I want to get your thoughts on what Donald Trump has been saying. CNN is reporting

10:38that Trump says Harris would be easier to beat than Trump. Give us your assessment of that.

10:46Yeah, I agree with your colleagues. That's putting a good face on it. I mean, keep in mind that

10:53all of his surrogates, including his son, were just on television even this morning here,

11:00criticizing the Democrats for being anti-democratic, for trying to get rid of Joe

11:08Biden because 14 million Democrats had voted for him in the primaries. They were doing everything

11:15they could to put pressure on the Democrats to keep him because they thought he was

11:20the easier candidate to beat. From the legal perspective, Ohio has purported to change its law

11:27to eliminate that deadline. But nevertheless, because the legislature is Republican,

11:32the Democrats don't trust it and don't trust the legislature to keep that in place.

11:37So they already have scheduled a meeting this coming Friday to adopt a set of rules. This is

11:43the Democratic National Committee, to adopt a set of rules by which there would be a virtual

11:49vote of the convention delegates beginning August 1st and running through August 7th

11:55to designate the party's nominee before the convention. My view of it is that I think that

12:03Kamala Harris will choose a vice presidential candidate very quickly so that at the time of

12:09that vote, she and the vice presidential candidate can both be nominated. Then I think there are

12:17going to be contests throughout the United States because keep in mind that under American law,

12:24the qualifications for candidates running, even for federal office, are a matter of state law. So

12:32each state decides what the deadlines are and who are the legitimate candidates to be put on their

12:39ballot. I'm sure the Republicans will fight a rearguard battle and try to have a situation in

12:48which Kamala Harris does not get on the ballot everywhere in the United States. So we'll have

12:52a fight about that. As far as Biden's leaving office before January 20th next year,

13:00that isn't going to happen. But we are certainly going to hear from the Republicans all sorts of

13:05pressure. But they cannot force it. Under the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the only way

13:12that the president can be removed for disability is if the vice president and a majority of the president's

13:19cabinet. I'm going to have to interrupt you there. We are running out of time, but we do really want

13:23to thank you for coming on the program and giving us your insight to our viewers. Thank you so much

13:27as well. Do stay tuned. We'll have plenty more coming up.

Category

Transcript

Recommended