As Democrats debate whether US President Joe Biden should stay in the 2024 race, the party turmoil is deepening over whether his vice president is next in line for the job or if a “mini primary” should be launched to choose a new nominee before the party’s August convention.
Kamala Harris hit the campaign trail on Saturday in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and picked up a nod from the state’s prominent Democratic senator, Elizabeth Warren, who said ahead of the visit that if Mr Biden was to step aside, his vice president is “ready to step up” and unite the party.
But installing Ms Harris to the top of the ticket is not at all certain.
Officials from the highest ranks, including speaker emerita Nancy Pelosi, prefer an open process, some believing it would strengthen any Democratic nominee to confront Republican Donald Trump.
“If you think that there is consensus among the people who want Joe Biden to leave… that they will support Kamala, Vice President Harris, you would be mistaken,” representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said this week on a widely discussed social media post.
With the publicly-aired deliberations, Democrats are prolonging an extraordinary moment of uncertainty and upheaval. Mr Biden has weighty options before him this weekend that could set the direction of the country and his party as the nation heads towards the November election.
It is creating a stark juxtaposition with Republicans who, after years of bitter and chaotic infighting over Mr Trump, are energised and embracing the former president’s far-right takeover of the party, despite his criminal conviction in a hush money case and pending federal criminal indictment for trying to overturn the 2020 election before the attack on the Capitol on January 6 2021.
Mr Biden, despite a week of campaign stops, interviews and insistence that he is the best candidate to take on Mr Trump in a rematch, has not been able to quell the uproar.
Sceptical Democrats doubt he can keep the White House after his stumbled debate performance last month, and worry he will take hopes for party control of Congress down with him.
On Saturday, representative Mark Takano, the top Democrat on the House Veterans Affairs Committee, added his name to the list of nearly three dozen Democrats in Congress who say it is time for Mr Biden to leave the race. The Californian called on Mr Biden to “pass the torch” to Ms Harris.
More politicians are expected to speak out in the days ahead. Donors have raised concerns.
“There is no joy in the recognition he should not be our nominee in November,” said Democratic representative Morgan McGarvey of Kentucky, one of the Democrats urging Mr Biden’s exit from the race.
From his beach home in Delaware, Mr Biden, 81, is isolating after announcing a Covid infection, but also politically with a small circle of family and close advisers.
White House doctor Kevin O’Connor said on Saturday that the president’s symptoms were improving, but that he was still plagued by a dry cough and hoarseness.
The president’s team insisted he is ready to return to the campaign this coming week to counter what he called a “dark vision” laid out by Mr Trump.
“Together, as a party and as a country, we can and will defeat him at the ballot box,” Mr Biden said in a statement on Friday.
Very few of the Democratic politicians who are agitating for Mr Biden to leave have mentioned Ms Harris in their statements, and some have said they favour an open nominating process that would throw the party’s endorsement behind a new candidate.
A person familiar with Ms Pelosi’s thinking said that while she is a friend and admirer of the vice president, she believes that anybody who wants to be president is better served by such a process, believing that whomever emerges as the candidate at the convention would be strengthened to win the election.
Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, a Pelosi ally who had called on Mr Biden to step aside, said on Friday that some kind of “mini-primary” that would include Ms Harris makes sense.
Democratic senators Jon Tester of Montana and Peter Welch of Vermont have both called for Mr Biden to exit the race and said they would favour an open nominating process at the convention.
Other Democrats say it would be politically unthinkable to move past Ms Harris to a different nominee, and logistically unworkable with a virtual nominating vote being planned for early next month, before the Democratic convention opens in Chicago on August 19.
Minnesota representative Betty McCollum, who has called on Mr Biden to step aside, explicitly endorsed Ms Harris as a replacement.
“To give Democrats a strong, viable path to winning the White House, I am calling upon President Biden to release his delegates and empower vice president Harris to step forward to become the Democratic nominee for president,” Ms McCollum said in her statement.
The stand-off over Mr Biden’s political future has become increasingly untenable for the party and its leaders, a month from the Democratic National Convention that should be a unifying moment to nominate their incumbent president to confront Mr Trump. Instead, the party is at a crossroads unseen in generations.
It is unclear what else, if anything, the president could do to reverse course and win back politicians and Democratic voters, who are wary of his ability to defeat Mr Trump and serve another term after his halting debate performance last month.
Mr Biden, who sent a defiant letter to Democrats in Congress vowing to stay in the race, has yet to visit Capitol Hill to shore up support, an absence noticed by senators and representatives.
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