Time will soon tell whether Democrats move in lockstep to support Vice President Kamala Harris as the party’s nominee in the presidential race or if competing candidates emerge after President Joe Biden’s decision on Sunday to not seek reelection and to endorse his vice president.
John Cluverius, a political science professor at UMass Lowell and director of research for the university’s Center for Public Opinion, said Sunday afternoon that the next 24 to 48 hours will reveal a lot about the Democrats’ bid to hold on to the presidency.
Meanwhile, the coming weeks will tell how well the GOP pivots, as well, in its quest to win the White House, he said.
The Republican campaign strategy has been to unify behind the party’s standard bearer, Donald Trump.
Now, the GOP will need to convert its message to why Americans should support Trump over Harris if she becomes the nominee.
Cluverius thinks the increasing Democratic pressure placed on Biden to drop out, and the president’s decision to do so, was driven by an Electoral College calculation that showed Biden running behind Trump in swing states and hurting Democratic senators’ election chances in states that include Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania.
Cluverius said Harris has been a leading voice, more so than Biden, in the Democratic Party’s rallying cry to restore women’s abortion rights, a stance that pollsters have identified as a strength for the party in the race, given that the president nominates U.S. Supreme Court justices.
In 2022, conservative justices appointed by Trump and other Republican presidents overturned Roe v. Wade (1973), the constitutional right to an abortion, in their decision in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case.
If the Democrats hold an open convention, leaving it to the floor to select the nominee, the party runs the risk of turning off Americans, he said.
The old open convention model represents in some voters’ minds elements that they dislike about politics.
One is disunity, the inevitable sniping that would likely emerge among competing candidates if the nomination is contested.
Two is chaos. The convention is typically the time when the party rallies around its candidate. If much of the convention is spent deciding who the candidate will be, then the element of uncertainty could creep into the equation, Cluverius said.
Finally, a disputed convention could lead to worries about conspiratorial forces determining the nominee – power brokers or elite party members choosing the nominee as opposed to the party members, he said.
At the local level, Republican and Lawrence City Councilor Marc Laplante said the GOP looks strong in its bid for the presidency coming out of a convention in Milwaukee where the party united behind Trump.
At the same time, the Democrats appear wobbling as they head toward their convention in Chicago, he said.
“They are trying to get their sea legs under them and they are running out of time,” Laplante said.
He said Biden made the right choice by dropping out of the race.
Laplante said he understands on a personal level, having gone through the experience with his own parents, how it can be devastating for older people to lose the ability to make important decisions.
“Many of us understand the issues of having parents with diminished capacity and frailty,” he said.
As president, Biden’s decisions influence the entire world, so it is all the more important that a person in that position is mentally sharp and inspires confidence, Laplante said.