President Joe Biden’s endorsement of his vice president, Kamala Harris, on Sunday, just minutes after the former announced he was withdrawing from the presidential race, opened the floodgates of support for his number two. Throughout the afternoon and evening, hundreds of delegates, prominent governors such as Kentucky governor Andy Beshear, members of the Biden administration, and influential congressmen and senators including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elisabeth Warren, as well as the Clintons, aligned themselves with the possibility of Harris’ candidacy for the presidency of the United States.
After weeks of arguments and nerves following Biden’s disastrous performance before an audience of more than 50 million in his June 27 debate against Donald Trump… was that the sign that the entire party was finally united around the option? a priori more logical? Not all: some Democratic heavyweights have avoided making public their enthusiasm for the idea of Biden’s second-in-command stepping forward.
among those dissidents, There is former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who would prefer to hold a “mini-primary” to choose a candidate, and there is former President Barack Obama, whose entourage explained to the American media that he was applying the same caution as in the 2020 primaries, when he did not choose any of the candidates in the running. Others who are also keeping silent, interpreted as an act of responsibility, are the Democratic leaders in both chambers: the majority leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, and the minority leader in Congress, Hakeem Jeffries.
In the primaries, Biden secured the support of 3,939 delegates out of the just over 4,000 who will meet in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention, scheduled for August 19-22. Under party rules, those delegates are free to vote for whomever they want now that their candidate has dropped out of the race. Advocates of resolving the succession issue without further debate argue that those supporters were actually voting for the Democratic nominee. ticket formed by Biden and Harris.
The president’s campaign formally rebranded itself Sunday as “Harris for President,” giving the candidate access to an account that held $96 million in cash at the end of June. Those working on Biden’s ticket were also automatically moved to Harris’s. In the hours since the historic announcement of her resignation, her campaign has raised a record $50 million in donations, the bulk of them from small donors.
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So far, no other Democrat has come forward with a strong candidacy, although on Monday morning Joe Manchin, senator for West Virginia, seemed likely to do so. Manchin is one of the most influential politicians in Washington. A convinced centrist (an essential profile for a Democrat to win in a state as conservative as his own), he acted as a counterweight on Capitol Hill to Biden’s more progressive policies, especially environmental ones, which are detrimental to West Virginia’s important coal industry. Last May, he left the party and registered as an independent. Late on Sunday he threatened to return to the party in order to run for president. In the morning he denied that these were his intentions.
That Harris will most likely be the contender for the White House is also being considered by the Trump campaign, which in recent hours has sharpened its knives against her. Among other tactics, they have purchased ads attacking her in the decisive states. In those territories, Harris has better prospects than Biden had, and can also boast greater support among black voters, young people and women.
Harris, 59, also offers a much more forceful image than her boss did, and also than her Republican opponent, 78. This confrontation also hides an interesting twist of fate: the Democrat has a past as attorney general in California, while the Republican is a convicted felon, who was found guilty of 34 felonies by a New York jury in 2014. Stormy Daniels case.
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