I must say that as a political scientist, this has been the wildest two weeks of American politics that I have ever witnessed.
First there was an assassination attempt and then an abdication.
Opinion
Well, it wasn’t really an abdication, Biden simply stepped aside, which was his right.
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Now some people are crying foul that other possible contenders for the party coronation, such as Gavin Newsome or Gretchen Whitmer, were denied the opportunity to grab for the brass ring and that Democrat voters were entirely shut out of the process.
The people complaining simply do not understand how the process works.
Joe Biden was never the Democratic nominee for the 2024 race, and right now Kamala Harris is not yet the nominee. They were and are the presumptive nominees. Harris will not be the nominee until the convention names her as such.
So, couldn’t disgruntled former Biden supporters go maverick and get behind a Whitmer or Newsome and change their vote at the last moment? And, couldn’t Whitmer or Newsome sue over not being considered?
The short answer to both is no.
Since Biden/Harris was the only ticket to declare itself as running for president on behalf of the Democratic party, the others who never entered the race have no standing in court.
The delegates that Biden was “presumed” to have gotten pledged to that ticket, meaning Biden and Harris, and that is where a little known rule comes into play.
It is called the “robot rule” or Rule 11(H) of the Delegate Selection Rules, or Rule f(3)(c) of the Convention Rules.
In 1980, President Jimmy Carter began to face mounting problems that threatened the loss of a second term nomination from his party. The revolution in Iran, along with the taking of American hostages at that country’s American Embassy happened at the same time the nation was going through staggering inflation, record prices at the pump and terribly high unemployment.
Carter’s opponent, Ted Kennedy, began gaining steam, and Carter was afraid that some of his pledged delegates would jump ship at the last moment and nominate Ted Kennedy.
Now, such a scenario can happen in the Electoral College. Susan Estrich, writing for the Rasmussen Report, uses the “ax murderer” analogy to explain that delegates to the Electoral College could discover at the last moment that the candidate they were pledged to was actually an ax murderer and they could switch their vote to prevent a vicious criminal from taking the White House and then awarding himself a pardon.
It doesn’t work that way in conventions. At a convention, the ax murderer would have to appear, at least, on the first ballot.
Carter, in 1980, successfully cited the “robot rule” to deflate his opponent.
The rule states that all delegates to the convention are bound “to vote for the presidential candidate whom they were elected to support for at least the first convention ballot, unless released in writing by the presidential candidate.”
Since Harris was part of the Biden/Harris ticket and Biden stepped aside, the ticket still exists, just without Joe Biden, so she has a claim to those delegates. Even though Biden did put his intention not to run on paper, that action did not specifically release the delegates that were pledged to the Biden/Harris ticket.
I am sad to opine that Biden’s abdication had nothing to do with his health; it should have, but it didn’t.
America has had presidents become either permanently or temporarily disabled and the government ran as it always has. Most people now know that Woodrow Wilson’s wife had to sign his name on official documents and in those days before mass and social media, and before the 22nd Amendment came about, he could have run for a third term and no one would have likely been the wiser.
People were clutching their pearls over the fear that the same man that couldn’t remember the names of some of his senior advisors had access to the nation’s nuclear launch codes; however, presidents aren’t as powerful as people think.
Stories abound that there was a special hotline from the Secret Service to the Pentagon and a procedure was put into place for when Richard Nixon got sloppy drunk.
Documents related to this have only been released in recent years, but Nixon, on more than one occasion, apparently got drunk and belligerent and would call his generals demanding a nuclear strike on the USSR, North Korea or whatever nation was on his enemy list that day.
What Nixon didn’t know was that the Secret Service monitored his drinking and would literally hide the “football” with the nuclear codes away from him. Nixon would rant and rave as his generals politely, but firmly, said, “Yes, sir, now, please give us your launch codes to order the attack.”
It was said that Nixon would wake up the next morning with no memory that the night before he had attempted to plunge the nation into World War III.
No, Biden’s stepping aside had nothing to do with his health, the Democrat party has gone to levels not seen since the Franklin Roosevelt administration to hide the president’s health woes and they continued on even after that disastrous debate performance.
Biden’s decision to step aside had everything to do with money.
High-roller donors were not only boycotting Biden/Harris but withholding money to the DNC as well, and that could have been a disaster for Democrats running down the ballot.
The Democrats were in danger of losing the presidency and both houses of Congress in one fell swoop.
Biden could have eliminated the robot rule by releasing his delegates and allowing for an open primary, but money nixed that idea as well. If the president had done that, millions upon millions of dollars would be at stake.
If Biden declared the Biden/Harris as a ticket was over, he couldn’t just turn his war chest of donations over to the DNC or another candidate because of campaign finance laws. With Harris as the sole remainder of the Biden/Harris ticket, she was the only one that could receive the inheritance.
And that, my friends, is how we got to where we are today.
Scott Hudson is the Senior Investigative Reporter and Editorial Page Editor for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
