HOUSTON – When President Joe Biden told America that he was pulling out of the 2024 Presidential election race, he also endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris in the same breath.
The move by Biden is one that our nation has never seen before in modern history.
Joe Biden already won the Primary election, which was decided by the voters earlier this year.
With Biden bowing out of the election now, the voters won’t have the opportunity to select their own candidate for the Democratic Party.
“Now we’re in uncharted waters in that in the modern era primaries that is dating since the early 70s, we’ve never had a situation like this,” said Mark Jones, Professor of Political Science at Rice University. “Since the early 70s, voters determined who the party’s candidates were for, president. Now you have delegates who were by mostly Biden delegates make the decision of who the next candidate will be. So, we go from a process by which the people decided who the party’s candidate was to a small set of elites deciding who the party’s candidates are.”
Delegates will make that nomination of a candidate at the August 19th Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
That means they could nominate Harris, or they could decide to nominate someone else, according to political analysts.
Among the names on the list, according to political expert Alain Sanders are:
- Gretchen Whitmer - Governor of Michigan
- JB Pritzker - Governor of Illinois
- Josh Shapiro - Governor of Pennsylvania
- Gavin Newsom - Governor of California
- Andy Beshear - Governor of Kentucky
“There are certainly those who have been preparing for a run for the presidency, but I’m not sure they’ve been preparing for a run for the presidency in this cycle,” Alain Sanders, professor emeritus of political science at Saint Peter’s University. “These are all people who, certainly have presidential ambitions at some point, whether, however, they can garner unifying support from all elements of the Democratic Party remains to be seen. Kamala Harris is certainly the frontrunner at this point.”
The Democratic delegates will make their nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which starts on August 19.