DNC Aims to Push Biden Toward Nomination Next Week, Despite Doubts

Leaders of the Democratic National Committee are moving swiftly to confirm President Joe Biden as his party’s presidential nominee by the end of July, according to four people briefed on the matter who insisted on anonymity to discuss the sensitive deliberations.

The move would formalize Biden as the nominee at a moment when Democrats are torn over whether he should run again after his poor debate performance.

Since May, he has been set to be confirmed through a virtual roll call, weeks before the Democratic National Convention in August.

But as Biden faces persistent doubts from within his party, some delegates involved with the behind-the-scene bureaucratic process are eager to end the public conversations about his future that are unfolding during a fiercely contested campaign.

Not everyone agrees: In a previously unreported move, a group of House Democrats who question whether he should forge ahead is trying to rally support for changing the nominating path to allow for potential challenges at the convention. Donors and prominent strategists have floated ideas that would open the door to other candidates, but party insiders have dismissed those proposals as fanciful.

The process will effectively begin when the rules committee of the Democratic National Convention meets on a video call at 11 a.m. Friday, followed by another party group on Sunday. All of the more than 4,000 delegates are expected to begin casting their ballots as soon as Monday, a process that is likely to take about a week. After that, the committee is expected to quickly hold the roll call, a tradition that typically occurs on the convention floor but is being held virtually this year.

The rules committee is a body of more than 180 delegates led by Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota and Leah Daughtry, a veteran party official. A majority of its members have deep ties to Biden and were vetted for their loyalty to him, making it unlikely that his nomination will face significant dissent.

Democratic insiders say they expect a broad majority of party delegates — perhaps as many as 80% — to support Biden’s nomination. Still, there is no guarantee of how delegates will respond to this plan, or if they might buckle under pressure from Democratic lawmakers and donors.

The procedure would not change the reality of Biden’s position: Under the party’s rules, he can be replaced as the nominee only if he agrees to step aside and release his delegates.

Biden, during an interview with NBC News that aired on Monday, reiterated that he was not leaving the race.

“Look, 14 million people voted for me to be the nominee in the Democratic Party, OK?” he said. “I listen to them.”

If Biden dropped out after the party’s convention adjourned, responsibility for replacing him would fall to a small circle of party insiders that includes the leaders of the major Democratic Party committees. Those leaders include Walz, the chairman of the Democratic Governors Association.

“Governor Walz is honored to co-chair the committee and knows how important it is that Democrats have their nominee, President Biden, on the ballot in every state this November,” Teddy Tschann, a spokesperson for Walz, said.

Opposition to the DNC’s nominating schedule began to percolate on Monday, as Democrats who would like to see a change at the top of the ticket began to worry that their window for persuading Biden to step aside was closing.

Rep. Jared Huffman of California drafted and began circulating a letter among House Democrats calling on the party to delay nominating Biden until the delegates gathered in person at the convention. Huffman’s letter says that its signatories “share serious concerns about plans to hold virtual roll call as early as July 21,” according to a person who received a draft of it and read its contents to The New York Times.

Huffman, in an interview on Monday evening, declined to comment on the letter but said the party should allow the discussion about Biden’s viability as a candidate to play out longer before nominating him.

“To try to squelch debate and jam this through is a power play of the highest order,” Huffman said. “That kind of heavy-handed move is not going to go over well with a lot of people.”

In May, the DNC changed its process to nominate Biden to accommodate an Aug. 7 deadline to place him on the ballot in Ohio. Lawmakers in that state later passed legislation to push the deadline back to the end of August, but it does not take effect until Sept. 1. The Biden campaign and the DNC aimed to have Biden’s nomination locked up before Aug. 7 to avoid the possibility of a legal challenge by Ohio Republicans.

“We certainly are not going to leave the fate of this election in the hands of MAGA Republicans in Ohio that have tried to keep President Biden off of the general election ballot,” said Jaime Harrison, the DNC chair. “We’re moving forward with a virtual roll call, and the timeline for that process remains on schedule and unchanged from when the DNC made that decision in May.”

Huffman said he did not believe the party would have any problem placing on the Ohio ballot a candidate nominated at the party’s convention.

“Ohio is a fig leaf,” he said. “There is simply no risk.”

Huffman’s letter speaks to the fact that dozens of House Democrats remain worried about Biden’s political standing and the prospect of sweeping Republican victories in the general election in November. They are also concerned that the president’s allies will try to force any discussion about his remaining on the ticket to a conclusion.

Several lawmakers, strategists and activists said that those efforts had lost some momentum since the assassination attempt on Trump at a rally on Saturday, even though many in the party question the president’s ability to win.

In recent days, Biden has held several meetings with Democrats in the House that have ended with mixed reviews. Among those concerned that he will stay on the ticket, there is frustration that the discussions appear to be in limbo, partly because of the attack at the rally.

The House members are not the only Democrats trying to resist an early nomination of Biden.

A group called Pass the Torch, which has called on Biden to step down from the ticket, has been pushing Democrats to oppose the virtual roll-call vote.

Aaron Regunberg, an organizer with Pass the Torch, called it “a terrible idea” that would “ram through this nomination before we have this debate as a party.” He said it would “deeply undermine the morale of Democrats — from delegates, volunteers, grassroots organizers and donors to ordinary voters — at the worst possible time.”

Daniella Ballou-Aares, the chief executive of a coalition of business leaders called Leadership Now Project, said she had been urging Democratic elected officials to oppose the virtual roll-call vote.

It “would only delegitimize the process,” Ballou-Aares said. Her group, which leans left, has been circulating a letter to the White House and congressional offices urging Biden to make way for someone else.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .