An avalanche of Democrats expressing concerns about Biden’s ability to defeat former president Donald Trump, as he did in 2020, caused Biden to act. The push began after his stumbling debate performance June 27 and amid a series of continued uneven public appearances and polls that showed Biden losing ground in key swing states and about half of Democrats wanting a different nominee.
As for where we go from here?
The most likely outcome is that the next in line — Vice President Harris — steps up. Democrats, including Biden, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and the Congressional Black Caucus, quickly sought to close ranks around her as the party’s nominee.
But not everyone is convinced that clearing the field for Harris is the best course, both because it would look like a coronation and because of uncertainty about the unpopular Harris’s own prospects. (Harris, for her part, says she intends to “earn” the nomination, without specifying what that means.)
Beyond that, Democrats will need to slot in at least one additional candidate on the ticket, even if it’s just for vice president. Many names will probably circulate for both spots.
Let’s run through the options, adapted from our previous list, in rough order of plausibility.
It’s difficult to see how Harris wouldn’t be the top contender for the Democratic nomination unless she, too, voluntarily steps aside. She is, after all, the vice president. Skipping over the first female and first Black vice president would also be dicey for a party struggling to maintain its normally huge margins with Black voters — a major part of its base. And she would have the easiest access to Biden’s campaign war chest.
The problem is that Harris, like Biden, is unpopular. Americans disapprove of her by double digits in most polls. That’s not quite as bad as Biden, but it’s not good, either. She performs similarly against Trump in recent polls — though she has perhaps inched ahead of him lately — and an AP-NORC poll last week showed just 3 in 10 Americans thought she’d make a good president. Harris’s 2020 Democratic presidential primary campaign failed to gain traction.
The big decision Democrats face right now is less whether they should turn to Harris next than whether there should be some process to validate her selection. There’s an argument to be made that having a “mini-primary,” or at least leaving it up to delegates, would force Harris to prove she’s up to the task.
Biggest pro: By far the easiest option
Biggest con: Hardly the ideal option
The Michigan governor said she wasn’t interested, at least when this was in the realm of the hypothetical. But pressure might be brought to bear, given how many boxes she checks for the party.
She’s a female governor who hails from a crucial state where a poll Sunday showed Biden trailing by seven points. (Democrats probably need to hold Midwestern swing states, given their problems in other swing states). She has won both of her races there by around 10 points. Polling this year has shown her approval rating in Michigan between 54 percent and 61 percent. And she’s more experienced and has more of a national profile than a lot of other rising-star Democratic governors, such as Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore.
Harris aside, she probably makes more sense than anybody else — at least on paper.
Biggest pro: Swing-state popularity and experience
Biggest con: Lack of apparent interest — at least yet
The Pennsylvania governor checks a lot of the same boxes as Whitmer — a popular governor from a crucial state who is almost universally respected in the party.
But there are some key differences, which could either be assets or liabilities, depending on your perspective: He’s a man; he’s less experienced (having just been elected in 2022); he carries a reputation as a moderate.
Shapiro would also be the first Jewish American to lead a presidential ticket, after Joe Lieberman’s history making vice-presidential nomination in 2000.
Because of his relatively new status on the national stage, many have posited that Shapiro is more of an option for 2028. But it would seem hard for Democrats to ignore polls like one earlier this year showing that more than 3 in 10 Pennsylvania Trump supporters approve of him.
If you want the most broadly agreeable candidate, he’s probably it.
Biggest pro: Could have highest appeal to voters
Biggest con: Relative inexperience
An undersold achievement on the transportation secretary’s résumé is that he nearly won both the Iowa and New Hampshire presidential nominating contests back in 2020, when he was just a mayor of a midsize Midwestern city (South Bend, Ind.).
And if the party is looking for the antithesis of Biden’s inability to drive a message against Trump, it’s Buttigieg. His jousting with Fox News hosts and Republicans at congressional hearings is often shared widely in Democratic circles, as was a clip this past weekend criticizing GOP vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance. Buttigieg is a gifted messenger.
If there’s a big drawback with Buttigieg, it’s that he appears to be the wrong candidate to try to arrest the Democratic ticket’s budding problem with diverse — and especially Black — voters. He got very little support from such groups in 2020. And his tenure as transportation secretary hasn’t always been a smooth ride.
Biggest pro: Unmatched ability to take the fight to Trump and the GOP
Biggest con: Record of appealing to disaffected diverse voters
The California governor has long been mentioned in this context, owing to his efforts to expand his national profile by mixing it up with national Republicans and GOP governors. Late last year he even debated then-GOP presidential candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Fox News.
Newsom has some of the same attributes as Buttigieg in terms of taking the fight to Trump and the Republicans.
But it’s difficult to see the Democratic Party deciding that the recipe right now is a California governor and former mayor of San Francisco, a city Republicans would be only so happy to run against by pointing to its crime problem. It would be basically inviting Republicans to caricature the Democratic ticket.
Biggest pro: Central casting for a presidential candidate
Biggest con: Easy to paint as a California liberal
Perhaps nobody’s stock has risen more in recent months. That’s owing to the fact that the Kentucky governor was up for reelection in 2023 and won in a very red state.
He’d be a big contrast to Biden on the age front (he’s just 46), and he has intriguing bipartisan appeal, having succeeded in his state without straying too much to the right. (We often see that Democratic governors in red states and GOP governors in blue states marginalize themselves with the national party by having to take positions that are out of sync.) He even played up his support for abortion rights during the 2023 campaign — something previously unthinkable.
He also reportedly is taking the kinds of steps you would expect from someone with national ambitions. And he would be a pragmatic pick, perhaps even more than Shapiro. But it’s not clear how he would play with liberal base voters whom Democrats need to inject with enthusiasm.
Biggest pro: The broadness of his potential appeal
Biggest con: Lack of national experience
The Colorado governor and former congressman has some of the same bipartisan bona fides as Shapiro, and he’s also Jewish. The nation’s first openly gay man to be elected governor has crafted a compelling record and has largely avoided getting bogged down in potentially problematic liberal policies, despite running a blue state. He has also won big — by double digits in 2018 and nearly 20 points in 2022. And he has clearly expressed interest in going national one day.
But he doesn’t give Democrats a swing-state pick, and it would be bypassing Harris for a White man without the apparent potential electoral upside of a Shapiro.
Biggest pro: A record — both as governor and electorally — to run on
Biggest con: A lesser-known White man who isn’t from a swing state
Not many Democrats across the country will be familiar with the Illinois governor, and he doesn’t pack near the buzz factor of the other candidates on this list.
But he has shown some interest in going national. And one potential advantage he has if the race expands beyond Harris: He’s very wealthy — as in, in the billions. There are questions about just how practical it would be for a candidate to enter the race this late and be able to put together the funds to run a national campaign. The ticket apparently can’t get the Biden campaign’s money unless Harris is on it.
Biggest con: Not an exciting pick
The Arizona senator doesn’t give Democrats a woman or a diverse alternative, but he combines some of the assets of Whitmer and Shapiro with a compelling personal biography.
Kelly is a former NASA astronaut and the husband of former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), who survived a shooting in Tucson in 2011. He also won in both 2020 and 2022 in a crucial swing state — a state that favors Trump right now but that Democrats would love to put back in play.
Kelly doesn’t have much of a national profile, and he hasn’t been mentioned alongside many of the above names, at least until recently. He might make more sense as a running mate. But if the name of the game is a relatively safe pick — the kind of candidates who were doing better than Biden in Senate races across the country — he makes some sense.
Biggest pro: Broadly agreeable and hard to attack
This is the fantasy option for Democrats — and we mean that in more than one way. She would seem to be the ideal alternative, but the odds of her actually stepping forward appear minuscule.
Obama is the most popular recent former first lady in America, dating back to Lady Bird Johnson, according to a late-2023 YouGov poll. She has also consistently been liked by a clear majority of Americans, which we can’t say for many political figures. And unlike other Biden alternatives that have been polled head-to-head with Trump, she actually performs significantly better — as in leading-by-double-digits better, in a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll.
It’s tough to know how she would perform as an actual candidate, because she’s never done it. But she’s got the kind of strong personal brand and a large national profile — probably bigger even than Harris’s. And if you’re Democrats, how do you not at least try to convince her? She would also solve the potential problem of skipping over another Black woman.
But Obama has effectively expressed negative interest in ever running in her own right; going from that to waging a presidential campaign with just a few months to go is a huge stretch. It’s truly a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency option. And the glass appears to be shatterproof.
Biggest pro: A strong, built-in brand that would provide an easy replacement of Harris
Biggest con: Lack of fire in the belly
Other possibilities: If this process is swung open somehow, you could see other names pop up. Among them would be North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.). (Warnock, though, has a major problem in that a Senate vacancy in Georgia would be filled by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, and the battle for control of the Senate could be very tight.)
