MSNBC host Jen Psaki on Sunday laid out the challenges for Vice President Kamala Harris to replace President Joe Biden as Democratic Party’s presidential nominee following Biden’s withdrawal from the race.
Psaki appeared on the network to give her reaction to the president’s announcement to withdraw his reelection bid as mounting pressure within his party had come against him as the nominee. MSNBC host Katy Tur questioned Psaki on Biden’s additional announcement to endorse Harris as the presidential nominee, noting how it appeared Biden’s endorsement was a move to help the party unify.
“Well I think first to just give some credit to the vice president here, I think it’s first saying the president is confident that she can win and also be the president. There have been some questions about that. Not from him directly, but from all of the speculation and discussion. It is significant, I think. I wasn’t sure reading the statement earlier if he would wait until he gave remarks later this week, which felt like that would’ve been quite a lengthy and painful gap for everybody involved,” Psaki said.
“Now there are questions here, Katy, because there are nearly 4,000 delegates at the DNC. They were not — even if President Biden had stayed in, they were not legally bound. That’s not how the Democratic nomination process works, there’s a conscience clause that has not been tested many times. But as I understand it, they could have decided,” Psaki continued. “Now they were all Biden delegates, so many of them probably wouldn’t have done this. But they could’ve decided to vote for somebody else, somebody else needed 300 delegates to be kind of viable in consideration. So I think the question now is what does the process look like?”
Psaki continued to state that while the campaign “definitely” had discussed a “contingency” plan, the 4,000 Democratic National Committee (DNC) delegates aren’t obliged to back Harris. The MSNBC host additionally questioned whether former presidents such as Barack Obama and Bill Clinton will also endorse Harris, to make a “more unifying” party image.
“The DNC and others, because you do contingency planning in government [and] you do it in campaigns, no matter what the outcome, you have to. They’ve definitely been discussing what this looks like. But just because the president endorses, doesn’t mean all 4,000 come her way, so there will have to be a lot of work behind-the-scenes,” Psaki said.
“The last piece I would just add, that it’s important for people to understand, is that there are deadlines for state ballots, including Virginia, Washington state, that are at the very front end of the Democratic convention. So even if others wanted to throw themselves in the ring this would all be happening, in all likelihood, remotely,” Psaki continued. “There’s not going to be a battle on the floor like a West Wing episode, right? And it may be everyone comes behind Harris and that’s what that is, but others — this is all going to be done remotely cause that’s how the system is set up. And Democrats are not going to want to miss those state ballot deadlines like Virginia and Washington state.”
Biden announced his decision to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race through a letter posted on X (formerly known as Twitter). The president wrote that though intention was to seek reelection, he believes “it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as president for the remainder of my term.”
Since Biden’s poor debate performance against former President Donald Trump, concerns began to circulate as Democrats worried over low poll numbers and the president’s mental fitness. Over a dozen Congressional Democrats and a handful of Democratic senators had publicly come out against Biden over the past few weeks.
