President Biden's exit from 2024 race sets up historic DNC in Chicago
CHICAGO (CBS) – President Joe Biden announced he would end his 2024 re-election bid and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, to be their party's nominee, less than a month before the Democratic National Convention was set to take place in Chicago.
Delegates will vote to nominate a candidate at the United Center next month, unless the person is chosen in a closed-door vote beforehand.
"I was a delegate for Biden, and the Biden-Harris ticket, and so the president said he supports Kamala," said State Rep. LaShawn K. Ford (D-Chicago). "I support Kamala."
Ford will be a delegate at the first party convention to take place without a presumptive nominee in decades.
"I think she gives us the best shot at winning," Ford said.
The Democratic Party has long been planning to formally nominate its presidential candidate virtually before the actual convention, party leaders have said.
"We're still talking to make sure we do that roll call vote before the convention here [at the United Center]," he said.
If the roll call vote does not happen beforehand, the DNC would be an open convention with no set nominee. If Harris would win the roll call vote, she would have been chosen by delegates, but not Democratic primary voters.
"What that means is that she's really not been battle-tested for this role," said Wayne Steger, a professor of political science at DePaul University. "She hasn't been put through the kind of public scrutiny and media scrutiny that we normally see these presidential candidates face, and so there's high risk here."
Steger explained why party leadership might rally behind Harris and encourage delegates to do the same. She'll face former President Donald Trump, who has benefitted from coverage of an assassination attempt, the Republican National Convention last week, and a judge's decision to toss the case against him involving classified documents.
"And for the polls nationally to only have moved a couple of percentage points is unbelievable," Steger said. "[Trump is] really at his ceiling for support right now, and Democrats are behind him, but they have potential to grow."
Whoever the candidate is will need 1,968 delegates voting in their favor to secure the party's nomination. As of Monday afternoon, no other candidate has jumped in the race to challenge Harris.