With President Biden having dropped out of the race, I’m devoting today’s newsletter to four big questions about what happens next. My colleagues and I will also give you the latest news about the campaign.
Four questions
1. Is the Democratic nomination race already over?
It may be. Vice President Kamala Harris appears to be in a commanding position.
Some top Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, favor a competition to choose a new nominee. And an open process would have some big advantages. It would test whether Harris was a stronger politician than she had been during her failed 2020 campaign. If she won the competition, she would emerge from it looking like a winner who was more than Biden’s No. 2.
But a competition obviously requires more than one competitor, and Harris was the only top-tier Democrat to declare herself a presidential candidate yesterday. Many other Democrats endorsed her in the hours after Biden’s withdrawal.
Her list of backers include both progressives and moderates in Congress, as well as Biden, members of the Congressional Black Caucus and two governors who had been considered potential presidential candidates themselves: Gavin Newsom of California and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania. The party’s nominating delegates from three states — North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee — unanimously voted yesterday to endorse Harris.
Overall, the hours after Biden’s exit went about as well as Harris could have hoped.
2. What will the Harris-Trump polls say now that they’re not hypothetical?
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