WASHINGTON ― In one of the most stunning weeks in American politics, President Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to be the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee. The change leaves Harris with less than four months to prove to voters that she’s the best person to lead the country ― and to defeat Donald Trump.
Democrats have raced to publicly unite behind Harris, and their efforts are already reenergizing a base of supporters sapped of enthusiasm for Biden, who was plummeting in the polls after a disastrous debate performance last month in Atlanta.
But there’s another side to a massive transition like this ― namely, the mechanics of it all ― that’s being hashed out behind the scenes and has raised questions. How can you just swap in Harris for Biden, after voters across the country picked Biden to be the Democratic nominee? How is Biden’s campaign going to suddenly revamp its entire operation for a different candidate?
The short answer is that this is a lot easier to do because Harris was already on the presidential ticket with Biden. The long answer is that it’s not just about mechanics, but messaging.
Federal Election Committee rules allow Harris to use the tens of millions of dollars in existing Biden-Harris campaign funds, the campaign’s tens of thousands of employees, and its crucial voter data lists (though Trump has already filed a complaint challenging her ability to do this).
“A major party’s presumptive nominee stepping down months before Election Day is not an ordinary event, but it is also not a crisis,” Trevor Potter, president of Campaign Legal Center, said in a statement. “There are Democratic Party rules in place to govern the process of selecting a new nominee. There are also rules established by the Federal Election Commission that apply to the funds currently held by the Biden-Harris campaign.”
The Harris campaign’s messaging will obviously have to change, at least somewhat. Harris is already facing ugly attacks from Republicans over her race and gender, which is not something that Biden, a white man, had to contend with. At 59, Harris is also not nearly as old as Biden, 81, or Trump, 78, so she’s not going to deal with the same scrutiny about age.
Harris also has a different record than Biden as a former prosecutor and a former California attorney general, never mind her time as a senator and vice president, offices that Biden also held.
Some messaging shifts are happening in plain view. Brian Fallon, who is part of the Harris campaign and was Harris’ spokesperson when she was Biden’s 2020 running mate, on Thursday laid bare some of the sharpest contrasts between Harris and Trump.
“Prosecutor vs. the felon, Future vs the past, Repro repro repro,” Fallon wrote on social media.
The campaign also appears ready to have a little fun. Messaging on social media is leaning into viral hits, reposting singer Charli XCX’s tweet that “kamala IS brat” and stylizing posts in the aesthetic — or maybe in the context? — of the singer’s hit album. On Thursday, a campaign press release referred to Trump as “old and quite weird,” a reference to Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.) saying as much in an MSNBC interview earlier in the week, which spurred the use of the word “weird” to describe Trump and his associates. Another release wished a “Happy World IVF Day To Everyone Except JD Vance” — a dig at the Republican vice-presidential nominee’s stances on reproductive rights, and the GOP’s quandary on how to reconcile their abortion policies with access to in vitro fertilization.
Harris has made some staff changes, too. The campaign announced Tuesday that she has tapped Kamau Marshall, formerly a senior adviser and spokesperson for the Biden-Harris ticket, as a senior adviser for her new presidential campaign.
Harris unveiled her first campaign ad on Thursday, titled “Freedom,” with a little help from Beyoncé. And within 48 hours of Biden bowing out of the race, Harris was in Milwaukee ― the largest city in a key battleground state and, perhaps in a dig at Trump, the site of last week’s Republican National Committee convention.
Campaign officials declined to comment to HuffPost on their new messaging strategy for Harris. Instead, they pointed to a memo released this week by Harris’ campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon. The memo, titled “The Path to Victory for Kamala Harris,” breaks down how Harris has “well-documented support” from 2020 voters, why she is well-positioned to expand that support in 2024, and why she can win over more “persuadable voters” in today’s “highly polarized electoral environment.”
The thrust of Harris’ message is that this election is a choice between “two very different visions,” O’Malley Dillon said in the memo. “She is fighting for a future that strengthens our democracy, protects reproductive freedom and ensures every person has the opportunity to not just get by, but to get ahead. Donald Trump is a convicted criminal running to enact his extreme and dangerous Project 2025 agenda that would roll back Americans’ rights and freedoms, hurt the middle class, and threaten our democracy.”
Hours after Biden’s decision on Sunday to drop his reelection bid, O’Malley Dillon was on an all-hands call with campaign staff emphasizing that their operation was built to beat Trump ― and that is precisely how they will move forward, except with Harris at the top of the ticket.
“All of you, all of us, wherever we come from, are here for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and to defeat Donald Trump,” she told staff, per a source familiar with the call.
“While today is a big day of transition, nothing changes with why you got here and what we’re all here to do. But the path forward is a path that is for all of us to do this together,” O’Malley Dillon said. “So let me tell you what I know to be certain, which is that every single person here ― whatever your job, whatever you’re doing ― you have a job. You have a home. You are us. We are a team. We are in this together.”
The campaign also appears to be leaning into Biden’s call for unity as they proceed, framing their work ahead as an effort to build on his successes.
“He built a whole vote ― 81 million people ― a coalition that was bigger and more broad and more diverse than anyone before him. And that coalition is there for Kamala Harris, and that coalition is what we are building today,” O’Malley Dillon told staff on the Sunday call. “So when you are going off this call and you go back to your job tomorrow morning, for the work that we have in front of us, use him as your example for how we move forward.”
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As the campaign quickly readjusts to Harris as the party’s presumptive nominee, the Democratic National Committee is also scrambling to adjust.
The party’s nominating convention kicks off Aug. 19 in Chicago, and the DNC’s rules committee voted Wednesday to set Aug. 1 as the first day that delegates can begin voting to formally pick a presidential nominee. In the span of days, Harris has already secured endorsements from the vast majority of Democratic delegates who, since Biden abandoned his bid, are free to cast votes for whomever they choose.
Someone else could, in theory, throw their hat in the ring if they want to challenge Harris for the nomination. But it’s unlikely: In order to qualify, the DNC requires that this candidate would have to secure the electronic signatures of at least 300 convention delegates. The DNC is holding a virtual roll call, which allows for multiple rounds of voting on nominees other than Harris.
“We can and will be both fast and fair as we execute this nomination,” DNC Chair Jaime Harrison told reporters on Monday.
For now, at least, nobody is challenging Harris. And if they did, they’d almost certainly face the wrath of countless top Democrats eager to wrap up the nomination and refocus attention on defeating Trump.
Harris has until Aug. 7 to pick a running mate. Several Democrats have been floated as potential vice presidential picks, including Sen. Mark Kelly (Ariz.), Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.
The DNC is focused on that Aug. 7 deadline because Ohio law requires that both a presidential and vice presidential nominee be chosen by that date in order to appear on the state’s ballot. Ohio lawmakers have since nullified that deadline, but the change in state law doesn’t take effect until Sept. 1 and Democratic Party officials don’t want to risk legal challenges.
Some Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), have suggested it is illegal to replace Biden with Harris as the nominee.
“It would be wrong, and I think unlawful, in accordance to some of these states’ rules, for a handful of people to go in a back room and switch it out because they’re, they don’t like the candidate any longer,” Johnson, who is perhaps best known as the chief legal architect of Trump’s effort to steal the 2020 election, told ABC News on Sunday.
But even attorneys who have long represented Republicans have said that’s nonsense.
“There’s nothing to those threats,” Ben Ginsberg, a GOP-aligned lawyer, told Axios on Tuesday. “A convention naming a candidate who then gets ballot placement in every state is the normal course of business.”
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States have plenty of time to ensure that Harris’ name appears on the November ballots as the Democratic presidential nominee.
Assuming Harris is nominated at the DNC convention, her name will be officially submitted to every state’s chief election official, who would then certify her name to be placed on the November general election ballot.
“Most of these deadlines occur in late August or during the first two weeks of September,” notes the National Conference of State Legislatures. “Only then do states begin finalizing and printing ballots to be sent to voters.”
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), who is also a former DNC chair, on Monday scoffed at the idea of Harris not “earning” the delegates to be the presidential nominee since people voted for Biden in the primaries.
“I mean, when you go to a poll here in Florida, it’s not just the president’s name that was on the ballot. It’s the vice president’s name as well,” Wasserman Schultz said on CNN. “It’s a ticket that you’re voting to support. And so, it’s a logical transfer to the vice president.”
What’s key to remember, she said, is that Biden immediately threw his support behind Harris when he dropped his reelection bid. This process of transitioning to a new candidate would have been a lot messier if that hadn’t happened.
“Look, if Joe Biden had not endorsed her, if there was not a situation where she had earned those votes too, then, you know, I would say that probably delegates would be more likely to think about other candidates,” said the Democratic congresswoman.
Even as he steps back from the campaign, Biden is clearly prepared to keep helping Harris. In his Wednesday night Oval Office address to the nation, he officially addressed his decision to end his reelection bid and heaped more praise on his vice president.
“In just a few months, the American people will choose the course of America’s future,” Biden said. “I made my choice. I made my views known … [Harris] is experienced, she’s tough, she’s capable. She’s been an incredible partner to me and a leader for our country.”