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WHAT JOE BIDEN COULD DO: RESIGN AND MAKE KAMALA HARRIS PRESIDENT  
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Garance Franke-Ruta
July 1, 2024
The New Republic
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_ If Biden steps aside, yes, he could endorse his veep. He could also
make a far more dramatic and potent gesture. He needs to reach back to
the country’s founding, to George Washington and the power of our
commitment to the peaceful transfer of power. _

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, at Girard
College in Philadelphia on May 29, 2024 to launch a Black voters
coalition., Photo: SIPA USA // Philly Voice

 

As Democrats tear their hair out trying to think through how to
navigate the crisis of trust created by President Biden’s
painfully faltering debate performance
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Donald Trump last Thursday, there is only one graceful way out of this
mess, should party leaders and his family convince him to not stand
for reelection. A way to turn the narrative capstone of the Biden
presidency in the history books from one where he did not run because
he was old and feeble to one where he did the boldest thing any
American leader can.

Should he decide not to run again, Biden needs to reach back to the
country’s founding and the spirit of George Washington and
demonstrate, in deed as well as through his many words about American
democracy, the power of our commitment to the peaceful transfer of
power. He needs to hand the presidency—and his convention
delegates—over to Vice President Kamala Harris in August in Chicago.

There would be a lot of particulars to figure out, but for now let’s
leave those to the lawyers. The point is that doing this would be a
game changer, and it would also cement for him an extraordinary role
in history. He would be the man who made it his mission in his waning
days to finally break that highest, hardest glass ceiling
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giving America its first female president. This after having already
stood twice on the ticket alongside America’s first Black president
and swept the first female vice president into office during a run
that preserved American democracy.

What a political legacy! In a post-_Roe_ world where women voters
have been transforming the electoral landscape, it would further
elevate female organizing and voting passion, as well as likely
boosting Democrats’ faded support with Black voters and especially
with critically important Black women voters.

It would explode the stasis of this awful grinding gerontocratic
reprise of a presidential contest. It would be something wholly new in
American history. And it would be a hell of a spectacle.

Imagine it: The transfer of power, replete with a swearing-in
ceremony, teary thank-yous and encomiums and career retrospectives for
both the departing president and the new, incoming one. Harris moving
from her plain black and brown suits to the jewel tones of a female
president, emerging into a national spotlight that has already vetted
her. Rather than a reprise of 1968 with protests in Chicago against a
president weighed down by war, the convention would take on a
poignant, electric, unexpected air.

Why should Democratic delegates back her and not such compelling
high-profile governors as Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer? Because
she is the only candidate other than Biden who was on the ticket that
won the White House in 2020, and the only one who already has survived
having the Eye of Sauron that is presidential-level national scrutiny
alight on her. And because Harris today is no longer simply a former
senator; she is the incumbent vice president of the United States, the
next in the line of succession. There’s no clear-the-field
Hillaryism about “it’s her turn” here; it is the constitutional
order that if Biden steps down, Harris becomes the president. If he
hands the reins to her, she would have been made president by the
Constitution and the votes of 81 million
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the democratically cleanest solution—much cleaner than a bunch of
unelected delegates in Chicago or a pre-August 7 “virtual roll
call”
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a nominee who has never won votes or campaigned nationwide.

Harris could then run as an incumbent, along with a new vice
president—a whole ’nother bite at the excitement-generating apple
on a Democratic side that has sorely lacked it. This choice could
serve, just as Biden did for Barack Obama in 2008, as a reassuring
presence. One option could be North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper,
should he pass a vetting process that would need to begin soon.
Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania similarly represents a critical
voting state, although Shapiro’s presence would require threading a
very complicated
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policy needle. Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Governor Whitmer of
Michigan could work, although an all-female ticket might be a bridge
too far under the circumstances.

Democrats would get a new ticket while reducing the drama of a
convention contest. The role of the electorate would be respected—a
vote for Biden has since 2020 always included the possibility of a
Harris presidency because of the risk of his dying in office, given
his already advanced age—and American history would transformed.

A debate over the willingness to cede power has swirled in this
country since January 6, 2021. But the practice could not have a
better American lineage. George Washington’s resignation from power
in 1783, when he gave up his commission as commander in chief of the
Continental Army to return to Mount Vernon is the moment that set the
young United States on course to being a democracy, not a
dictatorship. Today a painting of that act hangs in the Capitol
Rotunda, along with one honoring the Declaration of Independence and
some others. Even the Democrats surely ought to be able to spin that.

Should he choose not to run for reelection, ceding the White House to
Harris would be one more executive action in a long line of powerful
Obama-Biden moves: something designed to set a high-water mark in
American history before leaving office, to transform what we think we
know about who we can be and that we can remember and reach for again.

_[GARANCE FRANKE-RUTA covered or edited coverage across five
presidential campaign cycles and today is a writer and editor based in
New York. @thegarance [[link removed]] ]_

* Joe Biden
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