In the breathless 36 hours after President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid, Vice President Kamala Harris cleared the field of serious challengers, raised $81 million and now appears poised to claim the Democratic nomination.
WBFO’s Grant Ashley spoke to University at Buffalo political science professor Shawn Donahue about what happens next in the Democratic Party’s nominating process and what a potential Harris administration would look like. You can read the full transcript of their conversation here:
GRANT ASHLEY: There were thousands of delegates who were pledged to Biden who were supposed to go to the convention and vote for him. My understanding is that they’re just kind of released from their commitment to vote for him. So, what happens on a structural level going into this convention?
SHAWN DONAHUE: Well, anybody could be nominated for the roll call if they meet the qualifications — which I think you have to have 300 pledged delegates supporting you, and no more than 50 can come from one state — but it’s really looking like state delegation after state delegation — last night and at the end of today, and I anticipate over the next few days — are saying that they are going to vote for Kamala Harris. And really, we don’t see any other person even putting their name out there to run. In fact, the names of people that we thought might run if there would be some type of an open convention — like Gretchen Whitmer, J.B. Pritzker, Mark Kelly, Josh Shapiro, Wes Moore, Roy Cooper, Andy Beshear — have all endorsed Kamala Harris. So, you have to wonder who, if anybody, is going to challenge her at this point.
ASHLEY: Is it a good thing for the Democratic Party that they’re all kind of coalescing around Harris? Or would it be better if there were three or four viable candidates going into the convention who had to prove they were the best candidate?
DONAHUE: Well, I mean, we aren’t seeing that anybody was really being pressured to support Kamala Harris. It was just that when President Biden dropped out, he immediately endorsed Kamala Harris. You saw that the Clintons came out in favor of Kamala Harris. You saw the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus — and it just seemed like it was just a parade of dominoes that just kept falling, all yesterday, all tonight and all of today. The party seems to really want to get behind and coalesce around Vice President Harris.
ASHLEY: And, you know, there’s a campaign cash is a factor here too. My understanding is Kamala Harris would be able to use any money that President Biden raised, but no other candidates could as easily. Could you kind of describe why that is, or if I’m correct at all about that?
DONAHUE: Well, the money that was raised before President Biden dropped out was for the Biden-Harris ticket. And once he dropped out, the Harris folks filed an amendment to their FEC filings to change it to Harris for America or Harris for President, if you will. So that made it much easier to be able to move the money around because it was attached to Biden and Harris. And as long as Harris is there, you don’t run into some of the issues that you could potentially run into with campaign finance laws if the new nominee were Gretchen Whitmer, for example.
ASHLEY: Obviously, there’s no sure bet that Harris wins the election, but if she does, how would she govern compared to President Biden?
DONAHUE: That’s a really good question because one of the things that kind of dogged her campaign in the primary in 2020 is that it really didn’t feel like she had a particular lane that she was running in. You know, Joe Biden was clearly running in the more moderate establishment lane. You had Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren running more in the progressive lanes. I think she was trying to somewhat have her feet in both areas. The fact is she was a senator from very liberal state, California. (She was the district attorney in San Francisco.) So, I think a number of people assume that she might be a little bit potentially more liberal than President Biden. But you know, as we have seen, you’re only able to govern, to a certain degree, with the Congress that you have. And I think that even if Vice President Harris becomes President Harris in 2025, probably the best Democrats can hope for in the Senate is a 50/50 tie and maybe a decent sized majority in the House (and by “decent sized” I mean probably a 10-seat majority). So, you know, she might be in a situation where she has to work with a Senate Majority Leader John Thune or John Cornyn in 2025, if she does get elected.
ASHLEY: That was all the questions I had for you. Is there anything else that I missed that's important? Anything you want to add?
DONAHUE: Since she seems to have locked up the nomination, the question really is becoming “Who is going to be her running mate?” And one of the things that you might notice with a number of the people that are on the short list — Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer, Andy Beshear, Roy Cooper — they share something with her: all four of those people have been prosecutors. You know, three of them state attorneys general, and Gretchen Whitmer being a county prosecutor back in Michigan. So that’s definitely a theme there. The thing that we have to look at too is that, in addition to those four, you have Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, who has been mentioned as well. Well, four out of those five potential VP choices come from some of the seven swing states in the election. Only Andy Beshear, from the really solidly red state of Kentucky, is not from a swing state. But with the prosecutor theme there, the one thing that you’re already hearing Democrats say is that the new race is a prosecutor versus a convicted felon. And if you have two prosecutors on the ticket, I think that it really doubles down on that.
ASHLEY: That was Shawn Donahue, a professor with the University at Buffalo’s Political Science Department. Shawn, thank you so much.
DONAHUE: All right, good to talk to you.