Joe Biden speaks from the Roosevelt Room of the White House.Artem Priakhin/Sipa/AP
As Republican delegates convene in a red, white, and blue balloon-filled Milwaukee arena to formally nominate Donald Trump as their presidential nominee, Democrats are at a crossroads about their own nominating process.
While they are scheduled to hold their own flashy convention in Chicago from August 19-22, the Democratic National Committee is speeding to anoint President Joe Biden weeks earlier via a “virtual roll call” vote.
The ostensible reason: an Ohio statute that required parties to present their presidential nominee to the state 90 days prior to Election Day in order to be included on the November ballot. That would give Democrats a deadline of August 7 to officially nominate their candidate.
“We WILL meet the August 7th deadline and our nominee WILL be on the ballot in Ohio this November,” DNC chair Jaime Harrison wrote in a statement Tuesday.
But Ohio Republicans refute that there is a deadline dilemma at all. In May, Ohio GOP Governor Mike DeWine called for a special session, urging the Republican-led state legislature to pass a bill changing the deadline for the 2024 cycle; in June, he signed that bill into law, extending the state’s deadline to until the day after the conclusion of the DNC convention.
DeWine says that the DNC’s blame-game is disingenuous.
“I called the legislature back, and they voted to put the Democratic nominee on the ballot. So this is not a problem,” he told me on the floor of the Republican National Convention on Tuesday night.
This DNC plan isn’t exactly new; the party announced it would do the official vote virtually before DeWine signed the legislative fix, stating that “Democrats will land this plane on our own… through a virtual roll call.” But in the last few days, their insistence on conducting the vote this way has become more intense; this week, Axios and other news outlets reported that the DNC planned to start the process as early as July 21.
Ohio Democratic Party Chair Elizabeth Walters told Mother Jones her peers need to consider the possibility the Ohio legislature will somehow claw back the extended deadline.
“In the past two years alone the Ohio GOP had a State House Speaker convicted of a $60 million dollar bribery scheme—the largest corruption scandal in state history. Our State Legislature and Members of Congress are running in districts from maps the Ohio Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional seven times. Last August, Republicans tried to change the state constitution to prevent a free and fair election on abortion rights,” she said in a statement. “Trusting the Ohio GOP to do the right thing for voters is like trusting an arsonist to put out a fire.”
DeWine says the notion that his party would play tricks after passing the bill is “ridiculous.” He adds that if Democrats want to do the virtual roll call ahead of their actual convention, “that is their business, but [an Ohio deadline] is not why they have to do it.”
Bernie Moreno, Ohio’s Republican US Senate candidate, suggests there is something more sinister afoot: a plan to expedite Biden’s nomination despite his decreasing approval among Democratic voters and some Democratic lawmakers. “They are trying everything, desperate to keep an old man who’s semi-senile in office and it’s a disgrace,” Moreno told me.
“Proceeding with the ‘virtual roll call’ in the absence of a valid legal rationale will be rightly perceived as a purely political maneuver.”
A faction of the Democratic Party seems to agree with the Ohio Republicans, at least at some level.
Indeed, some Democrats think the plan to push ahead with a remote roll call nomination could appear to voters like a sly effort to rush Biden’s nomination through as he faces calls to step aside due to his age and perceived ability.
“The ‘virtual roll call’ was initially proposed as necessary for meeting Ohio’s unique ballot access requirements, but that is no longer a valid justification,” said a draft letter written by Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) and obtained by Mother Jones that dozens of members were reportedly planning to sign onto. “Proceeding with the ‘virtual roll call’ in the absence of a valid legal rationale will be rightly perceived as a purely political maneuver.”
Amid reports of Huffman’s letter, the DNC sent an email to its convention rules committee, signaling the party’s intent was still do a pre-convention virtual vote, backpedalling slightly to say this virtual voting process will not start before August 1, according to CNN.
Huffman abandoned his plans to send the letter after the DNC announced a vote wouldn’t occur before August 1, according to a Wednesday New York Times report, but he remains “perplexed” Biden hasn’t seen the writing on the wall.
Meanwhile, as a new Associated Press poll shows nearly two-thirds of Democrats want Biden to withdraw from the race—because they don’t think he can beat Trump, they don’t think he can do the job a second term, they want a new generation of leadership, or all of the above—the Republicans who flocked to Milwaukee for the convention are thrilled by Biden’s refusal to step aside thus far.
“My thoughts on the November election is a landslide for Trump, that’s my word—landslide. I have no doubt,” says Diane Jordan, a convention attendee and leader of the Illinois Federation of Republican Women.
Corey Allen, another Illinois Republican, says he could see Democrats wanting to sub in Illinois Governor JB Pritzker or California Governor Gavin Newsom to increase excitement among apathetic Democrats.
But Trump emerging from the attempted assassination against him last week with a fist raised has only made his fans more confident in their odds amid the Democratic infighting. “How do you compete with assassination?” says Allen.
Republican convention-goer Aron Péna, of Texas agrees: “I think the failed assassination attempt has pretty much sealed the election’s fate,” he says.
That triumphant imagery contrasts sharply with how Republicans at the convention perceive Biden back in D.C.
“I feel bad for president because I really see the downfall, I hate to say, of an elderly gentleman,” says Jordan.
As I was finishing up this article on a bench just outside of the packed arena, a 20-something man in a Trump-branded shirt walked past me while talking on his cellphone. “Dude, did you hear 81-year-old Biden has COVID?” he said of the positive test result announced by the White House Wednesday. “It’s amazing.”
