Another week, another shock to the 2024 presidential election. President Joe Biden's decision to end his campaign and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris raised a large number of questions.
For starters, Biden won the Democratic primary in every state that conducted one. Can he just step aside? Is he picking Harris as his replacement, or do the people get a say?
CNN asked for your questions about what's going on. I've picked out a representative sampling and tried to answer with what we know based on CNN's reporting and polling. See below.
How can Harris just take over and get his delegates? Does she not have to file the paperwork to run for office and secure signatures?
You're right. Harris is not the nominee and she wasn't a candidate during the monthslong primary process. However, with Biden out of the race, the delegates he won are free to support any declared candidate recognized by the party at the convention in Chicago in August.
Just hours after Biden withdrew from the race, Harris filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to become a candidate for president, which would allow her to get signatures to be recognized at the convention.
An avalanche of Democrats have already endorsed her, so while it is possible another candidate jumps in the ring and challenges her at the convention, at the moment that seems unlikely.
Why is there no process on how to select the Democratic candidate? Why is Harris automatically nominated? It's not right.
There is a process; it's just currently being dominated by Harris.
This is an unprecedented event. Biden is the first president to bow out of a reelection campaign after winning nearly all of the delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination.
Since there is no time to repeat the primaries in all 50 states, Democrats are primed to simply select the nominee with delegates to their convention. Biden has released the delegates to support whomever they choose, but Harris may end up being the only major candidate as the party tries to unify around her.
Are there any other options besides Harris to get the nomination?
Not currently. In order to challenge Harris at the convention, a candidate would have to get the signatures of hundreds of delegates and gain recognition as a candidate from the party. That is possible, but there are no top-tier Democrats currently saying they will challenge Harris.
In fact, most of the Democrats who have been discussed as potential future candidates – people like Govs. Gavin Newsom of California, Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania – have all endorsed Harris.
Would DNC regulations preclude Harris from choosing a Republican such as Adam Kinzinger as her VP in order to appeal to disaffected Republicans?
Interesting idea! Other people submitting questions suggested former Rep. Liz Cheney, another disaffected Republican.
According to party rules, the process for selecting the vice presidential candidate mirrors the process for selecting the presidential candidate. Presidential candidates must sign a pledge that they are a Democrat and will run as a Democrat.
However, it is possible that if Harris wanted to find a willing Republican, that person could quickly register as a Democrat to be on the ticket. Or Democrats could change their rules at the convention. However, it does not appear, at least at the moment, that Harris is considering a former Republican to be on the ticket.
What are the chances of a Harris victory in November?
We don't know. I've covered too many elections to put too much stock in odds predictions for elections.
I will wait to see if there's any movement in polling in the coming days and weeks. In fact, some organizations that engage in such forecasts have suspended them for the time being.
Polling conducted before Biden left the race suggests a tight matchup going forward. In an election featuring former President Donald Trump and Harris, there is no clear leader. Trump has 48% compared with Harris' 47% in CNN's Poll of Polls, which is an average of the six most recent nonpartisan, national surveys of registered or likely voters that meet CNN's standards.
But the election may still come down to who can win the three Rust Belt states that Trump won in 2016 and Biden won in 2020: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. Keep an eye on those states.
Harris could pick a running mate to appeal to Rust Belt voters. She can help motivate Black voters and women. But her selection may not change the underlying dynamic of a closely divided nation and a few battleground states.
With some states changing laws recently, is Biden locked onto some ballots in any state? Can he be replaced on the ballot at this time?
Technically, Biden isn't yet on any ballot. The party has not yet officially selected its nominee; that happens at the Democratic National Convention in August or in a virtual roll call before that.
Biden is releasing the delegates pledged to support him, and there's currently no indication of anyone except Harris stepping forward. The state with a question mark about timing of the DNC, Ohio, already changed its law to allow for Democrats to select a candidate.
Plus, there is no guarantee that a state's primary winner gets the nomination. In 2020, millions of Democrats in multiple states picked Sen. Bernie Sanders and their delegates supported him, but it was Biden who won the nomination. This year, Democrats' move to rally around Harris might make her the shoo-in nominee, but it does not preclude a challenge before the roll call vote.
Expect lawsuits about this and for Republicans to keep up their complaints about the process. House Speaker Mike Johnson has said, without getting specific, that Republicans will look at ways to challenge a late replacement. But legal experts think such challenges have little likelihood of success, CNN has reported.
Finally, just as the Supreme Court made clear that voters should have access to the candidate of their choice when it rejected efforts to disqualify Trump from the ballot, it seems like the court might protect the right of Democrats to field a candidate.
With such a short period of time, how will undecided voters be able to learn more about the specific policy agenda of Harris/TBD vs. Trump/JD Vance?
There's plenty of time. The election is still months away. Republicans just presented their case at the Republican National Convention last week. Democrats get their turn in August.
Presumably, Harris' proposals will not depart too drastically from Biden. While Trump has changed the GOP, there are many predictable divides between the parties.
Democrats prize abortion rights; Republicans don't. Democrats want to act to combat climate change; Republicans largely don't. Both parties say they will protect Social Security and Medicare benefits, but neither is talking about long-term solutions. Democrats will try to raise taxes on Americans making more than $400,000 per year; Republicans have said they will try to lower taxes. Republicans, under Trump, are largely opposed to foreign aid to help democracies worldwide, and Democrats largely support those measures.
Would Michelle Obama run?
Nope. This is a question that appears to be on a lot of people's minds. The former first lady is incredibly popular within the Democratic Party and in the country at large. But she has consistently swatted away any idea that she might be interested in a White House run.
"I will not run for president. No, nope, not going to do it," Obama said in 2016.
More recently, she told Oprah in a Netflix special from 2023 that politics is hard and a candidate has got to want to run in the same way that they want children and a family.
"It's got to be in your soul, because it is so important. It is not in my soul," she said, adding she is more effective outside of politics.
If Biden were to step down before his term ends, would Mike Johnson become VP, or does Harris get to choose a VP?
We're getting deep into hypotheticals here. Biden has not said anything about resigning and, quite the opposite, has promised to finish his term, which ends on January 20, 2025.
If he were to resign, Harris would become president, according to the 25th Amendment. She would then pick a vice president, who would be approved by majority vote in both chambers of Congress. Johnson only comes into play in the presidential line of succession if both the president and vice president roles are somehow simultaneously vacant.
There are multiple examples in US history of vacancies in the vice presidency. Most recently, Vice President Gerald Ford became president when Richard Nixon resigned in August 1974. But Ford's pick to be vice president, Nelson Rockefeller, was not sworn in until December of that year.
Could Biden serve as some kind of senior adviser in the Harris administration, should she be elected? What are the historical precedents for ex-presidents to do so?
There's nothing to keep a former president from being involved in politics, but, with the exception of Trump, they rarely do.
John Quincy Adams went from being president during the 19th century to a long career in the US House of Representatives. President William Howard Taft was never a natural politician and lost the 1912 presidential election in a three-way race that featured his predecessor, Teddy Roosevelt, running as a Progressive, and the ultimate winner, Democrat Woodrow Wilson.
Years later, in 1921, President Warren G. Harding would make Taft chief justice of the US Supreme Court.
More recently, presidents have settled into long and lucrative post-presidencies outside of the political eye.
Isn't Kamala's anointment the modern-day equivalent of the smoke-filled back room deals of yesteryear where the party bigwigs, rather than the party faithful, chose the candidate?
That's a subjective assessment.
There was a primary process and Democrats rallied behind Biden during that process. When it became clear he was not up to running and serving another four years, they pressured him to step aside.
Now, the 3,949 pledged Democratic delegates – most of them community leaders from around the country – will join roughly 750 party leaders to select a replacement nominee. Democrats have said the process should be an open one. Only Harris has risen so far, and she has a massive amount of support among elected officials and delegates we've talked to.
Does that sound like a backroom deal? If so, you're among the large number of Americans frustrated by a primary process dominated by the two major political parties.
Does it sound like a party pivoting, under its rules, to address the realization that its candidate should not continue? That's also a legitimate take.
