House Dems Plot Last-ditch Effort to Delay Biden Nomination

One Democratic lawmaker is circulating a letter asking the DNC to postpone the virtual roll call vote expected to be conducted in the coming weeks.

The DNC is planning a virtual roll call vote to nominate President Joe Biden after Ohio election officials threatened to keep him off the ballot if he wasn't chosen by Aug. 7, before the party's convention later that month. | Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

By SARAH FERRIS, ELENA SCHNEIDER and JENNIFER HABERKORN

07/16/2024 12:56 PM EDT

Dozens of House Democrats are organizing a plan to speak out against their own party’s effort to seal President Joe Biden’s nomination sooner than originally planned, which they argue stifles the intense ongoing debate about his candidacy, according to a lawmaker involved in the effort.

A drafted letter, circulated by Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) and obtained by POLITICO, offers the first public signal from Democrats since the weekend’s attempted assassination on former President Donald Trump that scores of their own members remain deeply unsettled about the future of Biden’s candidacy.

“It’s a really bad move by the DNC. Somebody thinks it’s a clever way to lock down debate and I guess by dint of sheer force, achieve unity, but it doesn’t work that way,” Huffman said in an interview. He declined to confirm the existence of a letter.

The missive from this group of Democrats does not specifically call for Biden to leave the race — and, in fact, specifically states that it represents a “spectrum” of views. Even so, many Democrats who have been privately pleading for more of their colleagues to call on Biden to end his campaign saw this as a potentially watershed moment after weeks of mostly private discussions about the party’s dilemma.

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The push for a new nominee — which had been effectively frozen by last weekend’s shooting — has returned to public view, and House Democrats now appear to be seriously organizing for the first time. There’s also a clear deadline to take action that multiple Democrats privately said they hoped would push their leaders, such as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries or former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to take more decisive action themselves.

A draft of the letter, which was first reported by The New York Times, urges DNC members against holding a virtual roll call, instead of the customary timing during the convention in Chicago later next month. It insists that there is “no legal justification for this extraordinary and unprecedented action which would effectively accelerate the nomination process by nearly a month.”

It goes on to suggest that some of the signatories have called for Biden to step aside and others haven’t, but “all of us, however, agree that stifling debate and prematurely shutting down any possible change in the Democratic ticket through an unnecessary and unprecedented ‘virtual roll call’ in the days ahead is a terrible idea,” the letter continued.

“It could deeply undermine the morale and unity of Democrats — from delegates, volunteers, grassroots organizers and donors to ordinary voters — at the worst possible time.”

The move comes three days before the Democratic National Convention rules committee is scheduled to meet, when they are expected to vote on setting up the rules and dates for a virtual roll call vote.

That virtual roll call was initially authorized to address ballot access problems in Ohio, which had set its ballot deadline for Aug. 7. But Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed a law that moved the date to Aug. 23, one day after the DNC convention is scheduled to end. But some Democrats have argued that since the law doesn’t go into effect until Sept. 1, Republicans could still move to keep the party’s nominee off the ballot, they said.

“The train has left the station, so the only way you can express it is in an amendment to the [convention] rules [committee] on Friday. But you can’t do it through the press,” said Donna Brazile, the former chair of the DNC.

But Brazile argued that the DNC did this in good faith, adding that they “made this decision after we’d learned about the nefarious actions [of states], including Ohio, so why would we put the freedom of the Democratic Party in the hands of a few nefarious actors?”

“The suggestion that the timeline for the virtual roll call has been accelerated is false,” DNC Chair Jaime Harrison said in a statement. “The timeline for the virtual roll call process remains on schedule and unchanged from when the DNC made that decision in May.”

It’s unclear whether the letter will prompt more Democrats to come forward with their concerns about Biden’s electability — rather than their concerns about the party nomination process.

“It felt like the dam was about to break” before Saturday night, said one Democratic lawmaker with concerns about Biden, who was granted anonymity to discuss the effort. “Everybody appropriately took a step back, the pressure valve was somewhat released. We all knew it would be just days before that energy would return.”