Can Gavin Newsom Replace Biden Last Minute? – President Joe Biden’s dramatic fall during a U.S. Air Force commencement ceremony in Colorado on Thursday, which exposed the horseshoe-shaped rubber soles designed to prevent the octogenarian president from falling, sparked fresh discussion over the president’s ability to lead.
Pundits immediately argued that the fall makes the United States look weak to foreign foes.
In contrast, others pondered just how many times the president needs to fall, or lose track of what he’s saying, before the Democratic Party realizes he might not be the man for the job.
Ditching Biden as the party’s presidential candidate now, however, would pose a serious problem for the Democrats.
Biden has beaten Trump once, and with the power of the incumbency – even in the face of major economic challenges – he’s probably the party’s best bet at fending off a challenge from former President Donald Trump.
Impressively, he’s probably also the party’s biggest weakness.
So what can the Democrats do?
The immediately obvious choice for the Democrats would be for Biden to step down now, give Vice President Kamala Harris a chance to prove herself as president, and then hope that her obsession with Woke radicalism isn’t enough to turn voters back to Trump and the political chaos that would obviously ensure.
That decision carries significant risks, however, with Harris’ favorability figures still woefully low.
What About Gavin Newsom?
Talk of a potential 2024 run by California Governor Gavin Newsom may have died down, but there’s little doubt that the Democratic heavyweight hasn’t thought about it.
Newsom has aired ads that criticize Republican governors across the country. He has used Twitter to make political points that sound more like a national campaign that a state-wide one.
In July 2022, a Yahoo News/YouGov poll found that Newsom was a more popular candidate than Vice President Kamala Harris, and gave him an edge of one percentage point over former President Donald Trump in a hypothetical head-to-head presidential race. Newsom may be the candidate the Democrats need, but he’ll first need to take the nomination.
It’s unclear whether he’ll throw his hat in the race last minute, but he may be able to get the votes he needs with the support of the Democratic Party’s controversial “superdelegates.” These are the more than 700 unpledged delegates who will vote at the Democratic National Convention, and who were blamed for the failure of Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign. Newsom will not, however, be able to take the nomination with the support of these superdelegates on their own.
Making up just 15% of the party’s delegates, Newsom will need to put forward a compelling case, and could need to launch a full campaign against the president to even get the ball rolling in the first place.
If Newsom wants the presidency, then, he’ll either need to take on President Biden or hope that the president drops out of the race at the very last minute.
Jack Buckby is 19FortyFive’s Breaking News Editor. He is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.
From 19FortyFive
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