Atlantic journalists answer seven questions about what happens from now until November.
Now that President Joe Biden has dropped out of the race, Democrats have about 100 days to mount an entirely new campaign. Biden’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris made her the heir apparent to the Democratic nomination, but much about the Democrats’ next moves remains unsettled. Below are seven questions, answered, about how this process could actually work.
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
What Comes Next
Can Harris take over Biden’s campaign infrastructure—and receive his campaign’s money?
Yes—and very likely. Biden’s campaign filed paperwork to rename itself “Harris for President” yesterday afternoon, and the Biden-Harris campaign’s roughly 1,300 staffers were told they would now be the Harris campaign’s staff. If she becomes the nominee, Harris should be able to gain access to the Biden campaign’s coffers, although some Republican operatives and lawyers are suggesting that the Biden campaign’s money isn’t Harris’s yet, and they may mount legal challenges. (The Federal Election Commission chair, who was appointed by Donald Trump, has also said that this is an “unprecedented” situation with “open questions.”) Harris’s campaign has brought in an additional $81 million since yesterday, it said this afternoon.
Harris said that she intends to “earn and win” the Democratic nomination. Would another Democrat actually challenge her? Would they stand a chance?
As my colleague Russell Berman told me: Probably not, and no. The Democratic establishment is behind her and clearly wants her to be the nominee—and virtually all of her plausible challengers have endorsed her. Still, Russell reminded me that unlike Biden, Harris has not won any primaries. The delegates are now uncommitted, and are not obligated by the rules of the Democratic National Convention to back her. Harris is in a strong position. But if she stumbles badly or tanks in polls in the coming weeks, some Democrats could conceivably launch a last-minute bid against her, Russell said.
Why haven’t any prominent Democrats decided to challenge her at this point?
Everything moved so fast, Russell told me: “It became clear immediately that many, if not most, senior Democrats were looking to Biden for a signal of whether the party should rally around Harris or open things up to a wider field.
