or sometimes they regret you, and you don't even realize you're being recruited. how does the real world explore the doc surveillance on the world beneath the diplomatic surface? most that is done on the out of the us presidential race. joe biden abandons his re election bid and backs his vice president, pamela harris. but what's behind this move and will look energized the democratic base ahead of november's election. this is inside store the hello and welcome to the program. i'm how much enjoyed it's a historic move and a big political gamble. joe biden has dropped out of us presidential race after weeks of mounting pressure for him to step aside. that leave the democratic party

with just a few months to reorganize its strategy and re energize its base for some vice president. pamela harris is the obvious choice, but some democrats are questioning, or she can be donald trump. so where does this leave the democratic party? well, the shake ups way any independent voters, will explore these issues with our guests in a moment. but 1st this report from katya lopez on the on a historic moment in american politics with us president joe biden. out of his re election campaign. his party is rushing to build a new plan, including who will lead the democratic ticket in november. god bless the united states of america. by the end is supporting vice president carmella harris, but she's not the official nominee yet. the former california prosecutor is looking to walk in enough to look at both to secure her nomination at the democratic convention. next month. we believe in

the change has re energize the democratic base, but doubts linger. harris had low voter approval ratings in her 1st 3 years as v p . her party is now looking at whether she can turn things around and be donald trump, particularly in swing states. i think her likely nomination will put democrats in a strong position. she will be very competitive in those crucial midwestern states, pennsylvania, michigan in wisconsin. and i think she also will put some of those other swing states that have started to slip away. places like arizona back in very strong contention for democrats. some voters have mixed reactions. i hope it's they look at the person and not just, she's a woman, and she's a woman of color. i look at her record and how she work with joe biden. i'm not

thrilled, thrilled because i feel like in some ways it would be more of the same. however, i do think it's a positive direction for the to the party abroad. there are questions about how the shake up and the candidates could affect the world garza ukraine. intentions with china. they know commer owens this fails, reco trumps team has all ready released ads attacking harris his record including her handling of the southern us border crisis. look what she got done. a border invasion runaway installation. the american dream dead now did find in is that of the race 78 year old trump is the oldest presidential nominee and us history. despite his legal troubles, his recent assassination attempt has re energized his face. i think from the man to the hour, but the i feel like america is standing on his feet were bleeding but were standing now with less than 4 months before the presidential election. the parties

and voters was navigate politically. i'm certain territory, katia, a little bit of the un alj a 0 for insights story. the . all right, let's go and bring in our guess. they're all joining us from washington dc. steve harmon is the chief national correspondent for voice of america and the author of the book behind the white house curtain. a senior journalist story of covering the president and why it matters. so he's got bolden who's a former chair of the washington dc democratic party. and current chairman of the national bar association, political action committee, which raises and distributes funds for political candidates. and also with us as a veteran, democratic party inside our james army. he's advise the presidential campaigns of jesse jackson, the al gore brock obama and bernie sanders. he's also held leadership roles within the party, a warm welcome to all, and thanks so much for joining us today on inside story, scott, let me start with you today. how much of a boost does joe biden dropping out of the race give to the democrats going forward?

how much more energized is the base now? and what does this do when it comes to up ending the race? super bowls, silver energy, all the leaks and the democratic party that is manifested in the various polls over the last 3 to 6 months. are all sure by him step of the side. it also takes away the issue of age and mental acuity, which is a huge issue to the republicans. all of these leaks with young people, black and brown, people of pro live suburban women, independence, right in all manifest itself in the polling numbers with him, stepped to the side. she's not coming to harris is not joe biden, and it cheers all the defects. and so you see over night she res, $50000000.00. i think that coalition, the 5 years had a 4 years ago is going to come back together,

call us around her and you're going to see her not only get close to donald trump, but i think be donald trump in the. ringback in the next $4.00 to $6.00 weeks and it's gone after the convention. yeah, it's got, you mentioned the age factor and how much is played in the campaign. those for, you know, trump and his team. they've been making biden's age, a big issue in their campaign up now that bind is out of the race, you know, is trump of 78 years old. he is now the oldest presidential nominee and us history . so how much does this turn the tables? and i think the terms of the table a couple of ways. one is a convicted felon and come a harris as a prosecutor. she can prosecute the case, the political case, and the economic case just donald trump and his retribution efforts that he's promised that changes the dynamic there. she's much younger than him, much more dynamic than him. and party is going to be not only energized, but the republicans, they, they have, they focused on running a guest off. i run it against joe,

but he's no longer there now. and their tax on pamela harris has an african american woman. as someone who's been valid tested as the vice president changes the whole dynamics, you'll see the truck and the g o p. now i going to be on their heels and trying to figure out what the best messages, if the attacker on economics and stuff we can have that conversation about the economy, loss of employment and probably 50 to 60 years or more. gonna have that conversation about the stock market, gonna have that conversation about inflation. that's down, we're trending right now. and so we're on even putting there, and we'd like that debate. if you're a democrat and you're kind of the hairs james, in the past few weeks, there's been so much reporting about what president biden has been thinking. the kind of pressure that he was under from democratic colleagues after his disasters, debate performance against donald trump. i want to ask you about what it was that

finally convinced bite and he needed to drop out. i mean, how excruciating a decision was this for him as well? i wish i knew the answer to that. i'm not privy to the, the, the president's thinking, but certainly there was enormous pressure and there was a drip drip drip and it wasn't gonna get any less of a drip. it probably was gonna increase in the, in the coming days to a pretty much a rapid flow. but the key people, wyatt and speaker policy, for example. um, coming out as she did uh, the, the lack of support from, uh, the congressional minority leader who simply didn't say were endorsing you, but left it open. and schumer, i think was pretty tough as well. so this, the deck was stacked, the cards were getting stacked against them. um, how difficult is it it has to be difficult. lucky. 81 years old. this has been his

entire life of to have to make the decision to step aside for, for a guide to say, look, i just don't have what it takes to run right now. that's a, that's a tough. that's a tough call. i'm a 78. i'm not at 81, but frankly, when people tell me you're not able to do this, i wex indignant and i say that sure i can, even though i may not be able to. so i think that there's a, there's, there really was a lot of personal stuff here, but frankly, he was in a position to after the debate in particular he was going to lose. it just wasn't looking good there. denial to the contrary. that, oh yes, he can do it and yes, we're gonna win in the numbers are all on our side. simply the reality of what it was was telling a very different story. so he made the right decision. i wish she'd done it a month ago. i think would have given us more time to prepare. but here we are. i think couple of harris as well position to mobilize the various component groups in

the party. and it's, it's now going to be up to her to be able to do that. and i've been pushing an open convention. i think it would be better for her. i think it would be better for you uh for the party. if we had a bit of a mini primary contest and she said she wants to earn the the and when the, the nomination, i give her a chance to win it by having an open primary with town halls. and we have 23 weeks before the convention where we actually could do a whole lot to showcase our bench and have her emerges. the victor of, of that problem. this is james. let me just ask you about these next steps you're talking about. um, the official selection of anom and the, as i understand that it has to be made by thousands of democratic national convention. delegates are those delegates now going to coalesce around harris. i mean, whether there is this open and transparent sort of process that you are recommending,

is it now the fact that everybody's going to be coming around harris going forward? and how does this selection process by the delegates actually happen? well, what, what's gonna happen is that the states are going to meet the states are going to take votes. scott, who was my chair here a while back and knows this process better than, than anyone in the states will. will you release their votes? and um, add a, a roll call. uh, it'll either happen on the floor or the convention or the party wants to do it the weeks earlier, just in, in like a week and a half. i think they want to do a, a virtual roll call. but that's how it will happen. now will people say that they all support commer harris? of course, i think they most likely will. they may be something voting present who have some one reason or another, dissatisfaction, but the over whelming majority will be supported. the question is, how enthusiastic will that support be? and we were seeing a situation where democrats were supporting joe biden,

but 57 to 66 percent in different polls were saying they were, she weren't the nominate. we haven't seen those numbers with regard to kind of a harris, but they look, there's no secret to say that different kinds of different positions on things. and somebody not being through the attic, it's up to her right now to create the enthusiasm that will actually be masked by a coming together. and everybody's saying, oh yes, we support comments, but are they going to work hard? are they going to make this real? is the threat of donald trump enough to move them the way we need to move them to get the hard work done to get the votes out. that's going to be up to her. i think she can do it. she says she wants to earn it. i think she has the capacity to do it . we just have to have a, i think a process that allows her to show her stuff. and when this, in a convincing enough way, the people say she did it and we're going to be fully behind her. steve,

i just want to zoom out for a minute and talk about how the size make a shift. this all is because the last time that an incumbent president stepped aside from the presidential race that was in 1968. that's when president lyndon b johnson decided against running for re election. but of course that happened in march of that year. we're now much closer to the convention then johnson was in 1968 were just weeks away from the democratic national convention. how big of a political earthquake is this as well, as you pointed out there, this is unprecedented. and the democrats are really need to move fast. as james was explaining there, there has to be some sort of process to really unify the party. because if we just go back a few days, there were voices on social media and progressives, and others on the democratic party who really were against this movement to

pressure joe biden, to pass the torch. but they were calling it a bloodless crew in the making. and they may come around for uh, a comma la harris, but the time is running out so well. no. after the election, whether this worked or not, or joe biden will say, i told you so when the other democrats will say, you know, this was the right thing to do. it's all going to depend on what are the results in november, steve, we know that after his debate performance, you know, bite and tried very hard to try to sort of reset the narrative, insisting that he was going to stay in the race. so he thought that certainly giving some interviews and maybe getting some stump speeches, that nato press conference, so the, perhaps that would change the tide, but that didn't happen. was there anything that biden could have done that would have one back potential voters after after that debate?

stupid gold to say, but it does appear that that debate the performance was a fatal flaw for his candidacy. he was defiant, as you mentioned, he had said at one point in a narrow view that it would take a intervention from the all mighty above to convince them to drop out of the race. or he had to be shown, poll numbers that would convince them that he could not when we know that chuck schumer, senate majority leader went up to robot beach delaware on saturday to talk with him and apparently delivered the message that nancy pelosi and others. and the days ahead, we're going to make a very blunt public calls for him to drop out and, and it would be better for him to go out as a, as a hero this way. and i expect he will appear at the democratic parties national convention in chicago during the week of august 19th. and we will see an enthusiast

in crowd giving him a not a not unprecedented ovation. uh, as opposed to uh, if he had stayed in the race. uh there would have, who knows what would have happened at the convention? scott, we know that there's going to be a lot of meetings, rules committees of the democratic national convention. they've been planning for this virtual roll call. uh that would have happened and, and, and basically picked formally the nominee for the democratic party that they weren't even going to wait until the convention. that was all supposed to be blown up by, i believe, august 7th. that's what james was saying. i mean, is that still the plan of action going forward is, are things going to proceed by this timeline? still a well, i is. the short answer is, is yes, the rules committee, the credentials committee, all these committees, they're meeting to set up the conventions. so these are standing committees up to 1st thing. second of all, i think in a week or 2, they're scheduled into

a role. but a lot of that is probably going to depend on how the democrats coalesce around commer harris. i wish we had time to do um, a mini primary, but you gotta have a competition right now. there's no real competition on the jo magine said this morning that he wasn't going to run. major leaders in the party of got behind their representatives and senators have gotten behind. are there coalitions of civil rights organizations and human rights organizations have gotten the hider because the democrats understand how critical it is to beat donald trump. and that's what the month of democracy is on the line. and if that's the case, then we can, we spent a month or so uh, finding ourselves over jo, buying. we don't have time to fight anybody, but the g o. p a donald trump right now. and so we can call us around her, around the kind of le harris. she's the number, they won't be

a coordination. remember, she's part of the bite in here. a string. she's been campaigns. she's got 200000000 in the bank. she does fund raising. right. she's the vice president. yeah, it is really easy. our just to move up, pick a vice president and let those delegates vote because remember, now the fight and is not in the raise. they're all on committed. and so as a result, she's got to run it by making, by getting them to support her. that's not, that's not you got competition, that's fine. but this won't be much competition because there's not much time james, there's been pulling the past few weeks indicating the kind of le harris would perhaps do better against trump than bite and would have, as i understand that those are national polls had to have there been specific pools, focusing on battle, ground swing states, you know? yeah, that's been a, it's been a hypothetical. so the national polls are out. the state by state polls are not, we'll actually be doing one of my brother, john will be doing one in the next

a week or so. now that we have some clarity that who the nominee is, we held off because we didn't want to do a bite and we weren't sure he was going to stay. but i think she will do better. i think she'll do better in several states because many of the negatives that had come to plague joe biden, for example, his age and, and the debate performance. and then the, the equally disastrous interview with george stephanopoulos that was supposed to a late fears, but actually created more. and i think gaza, which has been a drain on the president. not only in terms of air voters in michigan, but also in terms of black, latino, asian, young people where you were seeing 1520 percent attrition. and people saying that it was god. so that was causing them to drop off. the vice president has been far more empathetic on cost any issues. we'll see how she frames

that in, in the weeks to come. but some of the negatives around joe biden are there with campbell harrison. i think she will most likely do better in the state by state buildings then then then the, then the president. so i'm optimistic about that, but i think like that, and i think what scott is saying, there's a very short period of time she's got work to do. i think she's up for the job, but she's really got to get to that. she's got to mobilize people around her as the not the number 2, but the number one. and james, i'm glad you mentioned that, cuz i wanted to dig a little deeper with you a specifically about buying these policies uh towards israel. uh and his stance on war on gaza. i mean you had a lot of pulling indicating that biden was hemorrhaging air of american and most of the american voters, due to his support of israel. i. i'd like you to talk to of you as a little bit more about the kind of data that you found. how dire the situation has been for president biden, especially in states like michigan. and now what we found was that, well,

59 percent of the air american voters voted for him in 2020. the number was down to 18 percent. and now, and i think that was not gonna go up it, most likely it was gonna go down. he wasn't a very bad situation there. but we also found in the national bullying that we did of the brought in the constituency of, of the democratic party. that like i said, he was losing young voters. he was losing black on an asian voters in particular, who have a global vision, who see themselves as part of a world community and who felt strongly that he was the president was failing on, on that score. so this was a problem that democrats had to deal with. they were not always as acknowledging of the problem. but clearly when i've spoken with the vice president and, and people in her team, they get it. and i think we'll see a far more empathy from her and, and hopefully

a change of policy. she's still the vice president, she's not the president until she when's the election. so she will still be jo biden's number 2. but as number 2, she can send different signals. she can send different messages about how open she is to change, and without contradicting the president. she can let people know. i understand and i think she will. uh, steve. um, vice president harris has already gotten a lot of endorsements, big political endorsements from very powerful figures in the democratic party. but there has been some democrats that have wondered aloud, why perhaps figures like former president obama and nancy pelosi, the former speaker of the white house representatives and senate majority leader, chuck schumer, why they have not not publicly endorsed or is that simply because they want it to be left to joe biden, to endorse campbell, a harris,

and that they will eventually do so. or does that represent any political peril going forward for a couple of years, as it does not appear to represent any political peril. it's more about their concerns with the process and talking of as we were about whether there's going to be our conference calls, a roll call vote of the delegates of many primary or a vote on the floor of the democratic national convention. and i expect that brock obama, nancy pelosi, a chuck schumer, once that is resolved, will come out and not only endorse com a lot, harris, but that we will see the brock obama, maybe bill clinton and others out on the campaign trail. and what this really boils down to however, is you know what, whatever donald trump says about cala harris or whatever

a comma air is about donald trump is not going to move voters over from one column to the other. it's about getting your base out and in these critical swing states, michigan, pennsylvania. that's where the work really needs to be done by the democrats, if, if they have any hopes of winning the election. steve, if i could also ask you, um, how difficult a needle was it for harris's team to thread the past few weeks to be supportive publicly a binding to not leak any potential succession plans but also to be ready when and if biden were to step aside which he did, or it seems like they did an excellent job on that. and part of that, we know from the poor reporters that travel with the vice president. usually she comes back to the plane and will talk to the journalists on air force to is usually

off the record. but that did not happen on the last 2 trips. uh, they were anticipating uh something could happen like happened on sunday, but they did not want to be, so you can to leaning in towards pushing joe biden aside. scott, we'll have a couple of minutes left, but i want to ask you about something that everybody's saying is going to be a paramount importance. going forward for vice president harris, which is going to be picking her running mate, because there are a lot of democrats that have privately argued that harris should pick a white man in order to widen her appeal and provide demographic balance to the ticket. there is this belief that perhaps somebody like joshua bureau is the governor of pennsylvania because that's a critical midwestern swing state. i mean, what do you think of that? how much concern is there right now about how she picks somebody that we will bring in the kinds of crucial voters that some democratic strategists think she means i,

i don't believe in identity politics at least taking someone black white yellow. ready brown or that is gonna help her when i help the democrats when and be a compliment to her strong leadership, her resume. very, very important. and so i'm a governor of one of the swing states would be excellent, regardless of what the race or nationality is. because wherever we need string is in those swing space, we've got to repair that the wall. once we repair that pool, then i think the vice president has to be, the selection is going to help us do that. because we got time, we don't have a lot of time, but there's time. i think you're going to see the energy of the democrats. then you're going to see her pull closer and closer to the dial truck. and he would be on donald trump. because all the issues or,

or negative energy that was causing the democrats to lead support in voters, 9 herm selection here is all of that. and so that's what i think. all right, fast any conversation, but unfortunately we have run out of time. so we're gonna have to ended there. thanks so much to all of our guest, steve herman, a scott bolden and james osby. and thank you for watching. you can see the program again any time by visiting our website. i'll just or dot com. and for further discussion, go to our facebook page, that's facebook dot com, forward slash age and side story. you can also join the conversation on x r handle is at a inside story for me. how much in room and the entire team here, and uh huh. bye for now, the the latest news as it breaks, they are not afraid they are going to stay here. with

detailed coverage president enforced isolation may very well lead to increased calls for him to in his quest for 2nd term. from around the world irregular migration from west africa into europe rose by 174 percent in the 1st half of 2024 . the a pod. his aim interviews is israel and obstacles piece. i think that the new thing you have on his government with these says 5 digit, you say getting russell, a thought provoking. nonsense. the e, you made weapons being used in guns. no guns should be used in an offensive way. that's our facing realities. you're running. mean, what does he bring to the table? hard from being presidential? could we go to some we cannot take the fact that he was signing up, present as not that important effective. he had the story on talk to how does era somebody post government prevent the like the, the longest that this junky provide us with the gnostic. one of the show me see

a god visual buses. it carries it. does it advise you, ma'am? it is, but i mean, got these and all right, that dick one of the shows you the, the boss is unique by the securities uploaded. let's go to the gallery delegate example as it is. uh and the phone i said the blink human was that's what i bought it for g. shit. if you can move with big city, not cheap up by the funny become us. not all, unless you go for she told the shelf you'd be a bunch of fun in there, which when i'm looking at finance of you, your son, we talked about that she was you don't know that they get they just bought it by the way to come up with them when they probably don't get enough money to be nice of them wasn't on

the carriage. austin de la, the top stories on out just their us vice press to carla harris has kicked off the campaign for the presidency. she addressed campaign stuff is that the headquarters gonna have to style is off the guessing the endorsement of senior democrat. nancy pelosi president cho buys and dropped out of the race for the white house on sunday . august has promised to defeat donald trump if she's chosen as a candidate for november election. when the days and weeks ahead. i together with you, will do everything in my power to unite our democratic party to unite our nation. and to win this election, you know, as many of you know, before i was elected.