[000:00:00;00] the outcome 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 it energize the democratic face 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 that strategy and re energize its base for some vice president campbell, a harris is the obvious choice. but some democrats are questioning if she can be donald trump. so where does this leave the democratic party will to shake up, sway any independent voters, will explore these issues with our guests in a moment. but 1st, this report from katya lopez had a young historic moment in american politics with us presidential biting 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 biden is supporting vice president, pamela harris,

but she's not the official nominee yet. the former california prosecutor is looking to walk in enough still a good vote to secure her nomination at the democratic convention next month. the change has re energize the democratic base, but doubts linger. harris had low voter approval ratings in her 1st 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'll 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. hopefully 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, thrill because i feel like in some ways it will be more of the same. however, i do think it's a a positive direction for the, for 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 failed reco. trump team has already released ads attacking harris's record, including her handling of the southern us border crisis. look what she got done. a border invasion runaway installation, the american dream debt. now, good finding is that of the race 78 year old trump is the oldest presidential nominee in the us history. despite his legal troubles,

his recent assassination attempt has re energized his things in compass. samantha, the, our 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 with the yen alj, a 0 for insights story. 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 or are you scott bolden is 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,

outdoor 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, super energy of all the leaks in the democratic party that is manifested. 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? it all manifests itself in the hallway. numbers with him stepped to the side. she's

not coming to harris is not joe biden and it cheers old. but the facts. and so you see over night she res. $50000000.00. i think that coalition, the 5 years had a 4 years ago was 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. and these. ringback in the next 4 to 6 weeks and after the convention. yeah, it's got, you mentioned the age factor and how much is played in the campaign that's part, you know, trump and his team. they've been making biden's age a big issue in their campaign. now that bite is out of the race, you know, is trump the 78 years old. he is now the oldest presidential nominee and us history . so how much does this turn the tables a while? i think the terms of the table. oh, a couple of ways. one is a convicted felon and come on 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. so 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 there are tax on couple of harris as 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, the lowest unemployment, 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 hare's 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 by them he needed to drop out. i mean, how excruciating a decision was this for him? 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 quiet and speaker policy for example, um, coming out as she did the, the lack of support from 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 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, the 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 going to 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. i've been pushing an open convention. i think it would be better for, for i think it would be better for um, uh for the party. if we had a bit of a mini primary contest. um, 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 to 3 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, 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 is going to be coming around harris going forward? and how does the 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 was my chair here a while back and knows this process better than, than anyone in the states will you release their votes? um i added. ready a roll call, it'll either happen on the floor of 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 virtual roll call. but that's how it will happen. that will people, i say that they all support comma harris. of course,

i think that they most likely will. there may be some 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 it, 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, i think, a process that allows her to show her stuff. and when this, in a convincing enough way that people say she did it and we're going to be fully behind her. steve, i just wanna 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 charge. 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. and 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 is debate performance, you know, bite and tried very hard to try to sort of reset the narrative, insisting, but he was going to stay in the race. so he thought the certainly giving some interviews and maybe give me 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 to be the performance was a fatal flaw for his candidacy. he was defiant. as you mentioned, he had set at one point in a narrow view that it would take a intervention from the almighty above to convince him to drop out of the race. or he had to be shown, poll numbers that would convince them that he could not win. 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, and if there was the aster 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 um 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 they would have happened and, and, and, and basically picked formally the nominated 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, as well as 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 scattered into a role. but a lot of that is probably going to depend on how the democrats cool us 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's the market. 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 find anybody but the g o. p a donald trump right now . and so we can call us around her, around the kind of la harris, she's the number they won't be a coordination. remember, she's part of the biden harris jane. 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 there's not in the race, 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 a if you got competition, that's fine, but it doesn't look like there's going to 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,

had there been specific pools focusing on battle ground swing states. right. yes, 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 allay fears, but actually created more. and i think gaza, which has been a drain on the president, not only in terms of air vote. ready as 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 tell us any issues. we'll see how to frames that in, in the weeks to come. but some of the negatives around joe biden are there with, kimberly harris. and i think she will most likely do better in the state by state pollings 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 gotta 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 or 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'd like you to talk to rob you as a little bit more about the kind of data that you found. how dire the situation is been for president biden, especially in states like michigan as well. 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 going to go up it, most likely it was going to go down. he wasn't a very bad situation there. but we also found in 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 and 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 at 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 of 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 a, as we were about whether there's going to be our conference calls, a roll call vote of the delegates, a mini primary or a vote on the floor of the democratic national convention. and i expect that brock obama, nancy pelosi, 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. com a lot, harris or whatever a combo 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

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 journalist 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. uh, but they did not want to be saved until leaning in towards pushing joe biden aside . scott, um 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 may 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 when will bring in the kinds of crucial voters that some democratic strategists think she means they 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 blue wall. once we repair that pool, then i think the vice president has to be the selection. that's gonna help us do that. because we got time, we don't have a lot of time,

but there's time. i think you go to see the energy of the democrats. then you're going to see her pull closer and closer to the dow truck. and he would be on donald trump. because all the issues or, or negative energy that was causing the democrats, so lead support in voters. 9 herm selection here is all of that. and so that's what i think. all right, fast and a 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 they'll have bye for now.

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the colleges. when the, the, the hello there, uninstalled the attain, this isn't use our life from the coming up. in the next 60 minutes. we have people to talk to, we have phone calls to make and we have an election to in the us, vice president couple of harris to get into campaigns of the white house saying she has enough support from democrats to clinch the policy. now as you remember joe