Biden’s “wobbly and stuttering” debate performance has led to “panic” in the Democratic Party, writes The New York Times in a news analysis. Biden mumbled, shuffled his words and apparently mixed up topics during the presidential debate against challenger Donald Trump on the night of Friday Norwegian time. Several columnists and commentators in American mainstream media believe that it is time for Biden to throw in the towel and withdraw from the election campaign. Now the debate also goes inside the Democratic Party, writes AP. In this case, you will get an answer to: That Biden is now being encouraged to resign puts the party in a very difficult dilemma, US expert Sofie Høgestøl, associate professor at the Department of Public Law at the University of Oslo, tells news. – Are you surprised by the demands that Biden must resign? – No, not based on what we saw in the debate yesterday, says Høgestøl to news. But there are several reasons why it won’t be easy. Joe Biden has already secured 3,894 Democratic delegates from US states. According to the plan, these delegates’ votes will go to Biden at the party’s national meeting on 19-22. August, where the presidential candidate will be officially nominated. To win the nomination battle, Biden must secure 1,976 delegates. So he has far more than he needs. Biden has no challengers in the Democratic Party. Høgestøl points out that The New York Times columnist Ezra Klein discussed the matter in a podcast earlier this year. Associate professor at the Department of Public Law at UiO, Sofie Høgestøl, explains what could happen if Biden resigns. Photo: Johanna Hauge / n633785 – Then he was met with a wall of silence. But that wall of silence seems to have crumbled. – How can Biden possibly resign? – Biden has not been formally chosen as the party’s candidate yet. He will only be at the national meeting, says Høgestøl. – That is why you usually have the debate in the autumn, because it is only when they are officially candidates. Right now, he is the person who has won the most delegates in the primary. Høgestøl believes the big question is whether Biden chooses to resign voluntarily, or whether he can be forced to do so himself. – There have been situations in the past where presidential candidates have withdrawn themselves. What has happened then is that their delegates have been free to speak at the national meeting. Then there has been a bickering at the national meeting about who gets those delegates. – So it would not have been entirely without precedent. – Do you think it is likely that Biden can withdraw? – Based on what he said last night after the debate, it doesn’t seem very likely. So we’ll see what he thinks after this has sunk in a bit, says Høgestøl. After the debate, the president and his wife Jill Biden went on to a fast food restaurant in Marietta, Georgia. – I thought we did well, Biden answered when reporters asked how he felt the debate had gone, according to Reuters. Joe and Jill Biden bought food at the Waffle House fast food chain in Marietta, Georgia on Friday after the debate. Photo: Elizabeth Frantz / Reuters – Can Biden be forced to resign? That is the much more difficult question, says Høgestøl. She says that parties in the USA differ from those we have in Norway. In Norway, a party leader can be replaced if a vote of no confidence is passed. But Biden is not party leader in the same way in Norway. – It is a little more complicated to imagine how to force him to withdraw, says Høgestøl. Joe Biden has no challengers when the Democratic Party officially nominates its candidate for the presidential election in November in August. Here he met supporters in Raleigh, North Carolina after the debate. Photo: Elizabeth Frantz / Reuters But she believes that one scenario could be that the delegates believe that the primary election is not valid because people who voted in the election did not know what the actual state of Joe Biden’s health is. Thus, they may feel obliged to vote for another candidate at the Democrats’ national convention in August. – Who is ready behind the scenes to possibly take over? – The difficult situation for the Democrats is that they have put all their cards behind an 81-year-old in the hope that he will hold out until the election in November. They haven’t really been good enough to cultivate others, says Høgestøl. Now she believes there is too little time before the national assembly in August and the presidential election on 5 November. One challenge was that the Democrats did not have a proper primary election. Høgestøl points out that Trump had real challengers, such as Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley. These candidates became known through the primary election. Democrats mentioned as possible candidates, such as Vice President Kamala Harris, California Governor Gavin Newson and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, are still unknown to many Americans. Vice President Kamala Harris had a distinct presence in the 2020 presidential campaign. But she has since become less prominent. Photo: Kevin Dietsch / AFP – What made Trump win the election in 2016 is that everyone in the US knows who he is. They’ve been watching him on TV for years. The other names are not people who are so well known in the US, says Høgestøl. – This is an enormously difficult situation for the party. It seems practically impossible to imagine that you could find another candidate in a good way by August, she emphasizes. – How unusual is it for such demands to be made in the news media? – It is very unusual, says Høgestøl. She emphasizes that it has not happened before. But it is extra unusual for this to come as forcefully as a first reaction to the first at-bat of a sitting president. – But we are in an extremely abnormal election campaign. Most people probably would not have predicted four years ago that you would see a rematch between Biden and Trump, says Høgestøl and highlights several points: Biden presented himself as a transitional figure four years ago who would not run for re-election Trump has been convicted of accounting fraud in the state of New York and indicted for election fraud in the state of Georgia, where the night’s debate took place. His election defeat in 2020 led to an angry mob of his supporters storming Congress on 6 January. – You would think that it was not a very difficult presidential debate, says Høgestøl about the trials against Trump. – But what we are sitting and talking about today is not the trial against Trump. It’s Biden. Published 28.06.2024, at 13.39
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Could Biden end up withdrawing from the election campaign? – news Urix – Foreign news and documentaries
