Democrats don’t have a nominee until delegates say so

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Democrats across the party are worried that they have failed to choose the candidate most likely to defeat Donald Trump, and that it’s too late to do anything about it. But they need to grasp a critical point: Joe Biden is not yet the nominee of the Democratic Party.

The nominee is chosen at the national convention (this year, it’s in Chicago in mid-August). The path to an alternative nominee remains open, and a look at party rules, and the reasons for their adoption, offers a road map to how such a shift could happen.

As the party’s charter explains, “The national convention shall be the highest authority of the Democratic Party.” Under party rules, a nominee must win an absolute majority of delegates on a given presidential ballot at the convention. Now, with democracy in the balance, the convention can return to its old role of actually choosing the nominee. The party can still decide.

But it must decide alongside Biden. He has been a successful president, liked by progressives and moderates alike. An open rebellion against a president determined at all costs to run again will not succeed. Yet if, as seems likely, intraparty rancor persists into the convention, or if anything else about his capacity to run changes, Biden will have a clear opportunity to make a historic and selfless decision for the party he has loyally served for so long. And he must seize it, allowing the party to select a new nominee.

Core to Biden’s claim that he is the only person who can beat Trump is the false notion that the die has been cast. At times, Biden suggests that he is already the nominee. At other times, he suggests that to change now would be, as he wrote last week, to “say this process didn’t matter.”

The first point is simply incorrect. The second point rests on an understanding of the convention as a coronation. But the point of a nomination process is to choose the best nominee for November. No solemn contract with voters is broken when delegates, taking into account circumstances that have changed since the primaries, choose a different nominee. On the contrary, the party’s rules have evolved specifically to consider just such a situation of changing circumstances — and after the disastrous June 27 debate, that is the situation Democrats are in.

There are to be around 3,934 pledged delegates at the convention from every state and territory and Democrats Abroad. Those delegates are, save for a tiny smattering of uncommitted delegates and seven who are committed to Dean Phillips and Jason Palmer, Biden delegates. That means their delegate slots have been awarded based on Biden’s performance in party primaries. They have received the approval of the Biden campaign and pledged to support the president on the first presidential ballot.

They are also required to attest that they are “bona fide Democrats who are faithful to the interests, welfare and success of the Democratic Party.” Thanks to the party’s strict affirmative action and gender balance rules, they are a notably diverse group — far more so than most other elites in American life.

The delegates are pledged, not bound. Note this from the party’s official rules: “All delegates to the national convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.” That is a pledge of fealty to Democratic voters and to those voters’ conscience as stewards of the democratic process — not to a candidate.

It gives delegates a measure of autonomy to respond to new circumstances, especially in the months between the primary in a given state or territory — the “first determining step,” in the language of party rules — and the national convention.

In addition to the pledged delegates, about 739 party leaders and elected officials — so-called superdelegates — each have a vote on all procedural matters, including the rules of the convention and the platform, as well as the presidential nomination if no candidate has a majority on the first ballot (they can’t vote on the first ballot). These superdelegates — members of the Democratic National Committee, members of Congress, governors, big-city mayors — are there to subject candidates to scrutiny. These party leaders and elected officials come to the table with unique expertise — they see politics up close and have to suffer the consequences if a flawed nominee drags down the ticket. They are there to protect the party’s broader interests rather than the narrow interests of any single candidate.

Here is how the nomination for president at the national convention works: By a date just before the convention, a group of delegates may place the name of a Democratic candidate into nomination. Delegates may also vote “for the candidate of their choice whether or not the name of such candidate was placed in nomination,” and their votes are then tallied, assuming they voted for a bona fide Democrat who has agreed to be a presidential candidate.

This is all to say that the delegates to the national convention have the power — if they wield the rules carefully and act collectively — to choose the Democratic presidential nominee in 2024. Superdelegates ought to start saying publicly, now, that they are aware the convention can pick a different nominee. And pledged delegates, often further from national headlines than big donors but closer to realities on the ground, need not wait to start making their opinions known.

Unless the Democratic National Committee changes its plans, however, all of this deliberation could be short-circuited. In response to an Ohio law requiring a nominee be certified 90 days before the election, the committee in May adopted rules allowing for a “virtual roll call” later this month.

But we are now in a different world. Ohio has since repealed that law. Especially post-debate, there is no good remaining argument for a virtual roll-call, with no opportunity for any deliberation, to anoint Biden before the process plays out.

The uncertainty surrounding Biden will not stop with an announcement from his campaign that the process is done. If needed, the convention can work its will, and Democrats can still control their destiny. Country and party now require the delegates to use the power that is theirs.

Daniel Schlozman, an associate professor of political science at Johns Hopkins, is a co-author, with Sam Rosenfeld, of “The Hollow Parties: The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics.” This article originally appeared in the New York Times.