by Jason Cohen
Democratic National Committee member Elaine Kamarck said on Monday there’s “no time” ahead of the party’s August convention for another candidate to become the nominee after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris.
Biden announced Sunday that he was withdrawing from the 2024 presidential race following calls from allies within his party to step aside after his disastrous June debate against former President Donald Trump. Kamarck said on “CNN News Central” that Harris’ likely advantage with Biden’s delegates and the lack of time in the race make it so the chances of another candidate becoming the nominee are exceedingly “small.”
WATCH:
Dem Convention Expert Says There's 'No Time' For Another Candidate To Usurp Kamala Harris pic.twitter.com/OTmle0jAm9
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) July 22, 2024
“The delegates are now formally uncommitted, okay? They can do whatever they want to. Now, you got to think about this for a minute. She’s his vice president,” Kamarck told host John Berman. “She has been all around the country with him doing political stops, et cetera. So the fact of the matter is that when Joe Biden says it’s Kamala Harris, I’d say most of those people are going to vote for her. And remember what vice presidents do. They do a lot of political work for their president. So I would guess that of that 4,000 plus group of people, a big percentage of them have actually met and shake[n] hands with Kamala Harris. So she’s got a lot going for her in this race.”
“They’ve got to concentrate on these 4,000 plus people, okay? Those are the deciders right now, there’s nobody else making this decision. Not Obama, not President Clinton. It’s the delegates,” she later added.
Berman asked what the odds are that an alternative candidate to Harris could end up being “placed in the nomination” at the upcoming Democratic National Convention.
“I think it’s very, very small. I think we have run out of time here,” Kamark said. “One of the reasons the party is coalescing so quickly behind Kamala Harris is frankly, we have no time.”
Biden said Sunday that selecting Harris as his vice president was his best decision when he chose to run in 2020.
Democratic strategist Cornell Belcher on Sunday warned that passing over Harris would be “a surefire way” for Trump to win another term as president.
“I will be really straightforward: If the Democrats want to give the White House back to Donald Trump, let them go into a nomination process, open nomination process and disrespect and step over the first black woman vice president in this country,” Belcher said. “They will be committing absolute suicide. Absolute suicide.”
Trump is currently leading Harris by 1.7 percent in a national head-to-head matchup, according to the RealClearPolling average.
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Jason Cohen is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “Kamala Harris” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.
