12 more Democrats are calling for President Biden to drop
out of the presidential race, among them Illinois Congressman Sean
Caston and Chewie Garcia.
The Biden campaign has reiterated the president is staying put.
And joining us this morning is Mike Nellis, founder and
CEO of Authentic, which is a political fundraising and consulting
firm.
Thanks for coming in.
Thank you for having me.
There's some people or reports that say that Biden is
now open to the idea possibly stepping away.
What are you hearing?
I mean, what I hear more than anything is that
Democrats are ready for the infighting to stop, right?
I think we all want to move on and get
back on the same page and get back to unity
so we can talk about what we want to do.
It's hard to say what's going to happen in the
next couple of days or how it's going to play
out.
But, you know, knowing Joe Biden, he's a good public
servant.
He's going to make the decision he thinks his best
for the country, for the Democratic Party, for himself and
his family.
And hopefully we'll have resolution pretty soon.
I think a lot of people are wondering, you know,
if he, if he does decide to to leave the
race, who could it possibly be?
I mean, does it automatically become the vice president or,
you know, could we have those other candidates in play?
Based on my understanding, basically have two scenarios, right?
He's either going to step aside and he immediately releases
his delegates.
That's my understanding of the rules.
And then you could have like a essentially like everybody
will rally around the vice president, make a decision to
to move forward.
And and there might not be like a, you know,
an open convention or a messy fight, or you might
have a couple people get in and you might have
a open and transparent conversation.
Hard to say which is the right decision politically.
It's sort of an unprecedented situation.
But those are sort of the two options that I
see.
If there's a way to describe this for our viewers
in simple terms, what is an open convention?
How would that work?
Yeah.
So basically right now there are a series of delegates
that have been voted on all across the country that
are all essentially, I think except for a few pledge
to vote for Joe Biden at the convention, right.
If Joe Biden and decides to drop out, those delegates
become uncommitted and now they have the opportunity to select
any candidate they want that gets in the race.
Do you think, you know, the vice president has the
support?
I mean, if she does end up being the candidate,
do you think she can kind of get people to
rally behind her or is there somebody else who might
be able to do this and maybe, you know, come
out on top?
I think if she's the candidate, she's going to do
a fantastic job, right?
More than anything, what we hear from voters is they're
tired of looking to the past and they're frustrated with
the choices that we have in the selection.
And so I think people want to know what the
future holds.
And I think the future looks a lot more like
Kamala Harris and it does like Donald Trump, for example.
So I think people are going to be pretty excited
to to get back on the same page.
And Democrats have been taking it on the chin for
the last three weeks, right?
We need to get back on offense.
We need to start talking about what we're going to
do to help this country.
You know, I was talking to my wife this morning,
like, we spent years trying to have our first son
and my wife had to do IVF.
And I watched this week, like Donald Trump nominate JD
Vance, who was someone who was repeatedly voted against protecting
IVF in this country.
And like, that was a hard thing for us to
watch.
And I think there are a lot of other people
that are feeling the same way.
OK, quickly, you know, you served it as advisor to
Kamala Harris when she was AUS senator.
Do you think?
I mean, is it's a very possible so they could
sidestep her, right?
But so the question is, who's ready to hit the
ground running on day one?
I mean, I think we have lots of good choices
if there's a lot of people who want to get
in.
But like, I don't think we should be sidestepping anyone.
I think what we have to do first is figure
out what's going on with President Biden.
And he's got to make the decision that he thinks
is best for himself and sort of let the chips
fall where they may.
All right, Mike, thank you for so much for coming
in.
And if you want to learn more, you can go
to authentic.com.