I do want to stay on this story and crossover
to speak to Stephen Deyfris, a former prosecutor and former
president of the International Association of Lawyers.
It's great to have you on the program, Stephen.
Obviously, this comes after weeks of mounting pressure on Biden.
What do you think?
Finally broke the camel's back here, so to speak, and
got Biden to step aside.
I don't think anybody knows, although paradoxically, it may have
been a gift to him to have COVID and be
required to isolate and sit without public events, without campaigning,
and have an opportunity to to reflect with those closest
to him, with his family in particular.
But as a practical matter, it's not possible to believe
that he did not himself recognize his physical limitations.
And it must have been extraordinarily frustrating to him to
know what he wanted to say and not be able
to communicate it effectively as he has done effectively throughout
his whole career.
So I think I think that even more than perhaps
the pressures of the of the leading Democrats may have
made the difference.
He, he's a very stubborn man.
He he still has a great deal of bitterness about
the manner in which he was pushed out of the
nomination by President Obama in 2016 in favor of Hillary
Clinton.
And I think that he was resistant because he's always,
as he always puts it in a fighter and the
comeback kid and all that.
But I think he finally realized that he was going
to lead his party to defeat and that Kamala Harris
would be a much stronger candidate.
Steven Dreyfus, do stay with us because I do want
to cross back to you.
I want to bring in our international affairs editor, Katavan
Gorgeousdani again.
Katavan, walk us through what's next for the Democratic Party
now.
Well, look, there are two options, really.
One is to sort of follow Joe Biden's lead and
go full force on Kamala Harris as the top of
the ticket and figure out the logistics of getting her
confirmed at the Democratic convention, which is going to start
on August 19th.
That would be the logistically, as we heard our previous
guests talk about, logistically the easiest, but also in a
way politically.
Because think about the image in the United States within
the Democratic Party of setting aside the vice president, the
first woman vice president, the first African American woman of
vice president in favor of somebody else, likely a white
male.
When she is on top of that, the vice president
and endorsed by the sitting president.
It would be very complicated politically.
So they'll have to make that decision.
But it's not necessarily completely a done deal.
It does help her a lot that Joe Biden came
out very quickly after his announcement to say that he
was endorsing her.
And you've seen some Democrats following his lead.
But there could still be some voices within the Democratic
Party that say, look, this is not the top of
the ticket that we had voted for.
We need to give others a chance.
In that case, it would be open a convention, which
would be a sort of mini primary, if you will.
And then there would be a different candidates.
The question is who right now in the leading Democrats
around the US, whether they're senators or governors who have
potentially down the road presidential plans maybe for 2028, risking
going against the vice president right now in this short
of a time could be complicated.
So I think the balance right now is tipping in
Kamala Harris's favor.
We'll see in the next few days who comes out
in supporting her.
And I think the more you see a sort of
big figures of the Democratic Party endorsing her, the likelihood
that she's going to get the top of the ticket
is going to increase with that.
But then there is another question that comes with, is
it her who is her running mate?
Because she's going to have to make that decision much,
much quicker than any other presidential candidate in history.
And the idea, the general idea is that she would
need someone to balance her weaknesses.
And that doesn't necessarily represent the same demographics from the
the Democratic Party.
She's a black woman from California.
So she likely maybe will be aiming for essentially a
white man from maybe one of the swing states.
Some of the names that are popping out are the
governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro.
There's also Mark Kelly of Arizona.
There's maybe also the governor of Kentucky, Andy Bashir.
Kentucky is a red state, but he's managed to be
re elected for.
So there are plenty of options.
The question is what targets, what demographic targets are they
going to be looking for when she decides who to
choose?
And of course, everyone is going to have an opinion
as to who would be at the best candidate.
But I think in the next few days, there's going
to be a lot of discussions going on within the
Democratic Party to figure out which Rd.
they take, Kamala Harris or an open convention.
And then if they do go full force behind her,
who is she going to pick and who is going
to be the best running mate to give them the
best chances to beat Donald Trump in 2024?
And to go back to what Fraser was saying at
the very beginning, this has really flipped completely the campaign
on its head.
And Donald Trump can say that she will be easier
to beat as much as he wants.
When you listen to what the Republic were saying during
the whole Republican convention was that they were pretty happy
to have Joe Biden because they felt that it was
going to be an easy win for them.
So those comments by Donald Trump don't really align with
what the Republicans were saying.
Well, let's cross back to Washington and speak to Fraser
Jackson.
Our correspondent there.
Fraser Piketa Van Gorgesdani just hinted at those questions that
are going to be surrounding who Kamala Harris could potentially
pick as vice president.
Yeah.
And let me tell you, this is something that we've
been discussing amongst us as journalists for quite some time
and also something we've been discussing with sources in the
government and on the Hill and various different places.
There are a couple of the big names that people
have been bandied around us to who could potentially replace
Joe Biden.
Obviously.
Now Joe Biden says he he wanted to be Kamala
Harris.
And when you look at people like Gavin Newsom, the
governor of California, he could not be vice president because
he's also from California.
And you can't have the vice presidential pick and the
presidential pick being from the same state.
So it's unlikely to be him.
It's also you have to think about somebody like Gretchen
Whitmer, somebody who's been pushed as a potential future presidential
candidate.
Would they want to almost waste that inertia, that momentum
on being a vice presidential pick and just rather go
for a 2028 nomination?
Or would they think that maybe being VP first would
be a great shoo in to maybe take over the
top of the ticket themselves?
So that is also a question that people people could
be weighing.
And if that's the case, you also have to look
at people like Head Van was saying Josh Shapiro, who
people have been putting forward and is somebody that has
quite a lot of support within the Democratic infrastructure.
There's also, interestingly, the governor of North Carolina, Roy Cooper,
who might be a bit of a somewhat of a
long shot, but we were watching him when Kamala Harris
went recently to North Carolina to do a campaign event.
And he was extremely flattering towards Kamala.
Harris was really pushing her record and what she'd done
while she was VP.
So a lot of ears got pricked at that time
as to whether he was potentially setting himself up for
a vice presidential run if Kamala did indeed become the
presidential nominee, which he now could well become given that
Joe Biden has given her endorsements.
So there's also people like Chris Murphy, the senator from
New Jersey, which would really secure the eastern part of
the United States vote.
But I think Kedavan is correct.
It would be probably a good idea to choose some
somebody from one of the swing states to try to
lock one of those down South.
Somebody like Josh Shapiro would be a great, a great
choice, I believe for for the for the Democrats.
But at the moment it is a wide open discussion.
But we're going to have to find out very soon
because the nominations for for the presidential election needs to
be done in just the next couple of weeks.
There's a quirk in Ohio State law which says that
whoever is going to be the Democratic nominee has to
be on the ticket and locked in by the 7th
of August.
That means that all those delegates that were pledged to
Joe Biden are going to have to choose who is
going to be the his replacement candidate between August the
1st, which is when the voting will start, and August
the 7th.
And that is before we get to the Democratic convention,
which is in mid August.
So there isn't much time now really.
And we are really in uncharted waters when it comes
to presidential history.
The last time there was an open convention was in
1968.
And since then, we've not really had this kind of
uncertainty this close to Election Day.
So it really is a fascinating time in American politics.
And there's also questions over whether Joe Biden will remain
president.
He says he will.
The White House I've spoken to says that he will
remain on as president.
But that is not going down well with Republicans who
argue that if he decides that he's not, you know,
good enough to run for the nominee and for the
next election, 2024, that he's therefore unfit to hold office
in the next four months.
The Democrats don't believe that and neither does Joe Biden.
So they trying to hush that and push that away.
But that is likely to be a lot of noise
coming from Capitol Hill over the next few months until
we get to Election Day in November.
Fraser, thank you so much for that.
Let's bring in Stephen Dreyfus once again.
He's a former prosecutor and former president of the International
Association of Lawyers.
Great to have you again, Stephen.
I want to get your thoughts on what Donald Trump
has been saying.
CNN is reporting that Trump says Harris would be easier
to beat than Trump.
Give us your assessment of that then.
Well, excuse me.
Yeah, I, I, I agree with your, with your colleagues.
That's putting a good face on it.
I mean keep in mind that all of his surrogates,
including his son were just on television even this morning
here criticizing the Democrats for being anti democratic for trying
to get rid of Joe Biden because 14,000,000 Democrats had
voted for him in the primaries they want.
They were doing everything they could to put pressure on
the Democrats to keep him because they thought he was
the easier candidate to be from.
From the legal perspective, Ohio has purported to change its
law to eliminate that deadline.
But nevertheless, because the legislature is Republican, the Democrats don't
trust it and don't trust the Legislature to keep that
in place.
So they already have scheduled a meeting this coming Friday
to adopt A set of rules.
The Democratic National Committee to adopt A set of rules
by which there would be a virtual of vote of
the convention delegates beginning August 1st and running through August
7th to designate the party's nominee before the convention.
My view of it is that I think that Kamala
Harris will choose a vice presidential candidate very quickly so
that at the time of that vote, she and the
vice presidential candidate can both be nominated.
Then I think there's there are going to be contest
throughout the United States because keep in mind that under
American law, the qualifications for candidates running even for federal
office are a matter of state law.
So each state decides who what the deadlines are and
who are the legitimate candidates to be put on their
ballot.
So or you can, I'm sure the Republicans will fight
a rearguard battle and try to have a situation in
which Kamala Harris does not get on the ballot everywhere
in the United States.
So we'll have a fight about that.
As far as his leading off of the Biden's leading
office before January 20th next year.
That isn't going to happen.
But we are certainly going to hear from the Republicans
all sorts of pressure, but they cannot force it under
the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution.
The only way that the president can be removed for
disability is if the vice president.
Stephen, I'm really sorry, Cabinet, I'm going to have to
interrupt you there.
We are running out of time.
But we do really want to thank you for coming
on the program and giving us your insight.
So our viewers, thank you so much as well.
Do stay.
We'll have plenty more coming up.