To continue to cover the breaking news after President Biden
decided to bow out of the presidential race and endorses
Vice President Kamala Harris, our Dave Lavalle is again standing
by from the White House.
He's talking with voters.
But first, we want to bring in DC News Now
weekday anchor Mark Hall into the conversation.
Mark, if the decision of a sitting president to not
seek re election sounds unprecedented, that's because it is.
For the past half century, it was most recently President
Linda Johnson's decision to not run for re election that
comes remotely even close to President Biden's choice.
Oh, Ben, you're, you're, you're spot on.
I mean, this is the historical moment.
And there are some similarities between President Johnson and President
Biden.
They both were vice presidents of this great country of
ours.
But that might be where the the similarities begin and
end.
How they got into the Oval Office are completely different.
As you recall, Johnson got into the Oval Office after
President Kennedy was assassinated and he served from 1963 to
1969.
And President Johnson had a very, very successful but also
tumultuous run in the White House.
You may recall the Vietnam War and was certainly very
unpopular in this country.
And then, of course, you had the civil rights movement.
And both of those issues really weighed heavily on President
Johnson.
Again, he passed a lot of historic legislation.
But really the experts will tell you that those two
main issues that we're dealing with in the late 60s
really took a toll on the president and the Vietnam
War really had an impact on his popularity.
And of course, President Biden, his popularity has dropped the
bit since, you know, since he had the the since
he and President Trump had that first debate a few
weeks ago.
And President Johnson again chose not to run.
Another iconic moment that he had was in his announcement
that he was not going to seek re election or
accept the nomination from the Democratic Party.
And that opened the door for President Nixon, who won
in 1968.
And just a few years after that, President Johnson died
at the young age of 64 years of age.
And age is the issue when it comes to President
Biden.
Many of Democrats felt concerned or became concerned after his
debate performance against the former President Trump.
And then that's really got us to where we're at
today.
The concern was, could he be President Trump in November?
And leadership, party leadership really applied a lot of pressure
and we're calling publicly for him to step down.
And that's where we are been.
And you know, Mark, we say a lot in this
business to follow the money and a lot of that
war chest out transitioning over to Kamala Harris even before
the convention comes about and the delegates cast their vote.
But what did Democrats have to really do right now
to rally the party around a candidate to secure a
nomination without showing voters that they can't get this done
smoothly?
Well, then let's not discount what you just said.
Often when we're talking about politics at this level, it's
all about the money.
And again, you know, you're talking about hundreds of millions
of dollars.
And, you know, the Biden Harris campaign has a lot
of money.
And so there's campaign finance concerns right now.
And so the question is, you know, if you start
with a whole new ticket without, you know, even Kamala
Harris being on the on the ticket, then you may
have to start from zero when it comes to raising
money for camp, you know, for, for this campaign, for
the stretch run.
So what, what, what what I'm hearing now is that
most Democrats are probably going to try and rally behind
Kamala Harris, but there are some Democrats that, you know,
are not supporting Kamala Harris at the top of the
ticket.
And so the the goal I think right now for
Democrats is to really figure this out.
The behind the scenes conversations been, Dennis, that, you know,
are taking place even as we speak.
They're going to have to really figure this out.
Are they going to rally behind Kamala Harris before the
convention next month to have some momentum going in, you
know, to their convention that's going to be in held
in Chicago about a month from now.
So we're just going to have to wait and see
how this plays out.
But there are a lot of names that are out
there, including Joe Manchin, who many people feel would have
the same appeal as President Trump's VP pick to Rust
Belt voters and the working class voters as well.
And some of those key battleground states have been, Dennis,
with a lot going to happen between now and and
the Democratic convention, and we're just going to see how
this thing is going to play out.
Our Mark Hall joining us this evening.
Mark, thank you.
And to your point, yeah, there have been some reporting
that the president has been on the phones all afternoon
long, likely reassuring donors and party Democrats as well to
try and back who he is backing Vice President Harris.
Mark Hall, thank you for joining us, my friend.
I appreciate it.
Thank you, Ben.