Kamala Harris’s path to the Democratic nomination, explained

President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race after winning the Democratic primary puts the party in an unprecedented position. 

With just weeks to go before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago — and less than four months until Election Day — they are running short on time to lock down the ticket and launch a campaign around an entirely new candidate. Democrats appear to be rallying around Biden’s preferred successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, and it seems likely that she’ll be the presidential nominee.

Here are seven questions answered about what needs to happen before Harris can become the nominee, what an open process for selecting Democrats’ next presidential candidate might look like, and what’s next for Harris and her party.

1) Will Harris automatically replace Biden as the Democratic nominee?

Harris is not officially the Democrats’ nominee; the endorsement of the Democratic Party’s leader isn’t enough. 

Harris has acknowledged this and said that she intends to “earn and win this nomination.” While there is still technically a chance that she will not become the nominee, she has already locked in endorsements she needs to make it unlikely that anyone will credibly challenge her. 

She has been endorsed by all 50 Democratic state party chairs, party leaders including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and many of her would-be Democratic rivals. That list includes Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper. Many of them are seen as her potential vice presidential picks. 

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, who left the Democratic Party to register as an independent earlier this year, seemed to briefly consider re-registering as a Democrat to run, but quickly said that he will not challenge Harris — though he stopped short of endorsing her. 

2) Does Harris get Biden’s delegates?

The rules committee for the Democratic National Committee is convening this Wednesday to establish a process by which a new nominee can be selected through an open process (essentially meaning that people other than party leaders get some input into who the nominee will be). 

The fact that some states have August deadlines for the nominee to make it on the ballot — including Iowa, whose deadline is August 16 —  may dictate how that process works. That means the nominee may be selected before nearly 4,000 delegates gather at the convention beginning August 19. Typically, delegates formally vote for the winner of the party’s primaries to be the official nominee at the convention — a process that recently played out at last week’s Republican National Convention. 

These delegates are party loyalists — everyone from poll workers to elected officials — and are allocated to every state or territory by the party. They are pledged to the candidate who wins their state’s primary, but they can theoretically deviate from that under the DNC’s rules, which state that they “shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.”

Biden won over 3,800 of those delegates in the Democratic primary. They will now be released and allowed to vote for whichever candidate they wish. As of Monday afternoon, Harris had already secured the endorsement of 1,1152 of the 1,986 delegates she would need to win the nomination.

3) How will DNC delegates choose a nominee to replace Biden?

State delegations will need to decide among themselves who they will back.

However, of those that have convened in the hours since Biden announced he was dropping out, many seem to be coalescing around Harris. 

When elaborating on their reasoning, many delegates have cited the fact that voters in their state already backed the Biden-Harris ticket in the Democratic primary and that she is qualified to carry the torch forward. In that sense, they see themselves as keeping the will of Democratic voters, but they are not directly soliciting new input from voters — at least not formally. 

4) What happens at the Democratic National Convention?

Before Biden dropped out, the DNC had planned a virtual roll call to lock up the nomination before the convention. The DNC adopted the virtual procedure during the pandemic when the roll call — which would normally happen in person at the convention and in which delegates formally announce their votes and select their nominee — had to happen remotely.  

Democrats may now decide to hold a similar meeting before the convention and, if a majority of delegates support Harris, her nomination would be secured. 

If not, then the matter could go to a technically open convention, which hasn’t happened since 1968. In every election since 1968, the convention has been about rallying around the nominee, rather than selecting them. But Harris has already secured the endorsements of so many delegates that it seems unlikely she would face any real competition at the convention or that an open convention would be nearly as contentious as 1968 was.

5) What is an open convention?

An open convention simply means one in which delegates hash out who the nominee will be. That’s a process more akin to how presidents used to be picked, but one that fell out of style following a Democratic convention meltdown in 1968.

Since then, the process has been: Every state has a primary, many of them fairly early in the presidential cycle, and then the convention is held to certify the will of voters through a ceremonial nomination process that energizes the party ahead of Election Day.

That can’t happen this time, but something like it might. An open convention doesn’t seem likely at this point, given how quickly Harris has rallied delegates in her favor. 

However, on the off chance it does happen, here’s how an open convention would work. 

The big thing to know is the process would unfold with delegates voting on the convention floor for the candidate they support as the nominee.

A candidate would need a majority of the pledged delegates to win the nomination on the first ballot. If no candidate achieves this majority, then the convention would move to additional ballots, where delegates continue to vote until someone emerges as the winner.

There are also 749 superdelegates, who are high-profile party leaders ranging from members of Congress to former presidents. If they voted in a block, they could quickly help end the process by coalescing around one candidate (presumably Harris). However, they cannot vote on the first ballot at the convention. They participate in voting only if the convention goes to a second ballot or beyond.

6) What is the timeline for this process?

It’s up in the air for now, but the DNC’s meeting on Wednesday will be livestreamed. The rules committee is expected to lay out a timeline around then. 

7) So, can Kamala Harris go ahead and campaign?

Harris can start campaigning immediately. Indeed, she has already hit the ground running. 

She can draw from Biden’s $240 million in campaign cash because she was already on the Biden-Harris ticket. Unless they could self-fund their campaign, any other Democrat would face a steep uphill battle to counter the kind of resources currently behind Harris. 

The DNC might not be able to officially support her until she secures the nomination, but that creates an imperative for the party to act quickly in deciding on a nominee.