July 21, 2024 • 12 mins
Joe Biden is stepping down from the US presidential election race.
He says his decision to stand down "is in the best interest of his party and the country"
Biden has endorsed Kamala Harris, the current vice-president, to be the new Democratic candidate – along with a strings of other key Democrats.
It comes four months before Americans go to the polls.
In this bonus episode, geopolitical analyst at The Democracy Project, Geoffrey Miller joins to explain what happens next.
Follow The Front Page on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can read more about this and other stories in the New Zealand Herald, online at nzherald.co.nz, or tune in to news bulletins across the NZME network.
Host: Chelsea Daniels
Sound Engineer: Paddy Fox
Producer: Ethan Sills
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Kilda. I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is a bonus episode
of The Front Page, a daily podcast presented by The
New Zealand Herald. Joe Biden is stepping down from the
US presidential election race. He says his decision to stand
(00:25):
down is in the best interest of his party and
the country. Biden has endorsed Kamala Harris, the current Vice President,
to be the new Democratic candidate, along with a string
of other key Democrats. It comes just four months before
Americans go to the polls. Today, on the Front Page,
(00:45):
geopolitical analyst at the Democracy Project Jeffrey Miller is with
us to explain what happens next. What do you make
of biden decision to step down? Is this, as he said,
in the best interest?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Look, it was a surprise, and yet not a surprise.
The last three weeks have been dominated by all kinds
of chatter about Joe Biden, whether he would continue. It
all started with that disastrous debate on the twenty seventh
of June, and it didn't really get any better after that.
Biden gave all kinds of one on one interviews that
were designed to kind of shore up his position, but
(01:25):
they only made things worse, and he continued to make
gaff after gaff, the most significant of which was probably
when he described the lot of Mezelenski as the president
of Russia. So it really didn't get better. In the
midst of that, of course, you had the assassination on
Donald Trump, and then the Republican National Convention last week,
at which the Republicans look incredibly unified with their new
(01:47):
vice presidential candidate jd Vance And in the end Biden's
position became untenable. He got COVID and he regrouped with
family and made that final decision to out of the race.
In some ways, yes, you can give Joe Biden credit
for doing this, and I've seen various descriptions. I think
(02:08):
Barack Obama described him as a patriot of the highest order.
And yet it's all very very late, And this could
have been done a year ago. If it had been
done a year ago and Biden had made his decision,
then I'm not going to stand for a second term.
It would have been I think it would have been
a courageous decision, and it would have given others in
the Democratic Party a chance against Carmala Harris. As it
(02:30):
stands now, it's being done what three months out from
the election or thereabouts, and it really leaves most challenges
with really little hope. So essentially we're going to see
a crown and a coronation of Carmala Harris. I don't
think that's particularly democratic or small de democratic, as the
Americans say, and I think you can blame some of
(02:53):
the blame for that at Biden and his advisors, but
also at the Democratic Party. I mean, they went through
a primary process last year and rubber stamped Joe Biden's candidacy,
and yet it was clear that Biden was aging, it
was having difficulties. It's been clear for the last year
or more. There've been all kinds of videos circulating showing
Joe Biden and some of his gaffes. These are not new.
(03:16):
While it may have come into sharper focus with this debate,
this talk has been around for a very long time,
and it's been dismissed often by Democratic operatives as you know,
conspiracy theories and this is just right wing attempts to
undermine Joe Biden. But actually there was some real substance
to that, and that all became apparent on that debate stage.
What three weeks ago, making sure that we're able to
(03:39):
make every single solitary person.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Eligible for what I've been able to do with the
with the covid ice could be with dealing with everything
we have to do with Look, if we finally beat Medicare. Yeah,
well it's taken about a month, hey for him to
(04:03):
resign since that disastrous debate, and the calls urging him
to pull out only grew over the last week since
Trump's assassination attempt. It's interesting watching this unfold from the
other side of the world, hey, where it's perhaps not
uncommon for party leaders to face calls to go. How
has the US handled that debate?
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Well, look, it's so late. As I said, the fact
is that Joe Biden was rubber stamped as the candidate,
so it was ready then up to him whether to withdraw.
In the end, he could have continued, and we were
told as late as Saturday that he was absolutely committed
to staying in the race and was going to be
out campaigning this week. So in the end, perhaps Biden's
(04:45):
hand was forced to a degree, But there is no
real mechanism once you're the nominee. That is the process.
He got through that primary process and was agreed upon
as the Democratic nominee for presidents. So in the New
Zealand context, it's a bit different, isn't it, Because it's
a parliamentary system here. We don't have a president, so
it is a different process. And of course the comparisons
(05:08):
that come to mind Jisindhdurn resigning as Prime Minister and
the Labor Party leader last year and paving the way
for Chris Hipkins. I guess you could look back to
Andrew Little making way for Cisinderadun a couple of months
before the election in twenty seventeen is another comparison point.
But in the end, I guess the comparisons always fall
down in the end. It's a very very different system.
(05:30):
Different quantities of money, certainly in the American system is
just one big difference. And there's a huge war chest
now behind Carmala Harris, and that will be one of
the things that gives her just a huge advantage of
any other challenges. She has essentially inherits the Biden Harris
campaign war chest. There have been some filings already on that,
so she will inherit all the donations that have been
(05:51):
made to the Biden Harris campaign and money does mean
an awful lot in US politics.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Donald Trump has come out and said that Harris will
be easier to beat than Biden. What do you think
of that match up but the lawyer versus the felon
I guess.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Look, I don't know. I think Karmala Harris will be fine.
I think she'll be a lot better than a lot
of her critics. It will be expecting. At the same time,
even the most stellar candidate on Earth would struggle at
this point, taking over three in months before the election
and suddenly having to go up against the Trump machine.
The Republicans are completely unified between Donald Trump and JD. Vance,
(06:31):
the vice presidential candidate. They had a very successful convention
last week. There's a lot of sympathy out there. I
guess for Donald Trump after that assassination attempt against him,
it's going to be hard. As I say, even the
most stellar candidate on Earth would struggle against that. So
there will be a huge mountain to climb for Karmala Harris.
(06:51):
I think that's who it will be in the end.
I think the Democratic machine, the Democratic establishment, is getting
behind Carmala Harris. You're seeing these as from the likes
of Joe Biden himself, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi are the
top Democrats, so I don't think there are many others
with a chance. So she's going to have all the
backing from the Democratic establishment. That will certainly help to
(07:13):
a degree. And yet it's also going to be easy
for others like Trump to claim while it's been a
stitch up, because in many ways it has, it hasn't
been really a fair primary on the Democratic side. So
we wait and see how Kamala Harris managers. No doubt
she'll be going up against Donald Trump and that debate
in September. There's a second TV debate scheduled, and it
(07:34):
won't be Joe Biden now, but it will be an
all likelihood Kamala Harris against Donald Trump. While I may
be the first woman in this office, I will not
be the last.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Do you think America is actually ready though, to vote
for a black South Asian female president when they didn't
want to pick Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Look, these discussions have been had before. If you recall
back to Barack Obama in two thousand and eight, there's
an awful lot of inks built and discussions had over
whether America was ready for their first black president. I
think perhaps actually Americans are a bit more mature than
we sometimes give them credit for. And I think Karmala
Harris will be fine. I think she will be probably
(08:21):
a worthy challenger to Donald Trump. But Donald Trump has
got a huge machine behind him. And unity is just
so powerful in politics, whether it is in New Zealand
or in the United States, and the Republicans are just
so unified now. There is a never Trump wing to
the party, but it's very small now compared with say
twenty sixteen or during the Trump presidency. The Trump machine
(08:44):
has just been very successful. And Trump, despite all of
his criminal trials and tribulations, he's more popular than ever.
So He's gone through an assassination attempt and is still
standing and is more popular than ever. It's going to
take a lot, an awful lot, to defeat that. But
I don't think in the end Kamala Harris's ethnicity, gender
(09:06):
will really pay much of a role in that. We
wait and see. I mean, an awful lot can happen,
and the predictions are a very dangerous thing to make.
If we've been recording this interview a month ago, Goodness meet,
how different things would look and three and a half months,
a lot can happen still in this race.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Could people vote for Harris simply because she isn't Trump
or Biden.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
I think that will be very much the strategy. Kamala
Harris used the line that she was the anti Trump
in her campaign adds back in twenty twenty when she
was in the presidential race or trying to get the
Democratic nomination, and you know, that's probably the best card
she has to try and convince people to vote for
her both because of who she is. I think there
(09:47):
will be plenty of Democrats who do genuinely like her,
and plenty of voters who do genuinely like her and
appreciate her. But then there will be plenty of others
who in the end vote for her because she's not Trump.
And that's I guess a valid strategy as well. No
doubt there will be all kinds of scare campaigns and
tactics used by the Democrats to reach that goal. You know,
(10:07):
in the end, it's a simple numbers game, and it's
all about appealing to the swing voters. And around about
ten states in the United States which are the swing states,
that's you know, the likes of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and
in the end, those voters that hold all the cards
here in the American system. So whatever appeals to those
(10:31):
swing state voters, I think those will be the strategies
that are employed by the Democratic campaign.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Just lastly, Jeffrey, Logistically, what happens next.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Look, there are a lot of arcane rules and procedures
from the Democratic National Committee, and I wouldn't pretend to
know all the ins and outs of it all. But
there was some talk before Biden made his decision that
there would be a virtual confirmation of his candidacy before
the Democratic National Convenent, which is scheduled to be held
(11:01):
in Chicago in a month's time, so it could have
been in early August. We wait and see. That could
still happen in Karmala Harris is rubber stamped. But in
the end there's a process to go through, and around
three nine hundred delegates who have pledged to support Joe Biden,
in all likelihood they're going to be backing Kamala Harris now,
so that's why largely it's going to be a foregone
(11:24):
conclusion in my view. But yes, formally there's a convention,
a party conference if you like, in Chicago from the
nineteenth to twenty second of August. In theory, it could
go to what's called an open convention where the delegates
can choose whatever candidate they find best on the day
and practice. I think it's going to be a coronation
for Karmala Harris, and it will be signed up well
(11:46):
before then. And simply time is not on the Democrat side.
They're already incredibly late working out their candidate. I doubt
very much they're going to still be working out who's
going to be their candidate in a month's time. I
think it will all be sealed and there will be
a bit convention that was all about crowning Krmala Harris
as the nominee.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Thanks for joining us, Jeffrey. That said, for this episode
of The Front Page, you can read more about today's
stories and extensive news coverage at enzed Herald dot co
dot z. The Front Page is produced by Ethan Siles
with sound engineer Patty Fox. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to
(12:29):
the Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts,
and tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.
Kilda. I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is a bonus episode
of The Front Page, a daily podcast presented by The
New Zealand Herald. Joe Biden is stepping down from the
US presidential election race. He says his decision to stand
(00:25):
down is in the best interest of his party and
the country. Biden has endorsed Kamala Harris, the current Vice President,
to be the new Democratic candidate, along with a string
of other key Democrats. It comes just four months before
Americans go to the polls. Today, on the Front Page,
(00:45):
geopolitical analyst at the Democracy Project Jeffrey Miller is with
us to explain what happens next. What do you make
of biden decision to step down? Is this, as he said,
in the best interest?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Look, it was a surprise, and yet not a surprise.
The last three weeks have been dominated by all kinds
of chatter about Joe Biden, whether he would continue. It
all started with that disastrous debate on the twenty seventh
of June, and it didn't really get any better after that.
Biden gave all kinds of one on one interviews that
were designed to kind of shore up his position, but
(01:25):
they only made things worse, and he continued to make
gaff after gaff, the most significant of which was probably
when he described the lot of Mezelenski as the president
of Russia. So it really didn't get better. In the
midst of that, of course, you had the assassination on
Donald Trump, and then the Republican National Convention last week,
at which the Republicans look incredibly unified with their new
(01:47):
vice presidential candidate jd Vance And in the end Biden's
position became untenable. He got COVID and he regrouped with
family and made that final decision to out of the race.
In some ways, yes, you can give Joe Biden credit
for doing this, and I've seen various descriptions. I think
(02:08):
Barack Obama described him as a patriot of the highest order.
And yet it's all very very late, And this could
have been done a year ago. If it had been
done a year ago and Biden had made his decision,
then I'm not going to stand for a second term.
It would have been I think it would have been
a courageous decision, and it would have given others in
the Democratic Party a chance against Carmala Harris. As it
(02:30):
stands now, it's being done what three months out from
the election or thereabouts, and it really leaves most challenges
with really little hope. So essentially we're going to see
a crown and a coronation of Carmala Harris. I don't
think that's particularly democratic or small de democratic, as the
Americans say, and I think you can blame some of
(02:53):
the blame for that at Biden and his advisors, but
also at the Democratic Party. I mean, they went through
a primary process last year and rubber stamped Joe Biden's candidacy,
and yet it was clear that Biden was aging, it
was having difficulties. It's been clear for the last year
or more. There've been all kinds of videos circulating showing
Joe Biden and some of his gaffes. These are not new.
(03:16):
While it may have come into sharper focus with this debate,
this talk has been around for a very long time,
and it's been dismissed often by Democratic operatives as you know,
conspiracy theories and this is just right wing attempts to
undermine Joe Biden. But actually there was some real substance
to that, and that all became apparent on that debate stage.
What three weeks ago, making sure that we're able to
(03:39):
make every single solitary person.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Eligible for what I've been able to do with the
with the covid ice could be with dealing with everything
we have to do with Look, if we finally beat Medicare. Yeah,
well it's taken about a month, hey for him to
(04:03):
resign since that disastrous debate, and the calls urging him
to pull out only grew over the last week since
Trump's assassination attempt. It's interesting watching this unfold from the
other side of the world, hey, where it's perhaps not
uncommon for party leaders to face calls to go. How
has the US handled that debate?
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Well, look, it's so late. As I said, the fact
is that Joe Biden was rubber stamped as the candidate,
so it was ready then up to him whether to withdraw.
In the end, he could have continued, and we were
told as late as Saturday that he was absolutely committed
to staying in the race and was going to be
out campaigning this week. So in the end, perhaps Biden's
(04:45):
hand was forced to a degree, But there is no
real mechanism once you're the nominee. That is the process.
He got through that primary process and was agreed upon
as the Democratic nominee for presidents. So in the New
Zealand context, it's a bit different, isn't it, Because it's
a parliamentary system here. We don't have a president, so
it is a different process. And of course the comparisons
(05:08):
that come to mind Jisindhdurn resigning as Prime Minister and
the Labor Party leader last year and paving the way
for Chris Hipkins. I guess you could look back to
Andrew Little making way for Cisinderadun a couple of months
before the election in twenty seventeen is another comparison point.
But in the end, I guess the comparisons always fall
down in the end. It's a very very different system.
(05:30):
Different quantities of money, certainly in the American system is
just one big difference. And there's a huge war chest
now behind Carmala Harris, and that will be one of
the things that gives her just a huge advantage of
any other challenges. She has essentially inherits the Biden Harris
campaign war chest. There have been some filings already on that,
so she will inherit all the donations that have been
(05:51):
made to the Biden Harris campaign and money does mean
an awful lot in US politics.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Donald Trump has come out and said that Harris will
be easier to beat than Biden. What do you think
of that match up but the lawyer versus the felon
I guess.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Look, I don't know. I think Karmala Harris will be fine.
I think she'll be a lot better than a lot
of her critics. It will be expecting. At the same time,
even the most stellar candidate on Earth would struggle at
this point, taking over three in months before the election
and suddenly having to go up against the Trump machine.
The Republicans are completely unified between Donald Trump and JD. Vance,
(06:31):
the vice presidential candidate. They had a very successful convention
last week. There's a lot of sympathy out there. I
guess for Donald Trump after that assassination attempt against him,
it's going to be hard. As I say, even the
most stellar candidate on Earth would struggle against that. So
there will be a huge mountain to climb for Karmala Harris.
(06:51):
I think that's who it will be in the end.
I think the Democratic machine, the Democratic establishment, is getting
behind Carmala Harris. You're seeing these as from the likes
of Joe Biden himself, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi are the
top Democrats, so I don't think there are many others
with a chance. So she's going to have all the
backing from the Democratic establishment. That will certainly help to
(07:13):
a degree. And yet it's also going to be easy
for others like Trump to claim while it's been a
stitch up, because in many ways it has, it hasn't
been really a fair primary on the Democratic side. So
we wait and see how Kamala Harris managers. No doubt
she'll be going up against Donald Trump and that debate
in September. There's a second TV debate scheduled, and it
(07:34):
won't be Joe Biden now, but it will be an
all likelihood Kamala Harris against Donald Trump. While I may
be the first woman in this office, I will not
be the last.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Do you think America is actually ready though, to vote
for a black South Asian female president when they didn't
want to pick Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Look, these discussions have been had before. If you recall
back to Barack Obama in two thousand and eight, there's
an awful lot of inks built and discussions had over
whether America was ready for their first black president. I
think perhaps actually Americans are a bit more mature than
we sometimes give them credit for. And I think Karmala
Harris will be fine. I think she will be probably
(08:21):
a worthy challenger to Donald Trump. But Donald Trump has
got a huge machine behind him. And unity is just
so powerful in politics, whether it is in New Zealand
or in the United States, and the Republicans are just
so unified now. There is a never Trump wing to
the party, but it's very small now compared with say
twenty sixteen or during the Trump presidency. The Trump machine
(08:44):
has just been very successful. And Trump, despite all of
his criminal trials and tribulations, he's more popular than ever.
So He's gone through an assassination attempt and is still
standing and is more popular than ever. It's going to
take a lot, an awful lot, to defeat that. But
I don't think in the end Kamala Harris's ethnicity, gender
(09:06):
will really pay much of a role in that. We
wait and see. I mean, an awful lot can happen,
and the predictions are a very dangerous thing to make.
If we've been recording this interview a month ago, Goodness meet,
how different things would look and three and a half months,
a lot can happen still in this race.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Could people vote for Harris simply because she isn't Trump
or Biden.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
I think that will be very much the strategy. Kamala
Harris used the line that she was the anti Trump
in her campaign adds back in twenty twenty when she
was in the presidential race or trying to get the
Democratic nomination, and you know, that's probably the best card
she has to try and convince people to vote for
her both because of who she is. I think there
(09:47):
will be plenty of Democrats who do genuinely like her,
and plenty of voters who do genuinely like her and
appreciate her. But then there will be plenty of others
who in the end vote for her because she's not Trump.
And that's I guess a valid strategy as well. No
doubt there will be all kinds of scare campaigns and
tactics used by the Democrats to reach that goal. You know,
(10:07):
in the end, it's a simple numbers game, and it's
all about appealing to the swing voters. And around about
ten states in the United States which are the swing states,
that's you know, the likes of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and
in the end, those voters that hold all the cards
here in the American system. So whatever appeals to those
(10:31):
swing state voters, I think those will be the strategies
that are employed by the Democratic campaign.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Just lastly, Jeffrey, Logistically, what happens next.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Look, there are a lot of arcane rules and procedures
from the Democratic National Committee, and I wouldn't pretend to
know all the ins and outs of it all. But
there was some talk before Biden made his decision that
there would be a virtual confirmation of his candidacy before
the Democratic National Convenent, which is scheduled to be held
(11:01):
in Chicago in a month's time, so it could have
been in early August. We wait and see. That could
still happen in Karmala Harris is rubber stamped. But in
the end there's a process to go through, and around
three nine hundred delegates who have pledged to support Joe Biden,
in all likelihood they're going to be backing Kamala Harris now,
so that's why largely it's going to be a foregone
(11:24):
conclusion in my view. But yes, formally there's a convention,
a party conference if you like, in Chicago from the
nineteenth to twenty second of August. In theory, it could
go to what's called an open convention where the delegates
can choose whatever candidate they find best on the day
and practice. I think it's going to be a coronation
for Karmala Harris, and it will be signed up well
(11:46):
before then. And simply time is not on the Democrat side.
They're already incredibly late working out their candidate. I doubt
very much they're going to still be working out who's
going to be their candidate in a month's time. I
think it will all be sealed and there will be
a bit convention that was all about crowning Krmala Harris
as the nominee.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Thanks for joining us, Jeffrey. That said, for this episode
of The Front Page, you can read more about today's
stories and extensive news coverage at enzed Herald dot co
dot z. The Front Page is produced by Ethan Siles
with sound engineer Patty Fox. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to
(12:29):
the Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts,
and tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.
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