Dan Mitchinson: US correspondent says many donors were unconvinced at Biden, now we'll see if they'll back Harris

Kamala Harris could make history if the Democratic Party follows through in giving her the reigns.  

Joe Biden's publicly endorsed his Vice President for the presidential nomination after deciding to end his campaign.  

She could be the first Black woman and Asian-American to lead the ticket of a major political party.  

Uncertainty had been circling since last month's debate about whether Biden would stay in the race. 

US correspondent Dan Mitchinson told John MacDonald many donors had taken a step back - unconvinced Biden would be able to beat Donald Trump. 

“They don’t want to back a losing horse, so I think they were waiting to get their chequebooks out to see what he’s going to do, and now we’ll see if they’re willing to back Kamala Harris.” 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Kerry Wood of Morning's podcast from
News Talks, he'd be.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Let me show you a little bit of Joe Biden's
announcement today. He said, quite, it has been the greatest
honor of well, have you just woken up? His announcement
that he's not seeking the presidency in this year's election.
He said, quite, it has been the greatest owner of
my life. When I say have you just woken up,
it didn't mean, you know, have you got your brain
switched on? I mean if you're literally just woken up.
He says, it has been the greatest honor of my

(00:33):
life to serve as your president. And while it's been
my intention to seek re election, I believe it is
in the best interest of my party in the country
for me to stand down and to focus solely on
fulfilling my duties as president for the remainder of my term.
To discuss this, US correspondent Dan Mitchinson is with this Morning,
Dan Morning John. How come it took so long for
him to get to this point.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
Because I think he was stubborn, and he had pride,
and he had been under a lot of pressure by
many Democrats. I mean, I had spoken with some top
Democrats over the last eighteen months, and none of them
were excited about Joe Biden, off the record, running for reelection.
None of them thought that Kamala Harris would be a

(01:17):
significant challenger to Donald Trump should he decide, and we
know he has to run again, and here we find
ourselves in that exact position.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
In a way, Joe Biden's been lit down by those
people that were talking behind the scenes, isn't he?

Speaker 3 (01:31):
I think so. I think so. Apparently this was a
very low key event that happened last night. He only
had a handful of people around him when he made
this decision, and nobody, according to a number of reports,
got the heads up before this tweet posted. I mean,
here you have ony thirteen fourteen hundred people that are
working for you on the campaign and on the Sunday
morning talk shows. Here you have people that are going

(01:51):
on insisting that the president is not going to step
down and would continue his reelection efforts. And before you
know it, boom, this announcement comes out, which caught a
lot of people off guard. Although I think if we're honest,
we knew that this was going to come. It was
just about win.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
Do you think that that's the fact that it was
a surprise to sign me to the people on the inside.
How much does that reflect how much trust Joy Biden
had lost in his own people, the people around him.

Speaker 3 (02:18):
That's a good question. I wish I had an answer
for that, because I think it's I think if you
look at his advisors and you look at his wife,
and nobody knows Joe Biden better than his wife, you
would have thought that these people would have said, you know, look,
you've had fifty great years here, You've served your country. Well,
it's time to step down. He was supposed to be
the bridge President, as he referred to it. He was
going to run for one term. He was going to

(02:41):
usher in a new era with some younger Democrats, because
you look at the bench that we have for both
Republicans and Democrats and it's not extremely deep and it's
very old. But he decided he was going to run
again because you get that taste of power and you say,
I have all these things that I didn't get to
accomplish in my first term, and he wanted to do
it again. And I think that's why he was so

(03:03):
intent on saying I'm not going to give up.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
Excuse my ignorance, But was there a point when that
was known when he when when he made that shift
in thinking until now?

Speaker 3 (03:14):
Yeah, I know, I think I think he just thought that.
And if you look at the polls that he was
the only person once Donald Trump officially threw his hat
into the ring that could uh that could go after
Donald Trump. Because the polls show that Kamala Harris is
about even with him, sometimes a little less. She's not
been a favorite of a lot of Democrats again behind
closed doors, who think that she has the you know,
not only the name recognition, but the you know, the

(03:36):
star quality to UH to go after and beat Donald Trump.
And I think she's one of those people, much like
UH Cole and Powell when he was around and alive
and people wanted him to run that we kind of
project what we want to see onto a candidate that
we don't know a lot about, and then as we
get to know them a little bit more, we think, well,
maybe this isn't the person that I will back, Maybe
this isn't the person I think that should be leading

(03:58):
our party.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
Who do you think will get it? I Mean, what
I'm asking is, what chance does she have.

Speaker 3 (04:04):
I think I think she's absolutely going to get it
at this point. I think there are others in the wings,
like California Governor Gavin Newsom, who's been used by the
Biden administration quite a bit recently for going around the
country and you know, saying that he's not going to
step down, but he's he's definitely somebody that you know
four years from now is going to run. You have
a Michigan Governor, Gretchen Whitmer, who's another prominent Democrat. She

(04:28):
could be on the ticket as a possible VP candidate.
I don't think she will be Mark Kelly, who's a
former astronaut. He's a senator in Arizona. I think he
has a better chance of maybe being on that. So
I think it's it's sort of done and signed that
Kamala Harris is going to be the candidate. Now, there
are two things. You can have an open convention when

(04:48):
they meet together in Chicago next month, so the delegates
can vote for whomever they want to, or you have
a brokerage convention, which we haven't seen in well since
I've been covering politics in decades.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
The sorry could exped because why would you give up
a month of campaigning.

Speaker 3 (05:04):
To Yeah, they could, they could do that a little bit,
but I find it hard to see that they will
to tell you the truth. And I don't think it'll
come to a brokered convention, just because you know, there's
so much that goes on behind the scenes, and there's
so many votes, and you have to make so many
promises to this and there was a reason why they
changed these rules so you couldn't do that. You had

(05:25):
to commit to a candidate who won the state primary.
And they did that thirty maybe thirty five forty years ago.
So I think they're going to have to get behind
Kamala Harris. They're gonna have to get a fundraising effort
behind her fast, just so she can start getting some
money in the war chest.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
So does the money that Joe Biden head hays, does
that not just change hands?

Speaker 3 (05:46):
Yeah, most of that will will change over to her.
There were a lot of people that were still planning
on fundraising events. Former talk show host David Letterman was
going to host a big event about a week and
a half in Hawaii, but honestly, a lot of the
phone stopped ringing over the last couple of weeks. For
Joe Biden, A lot of the donors were taking a
step back because they weren't convinced that he was going
to beat Donald Trump, and they didn't know, honestly, if

(06:08):
he was going to continue this campaign, and they don't
want to back a losing horse, so I think they
were waiting to get their checkbooks out to see what
he's going to do. And now we'll see if they're
willing to back Kamala Harris like.

Speaker 2 (06:20):
They would have you post on that. Hi, Dan, thanks
for Tom, appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (06:25):
For more from carry Wood in Mornings, listen live to
news talks. It'd be from nine am weekdays, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio