After a month of grief, dread, tears and hand-wringing, congressional Democrats are relieved — jubilant, really — that they’ve successfully ditched what many of them identified as the root of all their electoral troubles: Joe Biden.
“There’s a great spirit of hope out there,” said Rep. Lloyd Doggett, the Texas Democrat who was first among his colleagues to urge the president to get out of the race after his poor debate performance against Donald Trump in June.
With Vice President Kamala Harris already poised to claim the party’s nomination, “we have hope of winning this election,” Doggett told reporters on Tuesday.
He’s under no illusions it will be easy. “It’s an uphill struggle. I think Trump clearly has the advantage,” Doggett said. “But we feel we’ve got the nominee and the strategy to prevail.”
Having a nominee and a strategy might seem like a low bar at this point in the election cycle. But both were uncertain in recent weeks as lawmakers and Democratic donors raised alarms about Biden’s mental acuity and ability to win.
“If there’s defeat, there’ll be plenty of fingers to point,” Doggett said when asked who’ll get the blame if Harris loses. “I feel that the numbers vindicate my position and ultimately that President Biden reached the same conclusion.”
Now that he’s out, and Harris is in? “There’s incredible momentum,” progressive Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington said. She added that she feels “really good” about “being able to put this debate behind us, to be able to have a candidate that we’ve all unified around.”
The monthlong setback came at a critical point in the campaign: Tens of millions of people watched Biden fumble the debate and then saw Trump hailed as a hero at the Republican National Convention. Time is running short for Democrats to make their case, with just over 100 days to go. Harris is facing tough odds before she’s even really started running: Trump has been the favorite in major polls, consistently running ahead of Biden and now even Harris in some very early analyses of the new matchup. In down-ballot races, too, Democrats are defending seats in challenging swing states like Ohio, Montana and Pennsylvania.
But Democrats across the ideological spectrum are shrugging off the feelings of dread that consumed the party just days ago.
Biden “made the right decision” to end his campaign, Rep. Dan Kildee told NOTUS on Tuesday. “It’s going to bear fruit.”
It’s a “tough environment,” Kildee acknowledged. But he thinks “there’s a clear path to victory” now, although what that path looks like differs in each state.
Is a new candidate enough on its own to change the tide? “This gives us a fighting chance,” Kildee told NOTUS of Harris being at the top of the ticket. “It’s up to us to make the most of it.”
In his home state of Michigan, Kildee suggested, Harris should lean into her background as a prosecutor.
“She was a prosecutor; he’s a convicted criminal,” Kildee said. Touting her former role can win votes “in some circles, for sure.”
As of Tuesday afternoon, more than 250 congressional Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, had announced their support for her, along with many Democratic governors who had previously been seen as possible alternative candidates.
Replacing a presumptive nominee with only a few months to go until Election Day is a gamble that hasn’t really paid off the few times it’s happened in the past, and none have entered the race as close to the finish line as Harris is. But Democratic lawmakers were so worried about the state of the campaign that they don’t seem to mind the risk.
“I don’t think you can compare 21st-century politics to anything anymore,” Kildee said when asked if he had any concerns about it. “It’s such a different period, such a different era.”
Rep. Wiley Nickel of North Carolina also said he wasn’t worried about the historic examples of a party losing after changing its ticket. He views this situation as very much its own thing: “Every week is unprecedented,” he said of 2024. “We’re just in a crazy time.”
“It’s going to be a close race,” he told NOTUS. But right now, “the party base is fired up, and that’s so important for this election.”
Rep. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia was the most optimistic Democrat who spoke with NOTUS on Tuesday: “She will win,” Spanberger predicted.
“A rematch of President Trump and President Biden kind of brought us back to 2020, right? And 2020 was terrible for everyone, for every conceivable reason,” Spanberger said in an interview. As much as Spanberger respects Biden, Harris can transcend “that negative swirl of 2020.”
Rep. Jim McGovern said some Democrats are feeling joyful for another reason. “My mother is over-the-moon excited about all this,” he told NOTUS.
She supported Biden, of course, “but she wants to see a woman get elected president in her lifetime. I mean, she was heartbroken when Hillary didn’t make it over the finish line. She says, you know, ‘Everyone I talk to in the supermarket says they’re for Kamala.’”
McGovern, too, feels “terrific.”
“I don’t feel any angst at all. I really don’t,” he said on his way to vote on Tuesday. “You know, we’re Democrats. Sometimes, we have trouble agreeing on what to have for lunch. And yet, there just seems to be this kind of unity that’s just very natural, and people are all kind of coalescing behind her.”
Should the party have done this sooner, then?
“This has been a process,” McGovern answered, with that word carrying as much anguish as it’s earned this month. “But it’s all working out, so I’m happy.”
—
Haley Byrd Wilt is a reporter at NOTUS.