US President Joe Biden departs the White House for Las Vegas on July 15, 2024 in Washington, DC. United States.
Celal Gunes | Anadolu | Getty Images
The Democratic National Committee said any mock roll call to officially nominate President Joe Biden as the party’s presidential nominee would not begin before Aug. 1, according to a Wednesday letter sent to delegates and obtained by NBC News.
The decision rules out starting a process designed to quickly nominate Biden next week, which some Biden allies had pushed for.
It also buys more time for Democrats on Capitol Hill to rally and ask Biden to drop out of the ticket, as many Democratic lawmakers privately hope.
The House and Senate are out of town this week, but return to Washington the week of July 22.
“Regardless of what may be reported, our goal is not to accelerate,” wrote Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Bishop Leah Daughtry, co-chairs of the DNCrules committee of. “None of this will be done in a hurry. Unlike our nation’s other major political party, our rules are set in public meetings, anchored in the Party’s constitution and traditions.”
While the nominating process won’t begin until August, Walz and Daughtry noted, it will be completed before the start of the Democratic convention on Aug. 19. Democrats decided to hold their convention unusually late this year, in part so it wouldn’t overlap with the Olympics. But the late start risks bumping into several state deadlines for presidential nominations.
Wednesday’s letter comes as the DNC faces continued pressure from Democratic lawmakers and donors, who want to scrap the nominating schedule altogether and give the party time to find a new nominee.
Sharp concerns about Biden’s age and mental acuity burst into public view during his devastating June 27 performance against former President Donald Trump.
As of Wednesday, at least 19 Democrats in Congress have publicly called on Biden to bow out of the race and find another candidate at the top of the ticket. Even more have expressed concerns behind closed doors about the president’s re-election chances.
On Tuesday, a group of House Democrats was collecting signatures on a draft letter calling on the DNC to cancel the early voting process and hold the nominating vote at the Democratic convention.
“Suffocating debate and prematurely shutting down any potential change to the Democratic ticket through an unnecessary and unprecedented ‘virtual roll call’ in the coming days is a terrible idea,” Tuesday’s letter said.
Biden has repeatedly rejected pressure to drop out, pledging to stay in the race unless his team told him there was “no way” he could win.
The DNC decided to move forward with the virtual roll call approach in May in order to meet the Aug. 7 deadline to get Biden on the ballot in Ohio. When Ohio officially returned the voting deadline to late August, the DNC followed its virtual roll call plan.
“We believe a dummy is the wisest approach because it ensures access to the ballot in the states we must win in November and avoids potential risks if there is a delay in the process,” Daughtry and Walz wrote in the letter. “The challenges we face with ballot access deadlines don’t stop in Ohio.”
They justified the mock voting process by citing late August ballot deadlines in Washington, Montana, Oklahoma, California and Virginia, which they said would be a close upset given the timing of the Democratic convention.
