Less than a week after President Joe Biden decided not to run for reelection and Vice President Kamala Harris got into the race, UW-Milwaukee political science professor Mordecai Lee drew comparisons to the 1968 election when another president withdrew from the race and his vice president threw his hat in the ring. One of the reported reasons Biden felt pressure to drop out was that major campaign donors were considering or actively withholding contributions — Nick Ramos of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign called big money in politics the “wild, wild west.” “Here & Now” political panelists — Republican Bill McCoshen and Democrat Scot Ross — responded to the fast-changing dynamics in the race for the White House.
 

Mordecai Lee
Political science professor emeritus, UW-Milwaukee

• In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson dropped out of his reelection bid and Vice President Hubert Humphrey was nominated instead. Despite his accomplishments, Johnson was deeply unpopular because of the Vietnam War. Lee drew historical comparisons to President Joe Biden’s low approval ratings that his vice president – now presumptive nominee Kamala Harris – now must overcome.
• Lee: “Vice President Humphrey could not break with LBJ, could not become an antiwar candidate, but he wanted to separate himself from having to carry on his shoulders all the baggage that LBJ’s war had. I think the same thing is happening with Harris. She needs to carry on her shoulders the weight of Biden’s unpopularity and of his policies, yet at the same time, to be a different candidate, to have a fresh take. And that’s hard to tiptoe through the tulips.”

Nick Ramos
Executive director, Wisconsin Democracy Campaign

• It’s widely reported that among the reasons President Joe Biden was pressured to drop out of the 2024 race was because big dollar contributions to his campaign from major donors were on track to drop by half from June to July if he stayed in.. Ramos said big money ends up choosing the candidates rather than the voters.
• Ramos: “For people like you and I [who] don’t sit on tens of thousands or even millions of dollars that [we] get to play with every day, we get to look on the outside looking in, and they’re over here playing kingmaker, trying to pick the candidate that’s going to do their bidding and going to serve their bottom line and do their agenda. And so, we’ve been in desperate need of campaign finance reform for so long, and Citizens United has opened the floodgates and Pandora’s box in a way that it leaves the everyday citizen a little less powerful than what we could be if there were better regulations to actually give us a better seat at the table.”

Bill McCoshen and Scot Ross
Republican and Democratic political panelists

• McCoshen and Ross expressed amazement that so much could happen in such a short span in the 2024 presidential election campaigns: Joe Biden’s debate performance, the assassination attempt against Donald Trump, Biden dropping out of the race and Vice President Kamala Harris stepping in. McCoshen said Democrats diluted Trump’s energy coming out of the Republican National Convention, while Ross said Harris definitely energizes the Democratic base. They each responded to Trump’s VP pick of JD Vance.
• McCoshen: “I don’t know that we should necessarily stick with JD Vance. I think Donald Trump could easily ask the RNC to reconsider their vote to nominate him. If there’s a candidate that gives us a better chance to win, at the end of the day, all of the campaigns are about winning. You can’t govern if you don’t win. And if they’ve got data that shows that there are candidates that may be stronger than JD Vance. If I’m Trump, I’m considering that.”
  Ross: “Democrats are going to continue to pound on him because he is the gift that keeps giving on abortion, calling it murder, saying no exceptions for rape and incest. The new recording that came out showing that he wanted abortion storm troopers to be … made by the federal government to go from red states to blue states to chase women who were trying to access their abortion rights. You know, as far as Democrats go, nobody puts JD in the corner.”

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