WASHINGTON — After nearly a near year of careful planning, organizers of the Democratic National Convention are in a mad dash to accommodate a new nominee, a recrafted program and a highly compressed deadline to pull everything off as though this was the plan all along.
With President Joe Biden now out of the race and Vice President Kamala Harris pursuing the party’s nomination, a dramatic role reversal for the two is likely to play out before a nationally televised audience when around 5,000 delegates, 12,000 volunteers, and 15,000 media members gather for four days in Chicago starting Aug. 19.
Harris is banking on introducing her vice presidential pick to the country and standing at center stage to accept her party’s nomination. Biden — who until mere days ago thought he’d be the one getting the nod — will have a more peripheral and ceremonial role akin to the treatment of second-term presidents set to leave office.
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He will still give a speech and have his achievements feted, but the whole thing will require a delicate political balance between the president and his No. 2.
“If it’s a Biden-Harris reelection convention, it’s all about doubling down on the great accomplishment. The challenge, obviously, will be how to sort of bank that, but also talk about the future,” said William M. Daley, a former Obama White House chief of staff whose father and brother were Chicago mayors.
There have occasionally been tensions, or at least struggles with political messaging and tone, as vice presidents campaign to succeed a president — like in 2000, when Bill Clinton was in office and Al Gore was seeking the White House. Clinton left the convention after offering a triumphant review of his accomplishments on the first day, but prominent party leaders urged him to more definitively cede the spotlight to his vice president going forward, citing the Monica Lewinsky scandal that prompted the president’s impeachment.
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