Biden Opponents Have Six Days To Get Him Out Of The Race

A virtual roll call is moving forward, despite no legitimate rationale to formally nominate the president early. Some Biden delegates are trying to whip up an objection campaign.

By David Dayen and Luke Goldstein, The American Prospect

The Prospect can confirm that the Democratic National Committee is aiming to nominate Joe Biden as their presidential candidate early, in a virtual roll call process that would begin Monday, six days from today.

Both Axios and The New York Times have reported that the virtual roll call would go forward, with the timeline set on Friday morning at a meeting of the Rules Committee. Axios says that voting for the presidential nomination by delegates would begin July 29; the Times says it would start July 22.

A source tells the Prospect that the July 22 date is correct. That would mean that voting by more than 4,000 delegates, the overwhelming majority of which were pledged to Biden, would begin almost immediately after the Republican National Convention, giving the now-underground process of trying to persuade Biden to step aside a very narrow window for success.

UPDATE: DNC chair Jaime Harrison said in a comment on social media that “We will have this vote by August 5th.” That would imply that the voting process, scheduled to take a week, would begin no later than July 29, aligning with the Axios timeline. Politics often involves “trial balloons,” where certain actions are floated to monitor for public response. Given the response here, a reasonable interpretation that the DNC is backing off the quickest possible vote, but not backing off the concept of a virtual roll call and early nomination.