Democrats falling in line behind Harris, ending weeks of rancor about Biden

REHOBOTH BEACH, Del. — The Democratic Party moved further toward fully coalescing around Vice President Harris as its new presidential nominee on Monday, a rapid and dizzying show of unity that followed weeks of public infighting and rancor over President Biden’s now-abandoned candidacy.

Less than 24 hours after Biden’s abrupt exit from the race, hundreds of state delegates, the majority of Democratic lawmakers and governors, a group of state party chairs, and several influential interest groups threw their support behind Harris, as other potential candidates said they would not challenge her. Biden, upon ending his bid, endorsed Harris as his successor.

While a small number of Democrats have continued to advocate for an open, competitive process, Harris appeared to have an inside track Monday to quickly securing the nomination ahead of the party’s convention next month. Her swift ascendancy reflected a Democratic Party exhausted by weeks of turmoil and seemingly relieved to finally be in a position to unite around the goal of defeating Republican nominee Donald Trump.

“I’m excited to fully endorse Vice President Harris for the next president of the United States,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D-Ky.) said Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program. “The vice president is smart and strong, which will make her a good president, but she’s also kind and has empathy, which can make her a great president.”

Beshear sidestepped questions about whether he was angling to join Harris as a running mate, though he notably used his appearance to attack Republican vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance, a kind of public audition that he and other top Democrats are engaging in the party begins to shift its focus to who will share the ticket with Harris.

Democratic Govs. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois and Wes Moore of Maryland also endorsed Harris on Monday, joining a growing list of potential rivals for the nomination that instead opted to endorse her candidacy. Govs. Gavin Newsom of California and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, each considered as potential candidates, both endorsed Harris on Sunday.

Trump and his allies, meanwhile, were forced to regroup and reorient their strategy in the wake of Biden’s exit. The Republican nominee had built an advantage in polls of key swing states and Trump has at time appeared frustrated with Biden’s exit in the race, lamenting Sunday that he had to “start all over again” after long focusing on Biden.

Harris made her first appearance Monday since jumping into the presidential race, speaking to National Collegiate Athletic Association championship teams from the 2023 -2024 season. Biden was originally scheduled to host the event, on the South Lawn of the White House, but has been isolating at his Rehoboth Beach, Del., home since testing positive for the coronavirus on Wednesday.

Harris first paid tribute to Biden and said that, in one term, he had already surpassed the legacy of most two-term presidents.

“The qualities that [Biden’s late son] Beau revered in his father are the same qualities that I have seen every day in our president: his honesty, his integrity, his commitment to his faith and his family, his big heart and his love, deep love of our country,” Harris said. “And I am a firsthand witness that every day our president, Joe Biden, fights for the American people.”

The turn of events resulted in a rare instance of Harris hosting a White House gathering on the South Lawn by herself, a privilege typically reserved for presidents. While the sports-focused gathering is designed to be lighthearted and low-pressure, many will be watching to see how Harris performs in a presidential role.

Harris’s nascent campaign has tried to frame the rush of endorsements as a sign of her hard work to unify and energize the party.

Harris’s campaign raised more than $50 million in the first hours after Biden dropped out and endorsed his vice president, aides said. Full slates of delegates from North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and elsewhere have already pledged to back Harris unanimously, giving her a portion of the delegates she will need to secure the nomination at the party’s convention Aug. 19 to Aug. 22 convention. A group of tens of thousands of Black women gathered on a virtual call Sunday evening to showcase their support for Harris’s bid to become the first woman of color to be president.

In her statement on Sunday, Harris said she was eager to unite the party and “earn and win” the nomination. Even as the vice president appeared to be benefiting from what amounted to a coronation after Biden’s endorsement opened the door to a flood of public support, Harris’s aides sought to show she had been working hard to convince the party that she deserved to be its standard-bearer against Trump.

She spent more than 10 hours on the phone on Sunday, wearing a hoodie and sweatpants, calling dozens of officials across the country to secure their support, according to a person familiar with the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the internal process.

The rapid political embrace of Harris marked a notable shift from a party that had previously questioned her strengths as both a candidate and as a vice president.

Last year, multiple commentators advocated for Harris to be swapped out as Biden’s running mate and several leading Democrats struggled on live television to answer what had become a hot-button question: Is Harris the best option for vice-presidential candidate?

“He thinks so, and that’s what matters,” Pelosi said on CNN in September, referring to Biden in what was widely interpreted as a noncommittal answer. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) also offered less than enthusiastic support for Harris last year during television interviews, though both endorsed her bid to be the nominee Sunday.

Still, there were notable holdouts. Pelosi, former president Barack Obama, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) released statements praising Biden without explicitly endorsing Harris.

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin III initially expressed interest in running for the nomination, before taking himself out of the running on Monday. Manchin, who left the Democratic Party in May to become an independent, said he wanted the party to embrace an open process to allow more moderate candidates to compete. Before Biden left the race on Sunday, Manchin suggested in an interview with The Post that Harris was too liberal.

“I think we can rebuild the Democratic brand and right now you’re going to have to pick somebody that physically and mentally basically believes with every fiber of their body that we’ve gone too far to the left,” he said. “Now if they don’t, they’re going to keep dwindling away.”

In a new ad released hours after Biden dropped out, the Trump campaign released an ad targeting Harris over the surge of migration at the Southern border, falsely branding her the nation’s “border czar.” The ad featured a repeated clip of Harris laughing, part of an attempt by Trump to undermine bid to be commander in chief. At a rally Saturday, Trump referred to Harris as “laughin’ Kamala” and “crazy,” repeating his practice of mispronouncing her name.

Trump continued railing against Biden for abruptly dropping out of the race, posting on his social media platform early Monday that those who urged Biden to step down “stole the race from Biden after he won it in the primaries.”

“These people are the real THREAT TO DEMOCRACY!” Trump wrote, echoing a line of attack several Republicans have embraced of late.

Harris’s campaign is leaning into her background as a prosecutor as it begins to cast the race against Trump in a new light.

“Vice President Kamala Harris has held criminals accountable her entire career — and Donald Trump will be no different,” Harris for President spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement.

The Democratic National Convention’s rules committee called a Wednesday meeting to discuss the process for picking a new presidential nominee. The 2 p.m. meeting will be broadcast live on the Democratic National Committee’s YouTube page. DNC Chair Jaime Harrison promised Sunday that the process would be “transparent and orderly.”

With Biden still in Rehoboth Beach recovering from covid, much is up in the air this week for the White House. Biden, who said Sunday he would address the nation about his decision in the coming days, has no public events scheduled for Monday, according to a White House schedule.

For Tuesday through Sunday, the guidance states: “Additional details to the President’s schedule forthcoming.”

Amy B Wang, Kelsey Baker and Matt Viser contributed to this report.