The ink was barely dry on Joe BIden's letter announcing that he would be dropping out of the race when Republicans began making noises about challenging the decision, arguing that he shouldn't be able to take his name off of the ballot at this late stage of the game, at least in some states. That sounds like a rather dodgy approach to take, at least at first glance. And it doesn't sound much better with a second glance, either. But election laws can be tricky and they vary from state to state, so some analysis will be required. It didn't help matters any when the Speaker of the House came out on CNN shortly thereafter and seemed to endorse the idea and suggest that litigation may be in the offing. An early analysis from Politico suggests that it may be possible to stop Biden's name from being removed, but it's a long shot at best.
Don’t believe the hype: Republicans are unlikely to gain traction in legal efforts to prevent Democrats from taking President Joe Biden off the ballot.
No state will have printed ballots prior to the Democratic National Convention, and the nominee chosen by the party at or in the run up to the convention was always slated to be the person who appears on the ballot in each state. Still, despite the odds, it seems certain some legal challenges will emerge in a climate when nearly every political controversy winds up in court.
House Speaker Mike Johnson teased possible legal challenges to Biden’s removal earlier Sunday.
“I think they've got legal hurdles in some of these states,” he said on CNN. “And it'll be litigated, I would expect, on the ground there.”
Nobody seems to be specifying which states these "legal hurdles" are cropping up in. There were some questions about Ohio for a while, but they made a legislative change to extend the latest date when the parties can provide the names of their candidates to go on the ballot. No ballots have been printed yet in any of the states, and they certainly aren't going to start printing them now until they know who both of the nominees are.
Even if that weren't the case, this is a very bad look for the GOP. To have Republicans arguing that the Democrats should be forced to leave Joe BIden's name on the ballot under the current circumstances makes them look every bit as bad as the Democrats did when they were trying to have Trump's name removed. Both parties have held their primary elections. The Democrats' primaries crashed and burned because Biden has done something virtually unprecedented, but they still deserve to have the right to pick a nominee in whatever fashion they can and have that person's name appear on the ballot. Elections are supposed to be won and lost at the ballot box in November, not through shady legal gimmicks in the heat of the summer.
An effort like this also hands the Democrats another talking point for the next three months. For all of the (totally justifiable) complaining we've been doing about Joe Biden for three years, he was secretly the person the GOP wanted to run against, particularly after that hideous debate. Conservatives didn't want Joe Biden to drop out of the race or - God forbid - resign from office and install Harris. We wanted Biden because he looked the most beatable. (My apologies for saying the quiet part out loud.)
Kamala Harris should still be beatable going against Donald Trump, but that remains an unknown prospect for the moment. The Democrats' fundraising went through the roof last night and a couple of snap polls show Harris doing at least slightly better than she had been previously. We're going to need to wait for this impactful news to soak in for a while before we can develop a more complete snapshot of where we stand. We very badly need Donald Trump to win this election and it really doesn't matter who he has to beat, but we're going to have to do it fair and square. So let's buckle up our seatbelts and get back to work, because this ride is far from over.
