How would a brokered convention to replace Joe Biden work – and could it backfire and cost Democrats the 2024 election

President Joe Biden is trying to counter growing calls within his party to withdraw from the presidential race, amid fears from some Democrats that he is unfit for the job and cannot defeat Donald Trump.

But if the president does leave office in the coming weeks, there will be no clear alternative at the top of the list, raising the possibility of a brokered Congress for the first time in more than 70 years.

Democrats will travel to Chicago in August for the Democratic National Convention. However, due to ballot deadlines in some states, a virtual process to certify Biden as the nominee will take place before live programming begins on August 19.

Biden garnered nearly 4,000 delegates who had committed to his support, as millions of voters cast their ballots for the incumbent president during the primaries.

The Democratic National Committee has stressed that Biden is currently the only person eligible for nomination and that delegates can either vote for the president or be marked as present, according to the talking points.

Biden and the White House reiterated Wednesday that the president has no plans to withdraw from the race.

But if he were to change course in the coming weeks, it would open the door for a wild and potentially exhaustive nomination process next month at Congress, where votes would be cast until a candidate is chosen by a majority of voting delegates.

A brokered convention is a presidential nominating convention in which delegates fail to nominate a candidate on the first ballot. This means that no candidate receives the votes of more than half of the delegates in the first round.

In the past, mediated congresses were held regularly because the major parties did not hold primaries to allocate delegates, as they do now.

This led to a series of complex negotiations among some of the party’s power brokers, typically federal and state leaders, including party officials, legislators and governors.

Voting takes place in a round of ballots until one candidate has a majority of the delegates.

The last time a mediated congress took place was in 1952.

Then-Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson and Senator John Sparkman at the 1952 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the last time there was a brokered convention

Stevenson secured the Democratic Party nomination on the third ballot at the 1952 Democratic National Convention in Chicago

Ultimately, the Democrats were able to nominate Democrat Adlai Stevenson on the third ballot. Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower fell just nine votes short on the first ballot that year, prompting some delegates to change their votes to make him the official nominee.

The longest brokered convention to date took place 100 years ago in 1924, when Democrats needed 16 days and 103 ballots to nominate diplomat John Davis. Franklin Delano Roosevelt needed four ballots to secure the 1932 Democratic nomination.

“We don’t have any standards, benchmarks, or known procedures yet,” said Leonard Steinhorn, a professor at American University, about what a mediated convention might look like in 2024. “We’re kind of running wild right now,” he said.

Although the terms mediated agreement and contested agreement are often used interchangeably, there is an important difference.

A contested congress is one in which one candidate has done well, but not enough to secure a nomination on the first ballot. So another candidate tries to convince the delegates to drop the frontrunner.

According to Elaine Kamarck of the Brookings Institute, it is more common in modern times than a mediated convention.

Now that Biden is running, the convention is more of a public relations event for the party and the president, as the nominee has already been determined, in this case the incumbent president.

But if Biden drops out of the race before the convention, there will be no clear favorite unless the president passes the baton and declares his support.

Political parties have largely tried to avoid both brokered and contested conventions, as history shows that candidates who require multiple rounds of voting to be nominated are less likely to win the White House.

It’s a pressing concern as Democrats consider the best candidate to take on Trump this fall.

According to Pew, of the sixty Democratic and Republican nominating conventions from 1868, after the Civil War, through 1984, eighteen candidates were nominated on multiple ballots.

Only seven of them were elected president. Four of them competed against other nominees, who also had to vote multiple times to secure the nomination.

The last time a Democrat made a strong case for an open convention was the late Senator Ted Kennedy in 1980. The senator challenged President Jimmy Carter for the nomination. Ultimately, delegates had to stick to their state results when voting. But Carter lost the election that fall to Ronald Reagan.

Before that, Republican President Gerald Ford went into the 1976 convention with a clear majority of delegates, but not the number necessary to secure the nomination, leading to a serious challenge from then-Governor Reagan. He eventually won on the first ballot, but lost the election to Carter.

“You want a party that is united behind the person who appears to be the popular choice of the members of that party, of the voters,” Steinhorn noted.

If the nominee were to be determined at the convention, the party and campaign would have to make efforts to introduce the nominee to the public, raise money, and campaign before Election Day.

Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Chesapeake, Virginia, on June 28. Republicans hold their convention from July 15 to 18, where the former president will officially become the party’s presidential nominee.

It would be beneficial for Democrats to have to attend a brokered party convention in 2024. It doesn’t matter who their nominee is, if it’s not Biden, it’s Trump.

‘T“This is going to be an unusual year because Donald Trump has very, very high negative numbers,” Steinhorn said.

Although Democrats are behind in message and commitment in November, there could be an important difference.

“Because Donald Trump is so extraordinarily unpopular as the opposition party’s nominee, it potentially gives the Democratic Party a slight advantage,” he added.