Bernie supporters will of course want to say “Bernie got the most votes of anyone still in the race, so he should be the guy”. But I would think (hope, anyway) that the party would be like “not so fast: voters spoke loud and clear that they want a mainstream Democrat, not Bernie the socialist”.
They would still have the convention in July, if there isn’t a majority of delegates for Bernie and there most likely won’t be, then the party will pick whoever they want.
But what if it happened tomorrow? Couldn’t Bernie potentially get a majority if he ran unopposed in the rest of the states? Seems to me the other candidates who “suspended” their campaigns would “unsuspend” and we’d quite possibly be back to a contested convention, with Bernie possibly having the plurality. IOW a mess.
Biden’s name will still be on primary ballots, same as all those who dropped out after California ballots were printed and before the primary. Convention rules will determine how those delegates are apportioned.
You don’t think anyone else would un-suspend their campaigns? I think they would.
Yes, I wish there was a way to have… I believe the legal term is a Do-Over.
And I’d want one if Biden just started to lose it. Pummeling supporters while screaming “Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!!!”
Trimp does that every day. Must Biden become Trimp-ish? Can he has cheezeburger?
Back to topic. Biden appears to be in much better physical and mental condition than the orange terror and likely has more competent medical care on hand, since he’s sane. With an convenient Biden death, look for assassins. I’d hate to be his food taster now. :eek:
Plus, Bernie has had a recent heart attack (5 months ago I think). I hope he has many happy years ahead of him, but let’s be honest, he probably doesn’t. If a medical condition incapacitates the presumptive nominee, it doesn’t make sense to then replace him with someone even more likely to have a medical risk.
In my opinion, if Biden died this week, the Democrats should probably turn to Sanders.
Sanders has lost to Biden. But everyone else who ran has lost to Biden and Sanders. Sanders is the strongest candidate if Biden disappears.
And I feel the Sanders supporters would have a legitimate complaint if the party decided to bring in somebody who hasn’t been running when Sanders has gone through the process.
No way. Democratic voters have made it crystal clear they think it’s too risky to nominate Sanders. Just because he has an adamantine base of core supporters like no one else has does not change that fact.
All we know is that he is in second place. Not the rest of this.
It was my sense of the race months ago, but since then I think it has become crystal clear to anyone who’s not really squinting and trying to see something that just isn’t there. Just look at how, when other candidates dropped out, nearly all their support went to Biden. It’s absolutely plain that the majority of the party wants to nominate almost anyone but Bernie.
ETA: If anyone’s holding out hope that Biden will get knocked out of the race and Bernie can sneak back in there, that’s reaallly desperate and kind of sad.
It’s currently 881 delegates for Biden and 725 for sanders.
It isn’t like sanders is some marginalized candidate, despite your efforts to portray him as such.
Ideally Biden would pick a vp candidate or surrogate before it comes to this decision and they would take over for Biden.
Not a marginalized candidate? 
Here are 538’s current odds for who may win more than half of delegates to the DNC convention:
Biden 99.9%
No one 0.1%
Sanders 0%
:dubious:
If it’s a race between Biden and Sanders, I agree; Biden has beaten Sanders.
But that’s not the scenario you set up in this thread. If Biden is gone, who do you see as the new default nominee?
I’ve already said who I see: Sanders. But you’re disagreeing. So who do you think it should be?
You seem to be suggesting that the remaining primaries will produce a new front runner. But that’s not going to happen. Warren’s in third place with 58 delegates. And if Sanders isn’t going to overtake Biden’s 156 delegate lead, then Warren is definitely not going to overtake Sanders’ 644 delegate lead. Especially when she would have to restart her campaign from a standstill.
So if Biden’s gone, Sanders is going to show up in Milwaukee with a strong lead over anyone else there. What do you think should happen at that point?
I do like Wesley Clark’s suggestion of Biden naming some kind of surrogate who would then carry the baton. But if he didn’t, it should be someone from the moderate lane who has demonstrated electability with swing voters. That sounds like Klobuchar to me, but there are other possibilities including some who have not been in the primaries (Sherrod Brown) or some who dropped out early (Steve Bullock). Definitely not Warren, and not Bloomberg or Buttigieg either.
I just checked a summary of DNC rules.
If Biden dies before the convention, he’s pretty much “withdrawn” from contention, not “suspended” (unless his taxidermied corpse is paraded ala Lenin). Thus Bernie’s best path to the nomination runs over Biden’s dead body. But he’d still lose in November.
The party picks no one. The voters do, in those case the delegates the voters picked.
I have trouble believing that’s the way the rules would really be applied in practice. If it were, that would mean an incumbent president running with token opposition would be replaced on the ticket by some fringe candidate if they managed to win a single delegate in their home state or something.
I sure hope this is not how it would work, because this is a live issue this year. I am already nervous enough about RBG, I don’t need to worry about Biden too.
I will point out that Biden is in better health than Sanders or trump.