Biden drops out of the presidential race: What's next and how it might impact races in Arizona

PHOENIX - President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race on July 21, marking a historic event. It's the first time a president has not sought re-election since Lyndon B. Johnson. It also opens the door for an open Democratic National Convention in August.

We spoke with long-time political expert Mike O'Neil to get his reaction to find out what happens next and how it might impact races here in Arizona.

Watch Brian Webb's full interview with O'Neil in the video player above, or read through the transcript below:

Brian: Mike, start with your reaction, please.

Mike: Certainly not overwhelmingly surprised. We've all been sitting on sort of pins and needles about this and sort of expecting this. But also, I was cognizant the whole time. This is one man's choice. And Joe Biden exercised a choice that I think in retrospect may be described as inevitable. But the fact is he held all the cards here, and I think he was finally convinced that his candidacy was not tenable. He could get the nomination. Of course, that's locked up. But his chances of winning the election got smaller and smaller. And I think he made a prudent decision and one that will probably reflect well on his legacy, which was, I think, in danger of being tarnished by a sort of quixotic attempt to stay in power that wouldn't have played well, I think with history. 

Brian: Well, let's talk a little bit about history since you brought it up. I mean.. the similarities to 1968. A lot of people are talking about.. what does that mean to you? 

Mike: Well, first of all, some letters, yes or no. At the end of March of 1968, Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not run again, nor would he accept the nomination for president of the United States. That's a that's a direct quote. You can somehow.. just seared in my brain. But he wasn't being forced out. He was in a weakened position. But it took the world as a complete surprise, it was totally unexpected. This was not totally unexpected. He didn't have to do it. But over time, it looked like this would be an increasingly likely outcome. 

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Brian: And then things did not work out well for Democrats in that election, correct?

Mike: Yeah, but they came back a lot closer than people thought. In the end, it looked like, particularly after the convention in 1968, the Democratic Party was completely torn apart. But the other side of the story is Hubert Humphrey, in the end, got within 1% of winning. And that tells you, you know, had the candidate had the candidate been, for example, Robert F. Kennedy, you wouldn't have had the raucous fight in the convention. RFK had the support of Mayor Daley. He would have got the nomination. And I'm convinced that he would have won. 

Brian: What's next, do you think? What'll happen next year?

Mike: I think the first question is he has endorsed Kamala Harris. Does that mean that she has it locked up? And I think it'll be some days before we get a sense that either there is a coalescing around Kamala Harris as the replacement nominee or else you you have people say that nobody should be coronated, and it should go through a process. And that would be characterized by one or more top tier candidates putting themselves out as potential candidates. It's way too early to say at this instant what's going to happen in this instant. All we've had is a Joe Biden endorsement and in the moment, it looks like that would prevail. But there's no reason why it has to. Those delegates who are pledged to Biden were not pledged to vote for Harris in his stead. And I think we're going to have some discussion about whether the Harris nomination should be contested or whether it should be more or less by acclamation. You could make a case either way. Vice presidents are the logical heirs. Her name is on the ticket. All that money that was given to Biden, Harris transfers to her. So there would be complications if somebody else would be the nominee. The reasons on the other side are equally obvious. Should there be some sort of a quasi-democratic process? We're not going to have our primaries redone, but we have delegates who are elected in those primaries. And that argument might be throw it to the convention, let them decide. So I don't think we're going to.. I think we'll know well before the convention which of those it's likely to be. In fact, there is a pre-convention electronic vote which was set up in order to appease the legislative situation in Ohio, so that they had the need to actually select a nominee before the convention, because the convention was held after what was then the Ohio Party's.. the state of Ohio deadline for final filing. So I think we're going to know to some extent well in advance of the convention just because of that. Now, they could dispense with that. If, for example, that robocall, electronic robocall did not give somebody with a majority, then you're going to have an open convention and a vote at a convention that will I'll get to see.

Brian: Who's in charge, and how are these decisions made? Mike, is this like smoke-filled rooms in some back office or is this out in the open? Who's calling the shots here? 

Mike: Well.. the process is specified by Democratic Party rules. The choice between smoke-filled rooms and completely Democratic Party is constrained by party rules as well. The people in general won't vote on this. Those who are already elected as delegates, who are democratically elected in primaries are the deciders. And if it doesn't pass on the first ballot, then you add in what the Democrats refer to as superdelegates, which are also elected. They are the senior Democratic elected officials. They don't get to vote until the second ballot, but that process is prescribed. Our 4000 delegates voting in an open convention. Is that a smoke-filled room? Well, it's not smoky anymore and it's a pretty big room. But it is not the same as being nominated in a series of primaries and caucuses. So that a lot of it depends on how you characterize it.

Brian: Where do independent voters fall in this whole discussion?

Mike: They're the targets. They're the folks that everybody wants. There aren't as many of them as people saying most of them have Democratic leanings. I think the big picture here is this upsets the apple cart big time. There were a lot of voters there who said, you know, Iike, I kind of or I like Joe Biden or I don't think much of them, but Biden's too old. Well, that issue is removed and.. we will then find out how many of them were really concerned about Biden's age. Was it really that they liked Donald Trump or didn't like the Democrats or something like that? We'll find out in the other thing I would expect in this race with assuming it's Kamala Harris or frankly, almost anybody else. This will be very volatile for several weeks as people fixate on a new choice, and they assess who is Kamala Harris or whoever. They've got a pretty good. The thing about Biden and Trump, that was the most stable election that I've ever seen in terms of the polling. And there's a good reason for that. They both served as president for up four years and almost four years respectively. We have a pretty good idea who they are. We've seen it in action, not just rhetoric. Now, when one of the choices is a more traditional, and we've never had that before, we actually had two presidents who had already served going back to.. at least we haven't seen since the 19th century. Now we have a more traditional situation. We've got one candidate who has been president. Okay, it's not immediately before. That's a new thing. But in other words, Trump is a former president but not a current president. Kamala Harris or whoever is less of a known commodity and vice president does tend to be fairly invisible. And so there will be those few people that are in the center who will decide this election. We'll scratch their heads a little bit figuratively and say, who is this Kamala Harris? What does she stand for? Do I want to cast my vote for her or not? So I think a reassessment, a reset is liable to occur now. Our country is so much a 50/50 country. We're going to end up with something real close to 50/50. But 51/49 is different from 49/51. So that's why we have elections. 

Brian: Can Harris beat Trump or do you think the Democrats might try to look for someone more middle America because she'll be painted as a coastal elite type argument? 

Mike: Let me take those one at a time. Can Kamala Harris beat Trump? Yes. Could Trump beat her? Yes. This is why we have a campaign. This is going to be close. No candidate is guaranteed election. I would have said Joe Biden looked very, very injured. I don't think he was at the end a very strong candidate at all, but I wouldn't have written him off either. Things can't happen in elections, but I think she'll she's just going to start out as a stronger candidate than Joe Biden. But she'll have to make the case because those numbers will be very tenuous as people decide who she is. 

Brian: And what do you think about the argument that she might be painted as a coastal elite, a former prosecutor? We've never had a female president before, those kind of things. 

Mike: Well, those are different things. Coastal elite will be a Republican talking point for sure. Of course, Donald Trump, it's somewhat laughable. Donald Trump is clearly a coastal person for Manhattan, though he hasn't portrayed himself that way. Prosecutor.. those are good Republican credentials. Republicans like prosecutors. And she had a reputation as a prosecutor as being very tough on crime. I mean, I could see her in a debate turning to him and say, I prosecuted hundreds just like you. And they all said the system was unfair, too. She has some rhetorical things that she could pull off as a former prosecutor. So those things are very different. All of the bio.. she's going to have to defend the bio, but also defend the characterizations that will be made of it. That's what candidates do in any election at any time.

Brian: Good point. What do you think about what does this mean to the Arizona tickets in the House and the Senate races and maybe even down ballot from there? 

Mike: I think very little. The polling thus far, even when Biden was slumping, there are four or five Senate races, for example, that have been widely followed because the Senate is at stake. And even as Biden was slumping, the Democrats maintained good leads in most of those, and they did not seem to be diminished. We are in in an era of increased ticket splitting. So I think those folks are going to stand or fall on their own merits. 

Brian: Last thing I can think of, did you ever think we'd be here? Or did you see this coming for the last, you know, couple of weeks? 

Mike: I could see something like this coming for sure. But, you know, and every election has something happened that we classify as you know, October surprise or very late surprise. Certainly, this is one of those.. how many people expected Biden to self-destruct in the debate? I think more people were looking at Trump, and they were saying, can this guy control his emotions and not appear as somebody who's completely lost it? Well, the rules work for Trump and it constrained his more erratic behaviors. He couldn't interrupt all the time because they cut his mike off. And it was Biden who insisted on those rules. And it may have saved Trump from himself. And then, of course, Biden had the memory lapse issues of a couple of things that could have been made and would have been made into completely devastating commercials. That's what that was the other shoe that was going to drop. Can you imagine what those commercials would have looked like? And it would have been just footage. Joe Biden's sort of best hits in terms of momentary lapses that they would have run, stuff like that. And then you'd just have the tagline say, is this man fit to be president? They wouldn't even they wouldn't have to state a conclusion because it would look, the video would have been devastating. Well, they can't do that, you know, and we've already seen the characters in the few minutes since this announcement. Donald Trump has announced that, oh Kamala Harris. she'll be even easier to beat than Joe Biden. You know, he wouldn't have said that a day ago. T ere is a reset all that time. There was even a reset in Trump's acceptance speech where I think they were starting to feel like Biden might be out the first two days of the convention. And they're bashing Joe Biden in the finale when Trump was making a speech. I think he mentioned Joe Biden's name once, and that was extemporaneously. So they had some sense this this is coming and they're going to have to shift to, you know, instead of talking about Joe Biden all the time, they're going to have to decide. Well, it'll be they'll probably both recast it as Biden/Harris and how she didn't contribute or whatever. And you know so it'll be a completely different campaign that the Republican side is not going to mention age anymore because if you mention age at this point, you're talking about Donald Trump, who is almost as old as the fellow who just who just got out on the basis of age. I expect age to be kind of a sleeper issue on the Democratic side, used in much the same way as it used. It was used against Joe Biden.