Sen. JD Vance, the Republican nominee for vice president, said recently that Democrats are trying to install Vice President Kamala Harris as their new nominee without her receiving a single vote for president. He then characterized it not just as a coronation but also as a coup. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., also cast aspersions on Harris’ nomination by claiming, “Having invalidated the votes of more than 14 million Americans who selected Joe Biden to be the Democrat nominee for president, the self-proclaimed ‘party of democracy’ has proven exactly the opposite.”
These protestations that the nomination of Harris for president is undemocratic are not tenable under objective scrutiny.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
President Joe Biden’s decision to forsake running for a second term (for the best of the country, it should be noted) opened a rare, unconventional situation. What could be more democratic than a democratically elected president endorsing his vice president carrying forward the agenda of the Biden-Harris ticket that was voted into office by the people? More so when this endorsement has received a resounding — practically unanimous — support from his party.
The confirmation of Harris without an open nomination process would have been undemocratic only if a viable challenger from the Democratic Party ranks had emerged. None did. Quite the contrary, all potential challengers were quick to endorse her. That being so, there is no ethical, moral or legal obligation for the party to subject itself to some prescribed perfunctory process to nominate its candidate. Yes, such a process is on the books, but that comes into play only when more than one candidate is vying for the nomination. Absent any competition, any further process becomes moot.
Indeed, as the vice president, Harris is precisely the perfect default choice to best represent the people’s will. To go even further, one could argue that anyone other than Harris would place on the ballot a candidate for whom the people never voted.
The ones on the far right (and the far left) trying to paint Harris’s nomination as undemocratic are either misrepresenting the situation or stooping to good-old politicking. The nomination is in line with the Democratic Party’s established norms and aligned with historical practices. Far from a coronation, it is a legitimate, strategic decision reflecting the party’s best interests and, ultimately, the will of its electorate.
Parthiv N. Parekh is the editor-in-chief of Khabar, a magazine serving Indian American readers in and around Georgia.
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