March 5 marks Super Tuesday, but March 19 has emerged as the more important date in the primary cycle for President Joe Biden.
By March 19, Biden is set to secure enough delegates to make him the presumptive nominee, rather than just the frontrunner. As a presumptive nominee, he will have legally secured his place on the ballot in some states.
In other words, if the 81-year-old Biden wants to step aside, then he needs to do it by March 19.
Trey Trainor, the Federal Election Commission’s former chairman, told the Washington Examiner about this deadline.
“I think he has to make that decision by the 19th himself,” Trey Trainor, now an FEC commissioner, told the paper.
“If he hasn’t made it by then… all of these other things kick in. You get bound delegates. You get him having enough delegates on the first vote that the super delegates can’t vote. You get state laws that now are requiring him, because he’s got enough votes, to be the nominee.”
Trainor acknowledged the possibility of a third-party candidate securing ballot access, but he considered it “pie in the sky thinking” due to the high cost.
“You look at the last legitimate third party candidate, Ross Perot,” Trainor said, referring to the independent candidate from 1992 and 1996.
“He was able to get on the ballot because he had the crucial resources to be able to spend to do that, and it really does take a ton of money.”
Normally, an incumbent president wouldn’t be encouraged to suspend his campaign, but the elderly, unpopular Biden has caused the pundits and strategists to panic.
At a press conference last month, Biden declared, “My memory is fine.” Then, he described Egypt’s President Sisi as the “president of Mexico.”
Afterward, liberal columnist Ezra Klein released a viral essay urging Biden to drop out and allow the voters to choose a new nominee at the convention.
“Democrats need a candidate — who can aggressively campaign, because again — and I cannot emphasize this enough — they are currently losing,” Klein said.
“I have this nightmare that Trump wins in 2024. And then in 2025 and 2026, out come the campaign tell-all books, and they’re full of emails and WhatsApp messages between Biden staffers and Democratic leaders, where they’re all saying to each other, ‘This is a disaster. He’s not going to win this.'”
Still, some pundits characterized the conventions as mostly ceremonial and named Biden the most likely candidate to win.
Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump looks likely to become the GOP’s presumptive nominee by the same date.
“Barring an act of God, it’s going to be Trump versus Biden,” Matt Gorman — vice president of the Targeted Victory, a conservative consultant — told the Examiner.
Ohio, Kansas, Illinois, and Arizona will hold their Democratic primaries on March 19. Plus, Florida will hold its Republican primary.
In the general election, the centrist group No Labels has reportedly been granted ballot access in 13 states, and independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is petitioning for ballot access, too.
The Horn editorial team