Congressional Democrats are to hold an emergency weekend meeting to discuss Joe Biden’s tottering presidential candidacy, after a primetime television interview failed to dispel doubts triggered by last week’s debate fiasco.
Hakeem Jeffries, the Democrats’ leader in the House of Representatives, scheduled the virtual meeting for Sunday with ranking committee members, according to multiple reports, even as Biden struck a defiant posture in Friday’s interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.
You’ll find it gets even more confusing. Our primary process differs from state to state. In some states you need to be a member of a party to vote on who gets to run for that party. Since many states are essentially one party, that process is where real democracy happens. In other states you can choose the day of to vote in one primary or another. In a general sense, the party itself has no say in who runs. They are able to play with funding and the conventions can have weird rules for things like presidents.
On election day, you of course vote for whoever you want.
Compared to the UK, our party leadership is very weak and driven by candidates and donors. Where you elect party leaders that then direct who gets to run, whoever we elect to run start to dictate how the party works. For the most part, short of directly volunteering, the vast majority don’t interact with the party itself at all.