What’s the Plan if President Joe Biden Dies Between Now and the Election?

This is hardly the first unresolved constitutional succession issue we’ve dealt with by crossing our fingers and trying not to think about it.

President Joe Biden (Gage Skidmore)
By Marty Smith

Not to be a Negative Nancy, but what happens if Joe Biden, y’know, kicks the bucket between now and the election? I was assuming that Kamala Harris would just automatically become the nominee, but I guess I don’t really know. What’s the plan? —Dressin’ for Succession

Last April, the White House released the “National Preparedness Strategy for Near-Earth Object Hazards and Planetary Defense,” a plan preparing our nation for the 1-in-650,000 chance of a major asteroid striking Earth in any given year. When it comes to the 1-in-20 chance of an 80-year-old man biting the dust in any given nine months between now and the election, however, our nation has decided to wing it.

In fairness, this is hardly the first unresolved constitutional succession issue we’ve dealt with by crossing our fingers and trying not to think about it. Even the basic question of whether the succeeding vice president becomes THE president or merely the ACTING president (first raised by the accession of John Tyler) remained unsettled until the passage of the 25th Amendment in 1967. (It’s THE.) Having Biden fall off his perch midcampaign could be even more tricky than that.

The 25th Amendment nailed down presidential succession pretty well: Kamala Harris would become president, surprising no one. Candidate succession, however, is another thing entirely. The Democratic Party is under no formal obligation to nominate Harris should Biden join the choir invisible, particularly if he does so prior to the party’s nominating convention Aug. 19-22.

Theoretically, this Biden-less convention could become the kind of old-school brokered free-for-all where lots of political horse trading and dozens of deadlocked ballots end up leading to the compromise nomination of Pauly Shore. Fun! Sadly, the backroom kingmakers who ran the parties a half-century ago are long gone, and Harris—at this point, an incumbent president with name recognition up the wazoo—would certainly have the inside track.

If Biden snuffs it post-convention, party rules require the Democratic National Committee to reconvene and name a new nominee. Still, it’s even harder to imagine them turning away from the anointed VP nominee-turned-incumbent.

A more interesting question (and certainly one more pleasant to contemplate) is what happens if Biden’s presumptive opponent goes tits up before the election. At 77, Trump’s own chance of pining for the fjords before November is a not insignificant 1 in 27, slightly more likely than a natural three of a kind in poker—not great odds, but apparently good enough for Nikki Haley.

Questions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.

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