Biden's team seeks to avoid delegate "revolt" at the convention and begins contacting them one by one

While Joe Biden continues to assert that he will be the Democratic nominee and will defeat Donald Trump in November, his team is working behind the scenes to ensure that this is what happens and avoid any potentially historic surprises. Indeed, advisers to the president are calling Democratic National Convention delegates to hear their concerns about the current Commander-in-Chief.

A mass "revolt" by delegates is historically unprecedented and the White House working hard to keep things that way.

As reported by Politico, "fearing a floor revolt against his nomination, President Biden’s aides are telephoning individual delegates to next month’s Democratic convention to gauge their loyalty to the president, according to three delegates who received a call this week." 

One of the delegates revealed that the call starts with questions about whether they understand what it means to be a pledged delegate, then goes right to the current Biden situation: "Do you have any possible disagreements with the president?".

Another said the questionnaire then got even more direct. "Is there any reason why you couldn't or wouldn't want to support the president at the convention?" it pointedly asks. 

The situation is quite unusual and generated a lot of surprise. "The delegates were thunderstruck at the calls. One of them initially wondered if it was some sort of prank until double-checking the caller ID and seeing Delaware’s area code, 302. After hanging up, each of them reached out to other convention delegates they knew and found these individuals also received the calls," they shared with Politico. 

As for the origin of the calls, the delegates emphasized that the callers identified themselves as members of the "Biden-Harris delegate operations team." 

Could the Democrats remove Biden against his will?

As with any democratic primary process within the Democratic Party, since 1970, individual states elect the candidate of their choice by sending a certain number of delegates to the convention, who then vote for the candidate for whom they pledged.

In other words, if Biden got 160 delegates in California, those people have no choice but to vote for his name on the day of the convention, which will be held in early August in Chicago.

However, delegates to the Democratic National Convention are not "bound" to their candidate. According to the current rules, and sticking to the literal wording of the text, they have some leeway.

"Delegates elected to the national convention who have pledged themselves to a presidential candidate shall in good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them," reads the rules of the Democratic National Convention.

With all states having already held their presidential primaries, Biden has an estimated 3,800 pledged delegates, far more than he needs to secure the nomination.

So, to remove Biden against his will through the delegates, the delegates would have to display a lack of support en masse, something that is unprecedented and seems highly unlikely, even more so considering that the current DNC chairman, Jaime Harrison, is a longtime ally of the president.

In case they want to change the rules to make Biden's removal easier, the members of the DNC would have to meet before the convention and modify the functioning of the Convention.

Moreover, in recent decades, no party has sought to remove the nominee arbitrarily, so it would set a historic precedent.