Many members of the media were quick in the past to dismiss the notion that Vice President Kamala Harris, or anyone, would be replacing President Biden at the top of the Democratic Party's ticket.
"First of all, a vote for Joe Biden is a vote for Kamala Harris. You know that and I know that. There’s no way Joe Biden is going to finish his term. I think Kamala Harris would become the next president and that should send a chill up every American’s spine," former GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley told a skeptical George Stephanopoulos on ABC last August.
"Do you think he’s going to finish his term? Do you think that he’s actually going to finish what he started? We look at the decline he’s had over the last few years. You have to be honest with the American people, George. There’s no way Joe Biden’s going to finish out a next term," the then-GOP presidential candidate said.
"We can’t have an 81-year-old president. We have to have a new generational leader. The Senate has become the most privileged nursing home in the country. We have got to start making sure we have a new generation," Haley told Stephanopoulos, who demanded more evidence, and repeatedly asked Haley, "what is that based on?"
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Prominent Democrats have quickly rallied behind Harris after Biden decided he would drop out of the race for the presidency. He endorsed Harris soon after announcing his decision on social media on Sunday.
After many in the media started speculating that Biden would withdraw from the race following his disastrous debate performance in late June, Haley took to social media and reacted to a video of the initial exchange.
"Believe me now, George?" Haley asked.
NBC News reported that replacing Biden on the ticket was a "quiet conspiracy theory" in October 2023. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., were both cited in the report and both argued the "Democrat kingmakers" were going to tap in someone else for Biden at their convention in August.
Both Republican senators initially doubted it would be Harris, arguing that it would be Michelle Obama who would take Biden's place. Cruz recently argued during an interview that it would be either Obama or Harris that would replace Biden.
Michelle Obama's office shut down any notion that she might be pursuing the Democratic nomination in March 2024.
A member of the president's campaign also told NBC News at the time that Republicans were pushing "blatantly false conspiracy theories."
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Politico's Playbook authors, on July 3, also said that Harris was having a "genuine moment" in discussions about possibly being the "more competitive nominee" in the weeks following the debate.
However, the authors added, "Harris has weak approval and favorability ratings compared to other possible alternatives. Nearly everyone we spoke to believes a Harris-led ticket remains firmly in the realm of fantasy."
"Joe Biden won the Democratic nomination," veteran Democratic consultant and ABC contributor Donna Brazile told Politico at the time. "To undermine the voters in this country at this hour would be the worst thing the Democratic Party could ever do."
The Boston Globe's Kimberly Atkins-Stohr wrote in a July 1 column that replacing Biden on the ticket was a "pipe dream."
"The Biden-must-go movement relies on a number of things falling magically into place without a hitch. Biden would have to agree to end his campaign. Another candidate, so perfect that the vast majority of the Democratic electorate falls almost instantly behind them, would have to emerge and get Biden’s blessing," she wrote, roughly three weeks prior to Biden's resounding endorsement of Harris.
She continued, "Then the 4,000 pledged Democratic convention delegates, who are nearly unanimously behind Biden, would all have to declare in unison: 'No problem! We are behind this candidate that 10 minutes ago we had no intention of supporting!'"
Further describing the scenario that appears to currently be taking shape, she added, "there is that pesky little wrinkle of convincing the Democratic electorate that overwhelmingly supported Biden in the primary to willingly accept mass disenfranchisement and let the Democratic apparatus tell them, ‘Tsk-tsk, settle down. We know better than you.’"
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Cornell Belcher, a former pollster for President Obama, told the Los Angeles Times in February that the idea of replacing Biden on the ticket was "absurd."
"No one who’s done this at this level thinks that removing the sitting president of the United States, who’s a Democrat, from your ballot is remotely plausible," he said. "It’s completely absurd."
Some news outlets tossed around the notion of Biden being off the ticket after Special Counsel Robert Hur's brutal report in February that questioned his mental acuity. However, liberal media outlets largely rallied around him against so-called "cheap fake" videos that appeared to show Biden having senior moments and a Wall Street Journal report about his declining behind-the-scenes abilities.
Then the debate on June 27 took place, and less than four weeks later, Harris was the de facto Democratic nominee.
