Joe Biden is still running for president. Quite literally.

A week after a disastrous debate performance that led many within his own party to question his physical and mental stamina, the president could be seen jogging from Air Force One to greet Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers in Madison. He jogged across the stage at a middle school to the Tom Petty song “I Won’t Back Down.” He jogged from the lectern and swayed with the choir after speaking to an enthusiastic Black congregation in Philadelphia. 

“I am running and going to win again,” he said at the Madison rally, prompting chants from the crowd: “Let’s go, Joe!”

The president indignantly cast the calls for him to step down as an affront to the millions of voters who had turned out to support him during the primaries. “Some folks don’t seem to care who you voted for,” he said. Then, shouting, “I’m staying in the race!”

Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

President Joe Biden (right) and pastor Dr. J. Louis Felton pray at a church service at Mount Airy Church of God in Christ, July 7, 2024, in Philadelphia.

Over the long holiday weekend, as Mr. Biden was staring down the biggest crisis of his political career, I was given a front-row seat to it all, as part of the White House travel pool. At this extraordinary moment in U.S. politics, it happened to be the Monitor’s turn to be the eyes and ears for the wider Washington press corps, sending out regular updates about everything the president said and did during swings through Wisconsin, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. 

“Jill Biden’s husband,” as the president likes to introduce himself, came on the Washington political scene more than a half-century ago as a 30-year-old senator. Now, pointed questions about his mental acuity have brought Mr. Biden to a make-or-break moment for his 2024 reelection campaign – and a defining juncture for his storied political career. 

Facing criticism in the wake of the debate that he and his team were in denial and willfully ignoring concerns, Mr. Biden made a concerted show of energy this weekend. His voice was often strong on the campaign trail. At one stop in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, he spoke and mingled with supporters for over an hour in 90-degree-Fahrenheit heat, in a courtyard filled with balloon animals and wafts of sunscreen. And while he often held the handrail exiting his plane, he also jokingly acted as though he was ready to dart away from us in the press pool. 

It remains to be seen whether those efforts can reverse the tides of criticism. While voters at his events expressed enthusiastic support, there were also signs – literally – that not everyone is on board. 

“Save your legacy, drop out,” one sign read outside Mr. Biden’s rally in Madison. At other stops, protesters criticized the president for “genocide” in Gaza. There were also reminders of his opponent, who has been widening his lead in recent polls. As the Biden motorcade sped along a Pennsylvania highway, we passed a Trump billboard urging motorists to “Achieve the American dream!”

Nathan Howard/Reuters

Some supporters along the campaign trail, such as this sign-holder outside Sherman Middle School in Madison, Wisconsin, July 5, 2024, urged U.S. President Joe Biden to exit the race in order to preserve his legacy.

Mr. Biden and his allies are vigorously making the case – both in public and behind the scenes – that he is still the best Democrat to beat Donald Trump. He sat down with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Friday for an interview that some criticized for being short and unconvincing.

Monday morning, the president called into “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, feistily telling the hosts, “I’m getting so frustrated by the elites in the party.” He added, “If any of these guys don’t think I should run, run against me. Go ahead. Announce for president – challenge me at the convention!” He also released a letter to congressional Democrats saying he had heard the “fears and worries about what is at stake” and arguing that he understands that responsibility better than anyone.

“I wouldn’t be running again if I didn’t absolutely believe I was the best person to beat Donald Trump in 2024,” he wrote.

On the trail this weekend, Mr. Biden doubled down on retail politics, shaking hands and taking countless selfies; gave speeches about American values; and lightly sparred with the press. 

One reporter called out a question as the president was boarding Air Force One in Madison, wondering how he could argue simultaneously that democracy itself was at risk and that he was the best candidate to take on Mr. Trump. 

Courtesy of Sophie Hills

Monitor reporter Sophie Hills (center, in floral top), with the members of the White House traveling press pool, stands under the wing of Air Force One while waiting for the president to arrive at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland July 5, 2024.

“Because I beat him before and I’ve gotten more done than any president has,” Mr. Biden said.

We huddled around the president on the tarmac, a sweaty bunch of journalists reflected in his aviators, trying to hear him over the roar of the plane. “That was four years ago, Mr. President,” a reporter responded.

“You’ve been wrong about everything so far,” Mr. Biden fired back. “You were wrong about 2020. You were wrong about 2022 that we were gonna get wiped out. Remember the ‘red wave’?” he said, referring to predictions of Republican dominance in the midterms that never materialized. “You were wrong about 2023, when you said all the tough races we were going to – and we won them all but two.” 

The president answered at least 15 questions in that two-minute “gaggle” – the most face-to-face time we in the pool had with him this weekend. His answers never varied: He sees himself as the strongest candidate to beat Mr. Trump. He shrugs off the doomsayers and poor poll numbers alike, insisting they’re all wrong.

Toward the end of the trip, at a Philadelphia church, the senior pastor compared Mr. Biden to the biblical character of Joseph, who overcame fraternal betrayal and exile and ultimately triumphed. “Don’t count him out,” he called, to cheers and applause from the Black congregation. 

That’s the message the president is sticking with. As he boarded Air Force One in Harrisburg to fly home and return to the maelstrom of Washington, the president turned back to us in the pool. 

“I’m up for the job,” he said, flashing a thumbs-up.

Sait Serkan Gurbuz/AP/File

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch speaks at The Federalist Society’s 2017 National Lawyers Convention in Washington.

In a concurring opinion he waited eight years to write, Justice Neil Gorsuch did not mince his words.

“Today,” he scribed, “the Court places a tombstone on Chevron no one can miss.”

The opinion came in one of the landmark decisions of the recent U.S. Supreme Court term. Overturning Chevron deference, a 40-year-old administrative law doctrine instructing courts to defer to federal agencies when interpreting vague statutes, was something of a personal victory for Justice Gorsuch.

That victory also represented the full realization of a high court that conservative lawyers and activists have been seeking for a generation.

In late 2016, as this decadeslong project was about to hit high gear with the election of President Donald Trump, the first shots against Chevron crackled across America’s judicial landscape. Then-Judge Gorsuch, serving on a Denver-based federal appeals court, fired them.

Chevron had “swallow[ed] huge amounts of core judicial and legislative power ... in a way that seems more than a little difficult to square with the Constitution of the framers’ design,” he wrote. “Maybe the time has come to face the behemoth.”

Eight months later, he was a Supreme Court justice. And now, in Loper Bright v. Raimondo, the behemoth has been vanquished. Chevron has joined Roe v. Wade and a pair of affirmative action decisions on the list of high-profile, decades-old precedents overturned by this high court. For conservative lawyers and activists, it’s the culmination of decades of work of transforming the federal judiciary to undo what they see as the legal errors of yesteryear.

“Was [Justice Gorsuch] ahead of his time? He was of his time,” says Cary Coglianese, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and an expert on administrative law.

Chevron deference “became a symbolic target of what people thought was problematic about our governmental system,” he adds.

The Loper ruling “is not actually changing a whole lot, but [it’s] sending a powerful message to the public, to lower-court judges, and to future litigants that this is a new court, and they want to call the shots.”

With the federal government regulating everything from air and water to health care and worker safety, it remains to be seen the degree to which Loper will change Americans’ everyday lives. But legal experts across the political spectrum agree that the Supreme Court is now in the driver’s seat.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP/File

Members of the Supreme Court sit for a group portrait at the Supreme Court Building in Washington, Oct. 7, 2022. Its six conservative justices have been instrumental in overturning several high-profile, decades-old precedents.

How a ho-hum ruling became a regulatory powerhouse

In contrast to today’s profound stakes, in 1984, the high court’s ruling in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council didn’t attract much attention.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit – which hears almost all cases involving federal agencies – had repeatedly struck down new federal regulations, including efforts to regulate air pollution under the Clean Air Act. With its Chevron decision, a unanimous Supreme Court held that courts could not overturn “reasonable” agency action without a solid basis in federal law.

“In the beginning, it was a warning [to] the D.C. Circuit,” says Michael McConnell, a professor at Stanford Law School who worked as a federal regulatory lawyer in the 1980s.

“As agencies became aware of the potential of Chevron deference, they became more adventurous in their statutory interpretations,” he adds, “and that is not a compliment.”

Industry groups grew particularly critical of the doctrine, which they saw as enabling overregulation. Conservative lawyers came to view it as empowering unelected and unaccountable agency leaders at the expense of the courts. Ironically, conservatives and industry groups had initially celebrated Chevron, viewing it as taking power from unelected federal judges.

The Federalist Society and the Trump White House

By the 2010s, the conservative legal movement had grown exponentially thanks to groups like The Federalist Society – and so had opposition to Chevron. With the Trump presidency, conservative lawyers like Don McGahn, who became Mr. Trump’s White House counsel, said they knew exactly how to take it down.

“There is a coherent plan here,” said Mr. McGahn at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2018.

“This is different than judicial selection in past years,” he added. “The judicial selection and the deregulatory effort are really a flip side of the same coin.”

The Federalist Society took a leading role in that judicial selection process, vetting candidates for Mr. McGahn (himself a member of the group’s board of directors). The majority of Mr. Trump’s judicial appointees, including all three of his Supreme Court appointees, have ties to The Federalist Society or other conservative legal groups. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito also are members.

Conservative lawyers and activists have also long been unified in opposition to precedents stemming from 1970s decisions on abortion rights and affirmative action.

While President Ronald Reagan denied in the 1980s that opposing Roe v. Wade was a litmus test for his nominees, Justices Antonin Scalia and Sandra Day O’Connor both voted to curb abortion access. His successor, President George H.W. Bush, nominated Justice Thomas, who had become a vocal critic of high-court decisions allowing race-conscious university admissions programs.

Twenty-five years later, Mr. Trump campaigned on a promise to appoint justices who would overturn Roe. He succeeded in appointing three, and in the past three years they have struck down Roe, affirmative action, and Chevron deference.

Is the Supreme Court now “the country’s administrative czar”?

The court’s Loper decision is just the latest in a series of rulings this term curbing the regulatory power of the executive branch.

In Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy, the court curbed the ability of agencies to pursue enforcement actions through in-house administrative tribunals. Also this past term, in Corner Post v. Board of Governors, the court expanded the statute of limitations for when federal regulations can be challenged under the Administrative Procedure Act. Two years ago, in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, the court strengthened the major questions doctrine, which bars agencies from regulating on “major questions” without clear approval from Congress.

All four decisions divided the court along ideological lines. And in all four, the dissenting justices issued dire warnings about the potential consequences. 

In her dissent to the Loper ruling, Justice Elena Kagan criticized the majority for “in one fell swoop,” turning the Supreme Court “into the country’s administrative czar.” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in a Corner Post dissent, wrote that the decision “is profoundly destabilizing – and also acutely unfair” in permitting challenges to settled regulations “long after the rest of the competitive marketplace has adapted itself to the regulatory environment.”

However, courts will still have to show some deference to agency decision-making, as they did before the Chevron ruling. Studies have shown that even before Chevron was overturned, agencies were losing legal challenges to regulatory actions more often. The Supreme Court itself had not enforced Chevron deference since 2016. The Biden administration appears to have scaled back on its expected pace of issuing proposed rules following the West Virginia v. EPA decision, according to a yet-to-be-published study by Professor Coglianese and Nabil Shaikh.

“The U.S. had a large and powerful administrative state before Chevron,” says Ilya Somin, a professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. The Loper majority, he adds, “said very clearly past [regulations] shouldn’t be disturbed except in extreme situations.”

Indeed, the Loper decision held that courts will need “special justification” to overturn regulations already approved under the Chevron framework. But some legal scholars believe litigants will already be preparing legal arguments for why there is special justification to overturn decades-old regulations. 

“Chevron at its core was a judicial efficiency tool, and it kept there being a mass run to the courthouse to overturn every little decision,” says Christine Bird, an associate professor of political science at Oklahoma State University who researches the conservative legal movement.

Now “there are going to be a flood of actions,” she adds. But because the Supreme Court now decides many fewer cases than it used to, it’s likely that the fate of most regulations “will be resolved at the lower levels of the federal judiciary, and the Supreme Court gets to pick” which of those decisions it wants to review.

This past term may have been a preview. After the overturning of Roe, lower courts have dealt with a range of abortion-related challenges. The Supreme Court dismissed challenges on procedural grounds in cases concerning emergency room abortions and the safety of a pill used in a majority of abortions.

“The conservative legal movement has been very clear about what they’re interested in,” Professor Bird adds.

Professor McConnell, who also served as a federal appeals court judge, counters that every judicial era “has its own preoccupations.”

The administrative law issues occupying the current high court’s attention “are responses to broader developments in the administrative state,” he says. “It’s in a sense a new project.”

With the three Trump appointees likely to serve for the next two or three decades, where that project goes from here is unclear. While the court did make challenging regulations easier, it also upheld the constitutionality of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Board in May. And it declined to hear a challenge to the constitutionality of the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, which oversees worker safety.

“People are looking at these cases from this term and putting them into the context of a court that ... is taking a very skeptical look at the administrative state, and are reasonably wondering, How far will this go?” says Professor Coglianese.

Taking a broader view, Professor McConnell argues, there is nothing abnormal about what the current Supreme Court is doing.

“Whenever there is a significant change in the composition of the court, the result is more repudiation of past precedent,” he says.

Editor's note: This story has been updated to correct the month in which the Supreme Court decided the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Board case.

Happiness and relief exploded on the streets of eastern Paris Sunday night, as voters cheered from balconies and honked their cars’ horns to celebrate the surprise win of France’s left-wing coalition in the country’s snap legislative elections.

“I loved hearing the shouts of joy in the streets … [but] it took me a minute to understand what was happening,” says Marie Ferrini, who joined neighbors in cheering from her window as the results were announced. “The idea of the left winning was completely out of the realm of possibilities for me.”

Grabbing 180 seats, the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) alliance surpassed all forecasts to pull ahead of both President Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble coalition at 158 seats and Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally with 143.

In the nearby Stalingrad square, La France Insoumise (LFI) leader and de facto head of the NFP, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, told the nation that it was “an immense relief for a crushing majority” of voters who had helped stave off a far-right win. He called on Mr. Macron to listen to the people and “let the Nouveau Front Populaire govern.”

But absent from Mr. Mélenchon’s victory speech was talk of compromise or coalition. Despite the NFP’s plurality of seats, Mr. Macron is not obliged to name one of its leaders to the role of prime minister. With no party holding an absolute majority in Parliament – meaning no single bloc can form a government – France faces the prospect of a hung Parliament and political stagnation.

Unlike in its European neighbors, coalition governments are almost unheard of in France. But if opposition parties are unable to work together, it could have wide-ranging implications for both French and European stability. The question becomes whether France can learn from its limited experience with coalitions, and whether parties who have always campaigned against one another– often viciously – can find common ground.

“France only needs to look to its neighbors to see how to be a functioning European country,” says Hall Gardner, professor emeritus of political science at the American University of Paris. “There needs to be some reflection in France: it’s not going to work going forward without dialogue and compromise.”

Thomas Padilla/AP

LFI founder Jean-Luc Melenchon (right) raises his fist with other party members July 7 in Paris. The NFP alliance, of which the LFI is part, unexpectedly won the most parliamentary seats in Sunday's elections.

Compromise vs. sellout

France remains a political outlier compared to much of Western Europe when it comes to coalition-style leadership. The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and Italy all operate under multiparty coalitions, many of which run across left-right divides.

While France has experienced three episodes of “cohabitation,” in which the president and the prime minister were from opposing parties, the resulting leadership more often featured conflict than cooperation. And in the French political lexicon, the word compromis, meaning “compromise,” is often taken to be the equivalent of compromission, meaning “sellout.”

“Coalitions are not part of the French political tradition because of strongly conflicting priorities, especially between the left and right,” says Vincent Tournier, a political scientist at Sciences Po Grenoble. “Until now, the only coalitions we’ve seen are those within the left or right, and even there we’re seeing conflict.”

In addition to changing societal perceptions on political cooperation, France is at a fundamental disadvantage when it comes to a coalition style of government due to the foundations of its system.

France adheres to a two-round vote rather than proportional representation, in which parliamentary seats are determined in proportion to people’s electoral choices. That pushes many voters to make tactical choices at the ballot box and can result in winning candidates who don’t necessarily reflect the will of the nation.

And unlike in Germany or Italy, where the role of president is largely ceremonial, the French president holds significant power over foreign policy, the European agenda, and the overall direction of the country. The prime minister, in turn, manages the government and domestic policy. That division of power has implications for how readily political parties enter into partnerships.

“In order for a coalition to work, everyone has to have an incentive to enter it,” says Jacob Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Brussels. “But in France, everyone is trying to position themselves for the future presidential election so there is no incentive to cooperate with the opposition.

“If a coalition works well, your opponent can essentially take credit and use it as a platform later when they run for president.”

“Much longer bridges”

Despite its lack of historical significance, coalitions could still be a way forward for France. Prime Minister Gabriel Attal – who Mr. Macron has asked to remain in office for the time being to maintain the country’s stability – has hinted at a desire to reach across the aisle.

Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters

French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal speaks July 7 at Hôtel de Matignon in Paris. Mr. Attal suggested that he was open to coalition-building after his Ensemble group came in second to the NFP.

On Sunday night, he told the nation that backbiting would not win out. “I will never resign myself to the idea that our system will be narrowed down to three political blocks, where each one is hoping the other will disappear,” he said.

Observers say Mr. Attal could be in a position to facilitate some kind of agreement between parties, which would most likely exclude radical groups like Mr. Mélenchon’s LFI, the most extreme party in the NFP alliance. The agreement would instead include only the more moderate parties from the NFP and their counterparts from the moderate right.

Even in this scenario, however, “parties are going to have to build much longer bridges to meet one another,” says Emiliano Grossman, an associate professor of politics with the Center for European Studies at Sciences Po in Paris. “The idea is to build a project for [presidential elections in] 2027. The far right is not going away.”

But before any type of partywide cooperation can happen, Mr. Macron must choose a prime minister who will unite, not divide. Mr. Macron could effectively choose Mr. Attal to remain in his current position. But that may not sit well with voters who have withstood two rounds of surprise voting and finally made their voices heard – with a clear rejection of Mr. Macron’s bloc.

But even staunch left-wing supporters say divisive characters, like Mr. Mélenchon, won’t work as prime minister. Unless the new French government can find new ways to work together, in the form of coalitions or otherwise, it faces votes of no confidence and political paralysis.

“We need to ask ourselves as a society, what do we want for the years ahead?” says Sandra Reinflet, a left-wing activist who was at the Stalingrad square to hear Mr. Mélenchon on Sunday night. “Do we want equality or people fighting against one another? We need to re-center our values on those of the French Republic so we can live together peacefully.”

Patrick Semansky/AP/File

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on stage at the Democratic National Committee meeting, Feb. 3, 2023, in Philadelphia.

[This story, originally published July 8, 2024, was updated July 21 to reflect President Joe Biden’s dropping out of the 2024 election campaign.]

President Joe Biden announced Sunday that he is dropping out of the 2024 presidential campaign following weeks of mounting pressure after his poor debate performance June 27. 

“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President,” he wrote in a letter posted on his official X account. “And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.”

In a separate post on X shortly after issuing the letter, Mr. Biden endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, to become the nominee. That makes Ms. Harris, a former senator and attorney general of California, the clear front-runner. She struggled as a presidential candidate in the 2020 cycle, dropping out before the primary season began. But allies say the experience she has gained during a bumpy tenure as vice president will make her a stronger candidate now.

From a logistical perspective, she is the best-positioned to take over the existing campaign apparatus and the only one who can use Biden-Harris campaign funds. Still, her nomination – while the easiest path forward for the party – is not guaranteed.

The focus has now turned to how exactly it will work to replace Mr. Biden as the Democratic choice to be the nominee.

There were three main scenarios under which Mr. Biden could have been replaced on the ticket. The most straightforward is the one the president chose: Mr. Biden exited the race ahead of the Democratic National Convention (DNC), set to be held Aug. 19-22 in Chicago. Alternatively, he could have been replaced by another candidate at the convention. The thorniest path would have been if he stepped down after the convention.

By stepping down now, Mr. Biden has given his party the least messy and potentially least divisive path.

Who chooses the nominee?

There is a widespread perception that primary voters directly choose presidential candidates, but that’s not quite true. Voters in state primaries and caucuses cast their ballot for the candidate they like best. But the nominee is elected by delegates to the party convention, who are chosen based on primary or caucus results in their state.

Within the Democratic Party, 3,896 delegates have pledged to support Mr. Biden at next month’s convention, 36 are uncommitted, and seven support other candidates, according to The Associated Press delegate tracker.

Per DNC rules, delegates “shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.”

Mr. Biden has facilitated the process by withdrawing ahead of the convention, and endorsing a replacement – albeit with only a month to go until the party convenes in Chicago.

How will the balloting go as President Biden steps aside?

Now that Mr. Biden has stepped down, a new candidate – whether Ms. Harris or someone else – will have to try to win over a majority of the Democratic Party’s delegates.

If a candidate wins that majority on the first ballot, he or she will become the party’s nominee. The most straightforward replacement for Mr. Biden is the vice president, but other names have also been floated. The party would also need to agree on a vice presidential nominee.

If no candidate wins on the first round for presidential nominee (something that hasn’t happened since 1952), voting would be opened up to 739 superdelegates, who are not pledged to any candidate. These superdelegates, also known as “automatically seated delegates,” include all Democratic members of Congress and Democratic governors, as well as other party leaders. 

Under a more dramatic scenario, if Mr. Biden had refused to step aside but many in the party had remained intent on finding another nominee, a candidate could have challenged him at the convention by trying to convince more than half of the delegates to vote for him or her instead.

Would the nomination still get on all 50 state ballots?

Alabama, Ohio, and Washington all have early deadlines for confirming the nominee for each party. Ohio’s was originally slated for Aug. 7, nearly two weeks before the Democratic convention starts. To work around this, the DNC set plans in motion to nominate its candidate via virtual roll-call votes before the convention. 

The Ohio deadline was then pushed back during a special legislative session in May, and the two other states also adjusted their timelines. Prior to Mr. Biden dropping out, the DNC had planned to go forward with the early roll-call votes – although in the wake of Mr. Biden’s rocky debate performance, some delegates asked for more time. It was unclear as of press time whether Mr. Biden’s decision to exit the race would change the DNC’s plan. 

Had Mr. Biden accepted the nomination and then decided to step aside later, this could have caused Democrats to run up against state ballot deadlines, creating a sticky path forward for the new nominee. 

But the party’s replacement effort could still face legal challenges. Even before the June 27 debate, the conservative Heritage Foundation said it would challenge a potential Biden withdrawal in court. The group argued in a memo, posted on the social platform X, that litigation could delay or thwart getting a new nominee on the ballot in at least some states. As speculation of a Biden drop-out mounted in recent days, GOP Speaker of the House Mike Johnson – a constitutional lawyer – said that in states where the switch could be legally contested, he expected it would be.

Would a new nominee be able to tap Biden campaign funds? 

The Biden Harris campaign had $91 million on hand at the end of May, the most recent tally available from the Federal Election Commission. In early July, the campaign announced that June marked its strongest fundraising month yet this cycle, with a total of $240 million now at its disposal, counting funds from the Biden for President organization, the Democratic National Committee, and joint fundraising committees.  

Now that Mr. Biden has left the race, the only potential nominee who could directly inherit that campaign money is Vice President Harris. If someone other than Ms. Harris were nominated, Mr. Biden’s campaign funds could be donated to the DNC or a political action committee (PAC). However, the rules on how PAC money can be used would significantly limit the extent to which those funds could be tapped by another candidate. 

Has anything like this happened before?

The most analogous situation may be the last open convention the Democratic Party had, in 1968. That year, President Lyndon B. Johnson, facing mounting protests over the Vietnam War, dropped out of the race partway through the primary season. But Mr. Johnson made his decision five months before Democrats would choose their nominee. 

He endorsed his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, who supported the war and had not won a single primary. Party leaders nominated Mr. Humphrey at the convention – which, like this year, was held in Chicago, inflaming anti-war protesters. The chaos outside the convention was mirrored by the infighting within. In November, Mr. Humphrey lost the election to Richard Nixon.

In the convention’s aftermath, a DNC-appointed commission made significant reforms to the nomination process, curtailing the power of party leaders and making the nomination process more democratic. The commission also introduced guidelines to make the actual convention process more inclusive and less dependent on backroom dealings.

Enough Iranians overcame deep-seated antagonism toward the Islamic Republic to elect a reformist president July 5, disrupting years of blanket hard-line rule and sparking modest hopes, both of improved lives and of Iran re-engaging with the United States and the West.

Masoud Pezeshkian’s mantra to “save Iran,” and to improve the economy by easing U.S.-led Western sanctions, elevated him above a field of hard-line and conservative candidates in the first round of voting June 28.

That was a definite snub to the regime, along with the lowest-ever turnout – just below 40% of 61 million eligible voters – since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

There had been widespread calls to boycott the vote in the wake of the months of protests triggered in September 2022 by the killing in custody of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, for allegedly showing too much hair. Still, some 10 million more Iranians decided to come to the ballot box for the run-off, decisively choosing the reformist heart surgeon over his hard-line opponent, former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili.

“The reformist campaign was a very clear one: If, with Dr. Pezeshkian, a better situation is a possibility, then the deterioration of the situation under Mr. Jalili is a certainty. That was the formula they used,” says Adnan Tabatabai, an Iran expert and founder of the Center for Applied Research in Partnership with the Orient, in Bonn, Germany.

Dr. Pezeshkian tapped into an everyman persona, far from elitist circles and “very different from other [previous] reformist candidates,” he says.

“He may be a heart surgeon – and of course is not a working-class person – but he has appeal among them,” says Mr. Tabatabai, speaking from Tehran. “Which is why [Dr. Pezeshkian], with his uncorrupt ways, and more relatable to the population, was able to awaken some significant parts of those who had decided to no longer participate in elections.”

Two days before the vote, former Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif – who campaigned frequently for Dr. Pezeshkian – called on voters to “send home those who have accomplished nothing for the country but sanctions, humiliation, and misery.”

When the results were announced, Dr. Pezeshkian vowed to “usher in a new chapter” for Iran, despite an upcoming “trial of hardships and challenges, simply to provide a prosperous life to our people.”

Majid Asgaripour/WANA/Reuters

Electoral staff workers count ballots at a polling station after voting ended in Iran's run-off presidential election between Masoud Pezeshkian and Saeed Jalili, in Tehran, Iran, July 6, 2024.

The rushed election was held after the death in a May helicopter crash of President Ebrahim Raisi. The hard-line former prosecutor oversaw the brutal suppression of the women-led protests, which left more than 500 dead.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, recognized the victory of Dr. Pezeshkian – the sole reformist candidate approved to run – and said he should “follow the path” of Mr. Raisi.

Yet analysts note that hard-liners’ policies deeply damaged Iran’s economy, isolated Iran in the region – where Iran and its allied militias are locked in a fight with Israel and the U.S. – and led to an unprecedented chasm between legions of Iranians and their rulers.

“What is really different this time around is that the overall situation has made clear: If you allow the most radical minds to govern the country in its entirety, the result will be catastrophic and get even worse,” says one longtime observer in Tehran, who asked not to be further identified. “And that, obviously, is something that voters care about.”

Overcoming a boycott campaign

Indeed, Dr. Pezeshkian’s campaign played on popular fear of Mr. Jalili and called on voters to “save Iran from Talibanism.” Mr. Jalili’s campaign, in turn, portrayed Dr. Pezeshkian and his team as a “dangerous, pro-Western clan.”

“We are losing our support in society, because of our behavior, high prices, our treatment of girls, and because we censor the internet,” Dr. Pezeshkian said in one televised debate.

In previous elections, higher turnout has favored reformist candidates. And getting out the vote this time required Iranians to overcome a potent boycott campaign, spearheaded by families of those killed in protests. On social media, they accused reformists participating in the election of being “traitors” who were benefiting from the loss of their loved ones.

Fatemeh Heydari, for example, whose brother Javad was killed by security forces in Isfahan province, posted on X that only traitors “would urge votes for a bunch of thieves and murderers.”

Majid Asgaripour/WANA/Reuters

People pose on the day of the run-off presidential election between Masoud Pezeshkian and Saeed Jalili, in Tehran, Iran, July 5, 2024.

Yet among those voting was Amir, a businessman and hotelier from southern Iran, who says he felt “hopeless” that his vote in the first round could stave off a hard-line victory, which he believed was baked into the system.

“The country has changed in the last two years; it is unrecognizable,” says Amir, who asked that only his first name be used.

“Lots of people started making a distance between themselves and anything from the regime; they wanted to be far away from that,” he says. “I voted, [but] this was the first time that I didn’t talk to anybody about voting or not, before the election. I didn’t want to convince anyone to vote. In the past I used to talk to people, to call them.

“This is not the reformist we were looking for,” says Amir, noting that Dr. Pezeshkian – unlike the two other reformist presidents since 1997 – is overtly religious and has often declared his allegiance to Ayatollah Khamenei, who decides all key matters of state.

“He is the one who is not a thief”

Still, one draw is the personal story of Dr. Pezeshkian, who was active as a doctor on the front lines of the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. When his wife and daughter were killed in a car accident some 30 years ago, he did not remarry – a rarity in Iran – and raised three remaining children on his own.

He was health minister during the second term of reformist President Mohammad Khatami, and has been elected to Parliament five times. He won kudos in the first week of the Mahsa Amini protests, when he told state-run TV that he blamed regime behavior for making “our children ... hate our religion” by trying to “implement religious faith through the use of force.”

“His superpower is not being corrupt – people say that, among the other [candidates], he is the one who is not a thief,” says Amir. “Uniting is not his superpower. ... I myself don’t have big hopes.”

Iranian presidents have limited scope of action, relative to the power of the supreme leader. Iran will continue close ties with Russia – which it has supplied with military drones to bombard Ukraine – and will keep backing Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” allies in their fight against Israeli and American interests.

But reformist presidents have set the tone domestically, raised hopes, and been given some leeway to conduct foreign policy – including clinching the 2015 nuclear deal with global powers, from which former President Donald Trump withdrew in 2018.

Dr. Pezeshkian promised on the campaign trail to ease economic suffering, which necessarily means some lifting of Western sanctions.

“Dr. Pezeshkian will try, and will be a proponent of trying to ease tensions with the West, and I think he will also be allowed to do so,” says Germany-based analyst Mr. Tabatabai. “When I say the West, it’s really the U.S.”

An Iranian researcher contributed to this report.

AP

Iran's President-elect Masoud Pezeshkian arrives at the shrine of Ayatollah Khomeini, outside Tehran, July 6.

n a clear message to their ruling clerics, more than half of Iranian voters chose not to cast ballots in a highly engineered election for president on July 5. “I want a free country, I want a free life,” one university student in Tehran told Reuters in describing her reason not to give legitimacy to an unpopular regime.

Those who did vote sent a similar message, one that might now also influence Iran’s violent campaign across the Middle East to be the guide and guardian of all Muslims.

Voters rejected the regime’s chosen hard-line candidate, Saeed Jalili, opting instead for a conservative reformer, Masoud Pezeshkian. While the winner seems loyal to Iran’s religious authoritarianism, Mr. Pezeshkian did call for citizens’ rights and a “partnership” with the people.

A former heart surgeon and health minister, he promised to end violent enforcement of a dress code for women as well as restrictions on internet access. “I am religiously opposed to any kind of coercion or harsh treatment of any human being,” he stated. In addition, he seeks talks with the West to end crushing economic sanctions aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear program.

Any forceful attempt at reform by Mr. Pezeshkian could be one more challenge to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and to a 45-year doctrine in Iran that a Shiite “jurist” must have ultimate authority in the Islamic Republic. That doctrine was directly challenged during a mass uprising in 2022 led by hijab-shunning women under the slogan “Women, life, freedom.” A poll that year showed that 72% of Iranians oppose the head of state being a Shiite religious leader.

The election was the first since those protests and came during a volatile political moment. Factions within Iran are jockeying to pick the heir to the 85-year-old supreme leader. The succession struggle only adds uncertainty to the future of Iran’s theocracy.

Many Iranians now point to neighboring Iraq, where the most popular Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, prefers free and fair democracy without direct political control by religious figures. Mr. Sistani openly opposes Iran’s model, preferring instead that clerics play a quiet, spiritual role. The Shiite branch of Islam is a minority in the Muslim world, which is  majority Sunnis. Yet in both Iraq and Iran, Shiites are the majority.

Mr. Pezeshkian acknowledged that his reforms face resistance. “A difficult road is ahead. It can only be smooth with your cooperation, empathy and trust,” he told Iranians after the election on social media platform X. Perhaps in recognition of the low voter turnout, he added, “Do not abandon me.”

The new president may also recognize that most Iranians don’t believe reforms are possible without regime change – as well as an end to Iran’s expensive meddling in the region. “The single most liberating event for the Middle East,” stated Tony Blair, a former British prime minister, “will come when the Iranian people finally have their freedom.” For Iranians who did not vote in the election and even for those who picked a reformer, their quiet protest was an expression of freedom.