This Frequency episode is devoted to a big shakeup in the 2024 presidential race. For months, it seemed certain that the contest for November voting would be a rematch of 2020, with current President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump.
Both had breezed through the primary election season, and they had even had one debate in late June.
But a seemingly faltering debate performance by Biden in that debate created a new moment in the election, with Republicans chortling that it showed he didn’t have the mental acuity to be president at age 81.
Democrats wrestled with those concerns as well, and there became a growing movement of rank-and-file Democrats and some who hold office that Biden should step out of the race.
After the Sunday, July 21, announcement that Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential contest, there was speculation about how wide open the nominee selection process might be at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month.
A Sioux City delegate to the convention on Monday morning threw her support to Vice President Kamala Harris. As the day went on, Democratic organizers and potential rivals largely rallied around the candidacy of Harris.
By Monday evening, all of Iowa's 40 delegates to the convention agreed to back Harris as the party’s new nominee.
South Dakota Democratic Party Director Dan Ahlers said many in the delegation look favorably upon Harris. He said he expects the convention will have an orderly process to pick the nominee to go up against Republican Donald Trump.
Harris has been backed by more than the 1,976 pledged delegates needed to win the nomination on the first ballot.

To discuss all this on this are Democratic national delegate, Catelin Drey, of Sioux City, longtime Monona County Democratic Party Chairman Ken Mertes, and Morningside University Political Science Professor Patrick McKinlay.
The Trump campaign in a release this week said the Republican former president beats Harris in every poll. Woodbury County Republican Party Chairman Bob Henderson, of Sioux City, said as people consider who to support in November that they should note that Biden and Harris have "done nothing but undermine our country and its values."
Click on the audio link above to hear the entire show.
*What's The Frequency, Episode 26.