This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, July 24, 2004.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Politically expedient, perhaps, but nonetheless an odd response from Republicans

over the departure of Joe Biden from the presidential race what about all those

disenfranchised Democratic voters for good measure some groups have threatened legal action to attempt to focus attention on

state rules for choosing candidates.

Walter Olson says most of those claims are nonsense.

We spoke yesterday.

It's been odd to watch the fallout from Joe Biden deciding not to run for president.

This was not unexpected, I should say,

but it was, the timing of it was surprising

at the very least to people that were reasonably close to the

White House and the campaign.

And the response by Republicans has been odd to say the least that is there have been

complaints from Donald Trump and others that you know it's sort of a weird complaint.

We spent all this money getting ready to run against this guy and now he's not running.

The Republicans are owed money because of this somehow.

And then the more technical side is the anticipation or at least

the threat of lawsuits in states that for whatever reason somebody believes have already

printed ballots or have already committed to having

Joe Biden on the ballot before the nomination of the Democratic

candidate. Can you help us understand that just a little better? I'm going to

...