17 thoughts on the transformation of the race
With more to come later, no doubt.
Like many of you, my mind is on Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race and its implications for the election, so I wanted to share some thoughts first thing this morning. Today’s previously scheduled post will be arrive in your inboxes at 8am Eastern.
Joe Biden did the right thing, and that’s what’s most important.
Republicans are going to pivot to “if he’s too old to run for re-election, he’s too old to serve and should resign,” which is honestly silly.
Running for president is a full-time job that all incumbents struggle to do on top of the job of being president. Under modern campaign conditions, it’s honestly impossible, but we just kind of fudge it. The problem for Biden is he was not only being asked to serve as president in 2024 while also running a national campaign, but one of the questions the campaign had to answer was whether Biden would still be up for serving as president in 2027 and 2028.
Aging is, unfortunately, a linear process.
Joe Biden was 77 years old on Election Day, 2020.
Donald Trump is 78 years old today, and I would say that Trump, at 78, is clearly more vigorous and verbally dextrous than 82 year-old Joe Biden. But Biden’s performance during campaign appearances back when he was 77 was much better than his performances today at 82. Trump himself is clearly fuzzier than he used to be, mixes up names sometimes, rambles when he goes off script, etc. — Father Time comes for us all.
In my piece last week on Kamala Harris, I tried to thread the electability needle, saying that she’d be a much stronger nominee for Democrats than Joe Biden without saying that electoral concerns about her are crazy.
Harris has a number of fundamental problems:
Her approval rating is bad
Her instincts as a candidate in 2019-2020 were often off-base
Her whole career as a politician in San Francisco and California didn’t involve trying to appeal to swing voters
Her electoral record, while fine, is not impressive relative to the partisan fundamentals
She is tied to Joe Biden’s unpopular administration.
To win, Harris needs to find ways to moderate her image, and critically, she is going to have to be allowed to do that by her supporters.
Donald Trump is in many ways a bad politicians and a bad candidate. His numbers are terrible, his manner is off-putting, and his record is plagued with scandal. But his “be allowed to do that” score is off the charts. If it’s convenient for him to start saying nicer things about electric cars in exchange for Elon Musk’s money, he does that. If it’s convenient for him to pretend the Republican Party isn’t deeply committed to banning abortion, he does that.
Every progressive I know recognizes that these Trumpian stabs at moderation are good for Trump, and that it’s good for the left to try to expose them as lies. The progressives who recognize that need to see the symmetry here.
Without knocking Harris too hard, she is clearly not an optimal candidate. Democrats have the option of running a ticket featuring the popular governor of Michigan plus the popular governor of Pennsylvania, which would be a very good way to win.
It appears that neither of the governors in question is interested in challenging Harris, and I can’t imagine anyone else being a formidable challenger. I think that this is a little bit short-sighted on their part. I get that from where Gretchen Whitmer is sitting right now, she has the inside track on the 2028 election. But these political moments pass quickly.
The good news for Harris is that her basic political problem — she is perceived as more liberal than the average voter — is extremely fixable.
She needs to fix that by saying and doing some things that help make her public image more moderate, ideally things that are either true (“some people belong in prison and it’s that simple”) or lacking in policy substance (“my parents moved to this country because it’s the greatest place on Earth, and I think my party and our school system need to get back to teaching kids patriotism”). But it also wouldn’t hurt to throw people a bone on a relatively unimportant policy issue (Bitcoin?) or two that demonstrate separation from Biden.
If Harris does the right thing and moderates, a big question for the left will be do they let her get away with it (as the right has let Trump say whatever he thinks he needs to say on abortion) or will they spend the whole final stretch of the campaign whining (they way they did with Hillary)? I think the Biden formula of prioritizing unity over all else basically failed, but he was right to perceive that dissent from the left hurt Clinton. Progressives need to decide if they want to win.
Biden made a difficult choice to do the right thing for the country, and it is utterly inconceivable to me that Trump would ever set aside his interests or his ego for any greater good. Trump loves the slogan “America First” because it implies he’ll help you by screwing over foreigners, but I think on some level, we all know that Trump puts Trump first. It’s Joe Biden who just showed us what it looks like to put America first.
The question that the American people face today, is:
Are you better off now than you were four news-cycles ago?
"I think the Biden ...was right to perceive that dissent from the left hurt Clinton. Progressives need to decide if they want to win."
I think Progressives are likely to do the right thing this time, because the expectations are different.
In 2016 many people -- not only progressives -- thought that Hillary's election was assured. Trump was treated as a joke, and his campaign had serious problems at every level. Given those expectations, leftists thought that the election came down to a choice between neoliberal Hillary and yasqueen Hillary, and they pushed for the second one.
No one treats the prospect of Trump's election as a joke this time. No one thinks that the choice is between a moderate Kamala and a maximalist Kamala. People have a clearer sense of the danger, both its magnitude and its likelihood.
There will still be some stupid leftists saying stupid things here and there. But I think most progressives will show more discipline. Fear can be salutary that way.