Not strictly on point, but what is with these American politicians just carrying on and not retiring until the point of mental collapse? What do they get from doing this? Bernie Sanders is still 'with it', but is he just going to carry on until he too has become senile?
It should be considered disgraceful to carry on working past the point of effectiveness, if one has the option to give up.
>We have weak political parties who can’t boot them out of power!<
This is the answer, of course.
I would argue the particulars of the country's Madisonian constitution and modern conditions mean if anything strong parties capable of easing aging politicians into retirement are needed even more in America than in most other wealthy democracies. Every president elected between Eisenhower and Trump was either a governor or senator first. Senate seats and governorships are the most plausible launching pads for presidential campaigns (after the vice presidency). But how do Americans get themselves elected governor or senator? There are exceptions, but in the main it is by first getting elected to the House, or to statewide office (lieutenant governor, attorney general, etc). I call these "feeder" positions for the presidential track. The US has perhaps 1,000 such positions available for a population of approximately 335 million, or about one per 335,000 Americans. The UK's feeder positions—seats in the House of Commons—are far more numerous—approximately one position for every 100,000 Britons. There's more competition for presidential feeder track positions in America than the equivalent in the UK, and this mechanically has the effect of rendering Americans who arrive in Congress older than Britons who arrive in Parliament. The gap isn't huge—I think only about 3 years—but it adds up when you consider that, at that point (typically mid 40s), a talented Briton might plausibly be competing for their party's leadership in as little as five years (Cameron became the leader of the opposition—the UK equivalent of White House nominee—only four years after his first election to the House of Commons). But in America, House members typically serve at least a couple of terms before becoming Senators—and even then more often than not aren't considered prime presidential material until they've been reelected. That's the same for governors: although there are exceptions, you can make a much more compelling case for becoming your party's nominee for the presidency one you're in your second term as governor (and that's often after serving a full term in statewide office before becoming governor).
Obama (47) and Bill Clinton (46) seem really outlier-ish from our perspective in 2024 in terms of their ages when elected POTUS (Bill Clinton even more so than Obama, as he was elected governor at the age of 32! That's pretty unheard of these days). But 40-somethings becoming British Prime Ministers—John Major (47), Tony Blair (43), David Cameron (43), LIz Truss (47), Rishi Sunak (42)—are more common than those over 50, at least since the late 1970s. And Margaret Thatcher was only 53. Indeed, incredibly, Keir Starmer is the *first* PM to take office after the age of 60 since James Callaghan nearly a half century ago! A quick glance at other democracies reveals a similar capacity to select leaders who are young and vigorous.
The United States has become a gray, Kremlinesque gerontocracy by contrast.
America could ease this situation a bit by resuming the long-abandoned practice of expanding the House of representative every decade. That would make it easier for Americans to enter high level politics at a younger age. But beyond that, yes, we need real political parties again!
"But age-related concerns in American politics run deeper than Messrs Biden and Trump. Data compiled by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, a Swiss-based organisation, show that America has the oldest legislators in the rich world. The average age of those who sit in the House of Representatives and the Senate is 59, two decades older than Mr Vance and almost a decade older than the oecd average for elected lawmakers. Mr Biden is 22 years older than the average head of government in the same group."
I think one of the biggest mistakes we ever made as a polity was limiting the House to 435. My main objection to it is that it means that representatives from different states have different size constituencies, but your argument that it's too hard to get a House seat when you become eligible at 25 also seems accurate.
The usual explanation I've seen historically is that members of the House don't like the idea of adding seats because it substantially increases the risk they'll get pushed into a competitive district by the resulting redistricting. In recent years, I would presume Republicans would also be increasingly opposed to it because it would dilute their advantage in the Electoral College.
Adding a couple hundred more of them would just make each of them individually more powerless and make the only meaningful vote they take be the one where they vote for leadership.
What power do they have now? A Republican senator's literal only job is to eat lunch on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, and vote "no" on nominations.
But reality is expanding the House would definitely help Democrats. So for the same reason DC is not a state, expansion is likely off the table. https://www.amacad.org/ourcommonpurpose/enlarging-the-house/section/6. Although based on this model House expansion of say 30 seats wouldn't have much of an impact.
"But reality is expanding the House would definitely help Democrats."
I think this is inaccurate unless there are additional restrictions on gerrymandering introduced. Smaller seats reduce natural gerrymandering while making partisan gerrymanders more effective. Republicans do more of the latter while Democrats rely more on the former.
Carter, Regan, Obama, Clinton, Trump, Biden and the younger Bush never served in the House, nor did any of them hold minor statewide office. People with what it takes to be president tend to make their entry at the senatorial or gubernatorial level.
In fact, George HW Bush is the only person elected President in the last 50 years to ever serve in the house. Only Biden and Obama served in the Senate, and Obama didn’t even even finish a full term. Too much time in Congress does not a president make.
I think you're defining minor statewide office differently than I would. Clinton was AG before he was governor, Carter and Obama were a state senators before becoming governor/senator. Biden didn't hold minor statewide office, but he was a city councilor before he ran for Senate. All of these guys held at least 2 elected offices before running for president.
Oddly enough, you're right about all the Republicans. Reagan and Bush Jr. both got in directly at governor. But they also had big name recognition already- Reagan from his movie career and Bush from his dad. Obviously Trump was also a celebrity already.
At the risk of wading into dangerous culture war waters, if the Democratic delegates this year want to do something useful, they should adopt a party rule that, going forward, the party will not nominate anyone for President who will be older than a certain age by the end of two terms, so this doesn't happen again.
In terms of electability, that would likely have a mild disparate impact in favor of women at this point. Maybe it shouldn't be true, but in society today with a few rare exceptions, having the average age of party grandees get older and older probably favors men. A private political party, rather than public laws, is a better place to push changes like that.
Many of the same traits that make the person successful as a politician -- incredibly high ego, a desire for power, self-belief that is off the charts, a need to be in the limelight -- are the same reasons they hate the idea of stepping down. They'd rather be compromised and still "in the game" than retire and be seen as just a regular person.
A friend of mine once said it is hard transition to go from a VIP to an FIP, a Formerly Important Person.
One of the many great parts of “Veep” was highlighting the many ways that a variety of people in politics are desperate beyond words to “in the room” when stuff goes down. In “Veep” this is played to comedic effect (and to be honest, probably with too much of a cynical lens) but of course the reason this works as comedy is because of the realization there is definite truth to this warped version of reality.
If the President/senator in question steps down there is a cascade effect to the aides who also now need to find something else to do. Now reality is all of these people very likely can find cushy/high paying gigs elsewhere; political consultant, cable news talking head, aide to another politician etc. But that would still mean you’re no longer as close to power as you once were.
Also, there’s going to be a big “first mover advantage” to inking that book deal as everyone wants to know when Biden’s age issues went from more theoretical to a genuine problem.
It’s possible that there’s no dramatic moment anyone can point to, that aides just managed to not see the deterioration because it was a matter of cumulative subtle changes over time, that time being years studded with work that kept them too busy to notice how much they were making excuses for him. And considering how Biden’s aides are still sticking with him, it’s possible that these are people loyal enough that they won’t be running out to sign a book deal (except maybe if Biden is the nominee and Trump wins, at which point all hell will break loose).
In other countries you serve at the pleasure of the party. You can be told to go jump in the lake, that you're not continuing as a member of Parliament from your party, as Jeremy Corbyn was this past UK election by Labour. It happens that his brand is so strong in his riding that he won the election against Labour anyway.
They don't need to primary you in other countries.
Could the DNC or RNC just arrogate that power to themselves by trying to use a combination of trying to get people to care about whether a candidate is "[R/D]NC-endorsed" (as the ABA tries to do with judicial candidates) and/or use some level of trademark law to either try to make "Democrat" a brand-name that one can't affiliate with without approval of the party or else (likely more plausibly) re-brand as "Dem2crats" in a way that allows them greater branding power?
There's something to that. But I think it's more tied to inequality in that as the spread between what you could earn in the private sector vs. the public sector widen from the 90s forward ... that's created way too high a status / lifestyle penalty for public service. I mean the CDC Director salary controversy was over $375k. If feel like that role in the private sector is making $1.0 - $1.5m. He's since taken a pay cut to $209k which is crazy because his prior salary was $757k. There's just too high a talent pay gap to create a pipeline.
EDIT: I just think this is crazy. A House Rep. salary is $174k. Post-MBA, McKinsey and Bain are paying $192k + $70k target bonus. I feel like the House should be paying $500k and the Senate should be paying like $1.5m. Just using consulting because I feel like that's a realistic career path for someone who's moderately ambitious.
Or, we could simply impose very strong financial disclosur laws and let members of Congress have other jobs. That's what the UK does. Is there any evidence their parliament is more corrupt than Congress?
Yeah. Could work. I think the Texas House is part time right so reps. can ~ have full time jobs? But I'm thinking more about building a way more competitive talent pipeline. I think it's silly, sad, stupid that the current career path is like work for government then go be a lobbyist to get paid.
Bad pay plus public service has little upside except for the super ambitious and is no longer seen as doing your patriotic duty or whatever. Our local PA state rep in my Philly neighborhood is young and tech savy and goes to tons of local community events to meet people and takes pride in the neighborhood, but half of the folks on the local facebook neighborhood page hate him just because of his political party. Even benign jobs like local election officials are retiring/resigning in droves now that a non-controversial position that you could do as a community service for 20 years now carries the threat of political violence.
True but it's the high risk/high reward route. I don't think Obama knew that he would get a $100 million deal with Netflix for narrating a nature show, post presidency, when he got into politics or ran for President.
There aren't too many low risk/reward ways to make a fortune. Is politics a lot worse? Politics is proximity to power by definition, and that's about the oldest and most reliable way to get rich.
We've stopped expanding the House. So, with time, the ratio of citizens per available seat has expanded. That's far from the whole story—as John FL points out, modern medicine plays a role—but with the passage of time House seats have simply, mathematically become rarer, as have statewide offices and other, similar positions that put one on the track high office like Senator, VP and POTUS. Compare this to other wealthy democracies.
Note that this would still be true (if less so) under literally any sub-linear-in-population expansion of the House. Under a linear expansion since the time that the house was set at 435 representatives it looks like we'd have a House of about 1,178 people.
I actually favor something like a linear expansion. Not that it will ever happen, but, my preferred formula would be: smallest state gets two reps and we use that as the basis for district size. That would yield something like a 1,165 member House in 2024.
I really don't think there's anything wrong with the house having 1178 people. A lot of countries that are much smaller than ours have bigger legislatures. The UK has 650 in the commons and more than 700 lords, for example. Ours is 24th largest even though we're the 3rd biggest in population.
It’s like saying, “ Michael Jordan would be even more legendary if he wasn’t such an asshole.” They are mostly inseparable.
Axelrod has said that when Obama was considering running for president, they had sincere discussions of whether he was too psychologically heathy to win.
When I think about ambition in business and politics I'm always reminded of the movie Nightcrawler. It really nails a certain type of person. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K7bEdW47Fw
I agree that much of this is a function of the personality types that are drawn to the hyper-competitive arena of statewide and national politics. I also think it’s true that these jobs require enormous sacrifices in one’s personal life that accrue over the course of a career, often leaving the officeholders with no real “there” there when they retire. Ancient Senators doddering around the capitol seem like sad cautionary tales for their younger colleagues.
She died being adored as the Notorious R.B.G., and there's still a lot of Ginsberg cultists out there, I'm not sure it's that much of a cautionary tale for a selfish or narcissistic politician.
US parties are weak so individual officeholders treat their office as their personal entitlement, and people (or at least politicians) are terrible judges when it comes to their own capacities and indispensability for all the reasons everyone else is saying. I keep thinking that this would work much better if the Democratic caucus in Congress could just vote Biden out and elect a new leader. But members of Congress do this too as you point out.
That makes sense. I've been looking for an explanation of why the US *in particular* has super-old politicians, and why that's only recently become true. The relative weakness of the parties looks like a prime suspect, since it's also uniquely American and fairly new.
It does explain why its the US in particular, in the UK as soon as a party leader shows sufficient weakness they will be hit with a no confidence attempt. Often they go nowhere but having them constantly looming as a Sword of Damocles is rather effective at making politicians who are failing resign before they have to face the ignominy of being ousted (in fact even surviving a VoNC is considered the point at which a British politician should resign).
Which British person said "All political careers end in failure"?
I think the UK system makes that more or less true by default: you're in power until you lose it by failing, not by dying in office or retiring at age 92. It must be less enjoyable for the politicians, compared to our arrangement, but I think it's better for everyone else.
"All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs." was written by Enoch Powell in his biography of Joe Chamberlain.
I think the recency is mostly about improvements in health care. Plenty of past politicians have stayed long past their prime. And seniority matters in Congress which doesn't help.
Besides weak parties, improvements in health care technology are almost certainly contributing to the gerontocracy problem as well -- people don't just live longer, but remain healthy longer as well.
That sounds right too. I was skeptical that rising life expectancy was that much of a factor because the median age in Congress has risen faster than that, but if you allow for people functioning better at any given age it might explain more.
(Although if the trend were just politicians getting very old while still remaining fully functional, I'm not sure we'd be discussing it as a problem)
I think on your latter point we need to distinguish between mental and physical health. There's been a lot more advancement on the latter than the former over the past 50 years or so; i.e., we've gained probably 10 to 15 years of physical health, but maybe only 5 to 7 years of mental health, so you have an increasing population of people with energy levels and the mobility necessary to handle decent public schedules, but whose brain functions are deteriorating.
I don't think this is unique to the US. Winston Churchill hung on until he was physically unfit. The Soviet Union famously suffered from a geriatric problem at the end (with countless Brezhnev jokes found all over the place), Xi Jinping is 71 and is unlikely to go away any time soon, Japan also has fairly old leadership.
It is true other places do it better than the US (and I think weak political parties are part of the problem), but I don't think this is just an 'us' issue.
Churchill left office 70 years ago! You might as well bring up William Gladstone.
Keir Starmer is the first UK Prime Minister to attain that office after the age of 60 since 1976. FIRST! And during this time fully five PMs have taken office in their 40s. Look at Canada. Look at Australia. Look at France. The United States has become an outlier.
You're basing 'outlier' on one country and I brought up Churchill purely because I know more about him than other international leaders. People tend to hang around until they're forced out
This is why we rarely have player managers in modern sports. A star athlete will want to compete even when he’s injured or having a bad game. He will be extremely reluctant to bench himself. Smart athletes understand their sport every bit as well as coaches, but they can’t view their own performance with detachment.
Sotomayor should probably have retired in June but it's not like the other examples--retiring after only fifteen years on the Court to make sure a Democrat appoints her replacement would be a new level of strategic retirement behavior. The most recent retired justice (Breyer) was appointed in 1994 and she was appointed in 2009. The problem re Sotomayor is not her staying on too long in any kind of objective sense but that it's unclear when her next good retirement chance will be.
Norms are shattering around us like mirrors in a funhouse shootout, why not just take strategic retirement to a new level to stave off a 7-2 conservative court majority?
I agree. There's some risk it encourages the conservative justices to do the same and diminish the possibility of a conservative-to-liberal switch from death or medically forced retirement, but the downside risks of her staying are worse in my opinion. But it's not really like RBG (who was older, less healthy, and longer on the Court in 2014) and even less like Biden (who on top of the political risks is clearly less capable of doing the job than he was four years ago).
Working an important job in Washington is fun. It’s a relatively posh, decorative, besuited, relaxing, ego-boosting, nice-smelling, superpower-y place to live and work nowadays, far more so than in, say, the 1970’s.
It’s especially fun if you’ve been there for a while and have spent many, many years climbing the ladder. Even more so if you came from a relatively grungy, generic place on the map with residents you would rather not live around. Or if you remember it as such.
In any case, it does appear to be a uniquely American thing. It’s the one way in which we genuinely do resemble the late Soviet Union.
A big difference is certainly that a lot of countries use voting methods that involve "party lists," where party leaders get to directly pick who the candidates are and public name recognition plays little to no role in voters' choices.
My family used to read a chapter from a Viking pulp novel every Christmas, and a memorable bit there was someone saying he didn't want to die in the straw like a cow.
Joe Biden has wanted to be president for decades, he's not going to resign and die in a nursing home. He's going to be there until the bitter end, dreaming of going out in a blaze of glory.
>He's going to be there until the bitter end, dreaming of going out in a blaze of glory.<
Not if 51% of his delegates invoke the good conscience clause at the convention. I'm not saying this nuclear option is likely. But I think we may be on the cusp of a "new ticket" tsunami.
I think "giving dramatic speeches at the convention, trying — and failing — to keep the final few delegates after 49% from straying" would count as a blaze of glory.
It seems apparent to me that the grueling task of running for higher office demands a significant level of narcissism generally. And to “turn that off,” especially when one has lost a lot of the relative neuroplasticity of a more youthful office-holder? Tough. Then add in Joe Biden’s history of being advised to give up before other challenges, the previous abuse he suffered for a speech impediment, and the successes he’s had in the past after hanging in there? Worse.
Kamala Harris would surely be a better candidate now. With Josh Shapiro as VP? Now there’s a combo!
I'm genuinely curious, is this truly different from most other political arenas? Quick googling shows that Senate is higher in average than UK, as a quick comparison. House is about the same, though? Taking the states as individual things, it is not surprising that some places without term limits have much older representation. Compared to the global arena, it seems far more normal, as well?
In European countries the actual leaders are *vastly* younger. Both the current and the previous UK cabinets were staffed by people aged 35-60, led by a 43 year old last time and a 61 year old currently. In the Netherlands PM Rutte retired recently at age 57, after 14 years. The 35 year old PM of France was recent nearly ousted by the 29 year old candidate of the far right, and has submitted his resignation to the 46 year old President Macron. The PM of Sweden is 61. The Chancellor of Germany is 66 and that’s getting near the upper limits for a European politician.
I did not mean to imply the US would be near the bottom of the lists. I was more curious what things looked like if you opened it up to other realms. Kings of the middle east and such. I see a few places have an odd cheat where they have ridiculously old kings, but younger ministers that take the head of state mark.
To quantify, add in India (74), Brazil (79), etc., and the ages start to get pulled up rather high. Not even having to pull in China (71) and Russia (71). (And again, I'm unclear how to consider places that have royalty, still.)
Same. I'd bar persons from becoming POTUS or Vice President after 75 or so, and from serving in Congress beyond 85. I'm actually inclined to think when the Biden/Trump era is behind us, we might actually get bipartisan support for such an amendment. Seems like it would enjoy broad support.
That's the kind of thing I expect would poll very well with the general public and yet no member of Congress will ever introduce an amendment to achieve or, if a such an amendment is eventually introduced, it will never be allowed to go to a vote. There are way too many Representatives and Senators who dream of becoming President and dying on January 21 after the last year of their second term.
Well, yes, or have it kick in after 20 years or something. But that actually is a good idea for a bunch of reforms for all sorts of different things (e.g., Supreme Court term limits), but Congress tends to be allergic to doing that too.
I agree that a more moderate Kamala Harris would be a formidable candidate. But that version of Kamala doesn't exist, if she ever did.
I was a little hopeful earlier this week that Biden's chances were better than conventional wisdom would suggest. But between his inability to be coherent for even a teleprompter speech (see NAACP speech highlights from this week), his increasingly narcissistic attitude toward policy questions and, most surprisingly to me, a relatively subdued and cohesive Republican National Convention, I'm more pessimistic than even immediately after the debate.
I'd still rather take my chances with Kamala than Joe. At least she will put up a good fight.
And a good fight translating into a close election—even if Trump still ends up winning—preserves downticket wins for Democrats. I suppose it's too much to hope for that Democrats will emerge from this election holding one of the chambers. But that is my hope!
It's been kind of shocking how Biden's image has changed over the last month - the nasty and defensive attitude he's taken has revealed him to be a bitter old man rather than a kindly grandpa type.
Not to defend him too much, but it probably feels like quite literally the whole world is against him at this point. The people around him should've never let the confused angry old man side of him show in public.
100% agree. It's no excuse, but he thinks he's been fated for this job for decades. He comes in, beats Trump. accomplishes more than anyone expected, and then gets killed for it.
I graduated in 09 and remember the snail like recovery from the Great Recession. It did permanent damage to my life If I was Biden I could totally get feeling like I solved an economic crisis super quickly, which my old boss who didn't want me to run in 2016, couldn't.
The fact the people who are calling on him to drop out come disproportionately for folks who backed guys like Mayor Pete makes him more dismissive. Mayor Pete's main accomplishment is he has the bio that Dem donors (and his old boss) love.
And I also suspect the fate of Carter/GHWB stays on him. Moderate presidents who leave after 1 term tend to get destroyed. The ideologues always hated them and love to say they lost because they were too moderate.
that said he should drop out. He is being selfish by not dropping out. He's done the best job of the economy of any POTUS in my adult life but the public hates the taste of the medicine and think he's too old. He's also being petty indulging personal grievances (no matter how legit they are).
Age takes it's toll, and nobody likes it. In the Copa America final, when Messi twisted his ankle and was subbed out for a less experienced player, he went to the sideline and sobbed -- he knew it was his last Copa America game and he didn't get to finish it or even score. But he had to be subbed out for the good of the team.
>The people around him should've never let the confused angry old man side of him show in public.<
I'm glad they did. Makes it less likely he'll be able to hold on. I hate that for me it's come to hoping he screws up, but, provided it's not something serious that would harm the country, I am indeed rooting for him to screw up. Not proud to say that. But it's the honest truth. He needs to step down—the quicker the better for the country's sake.
Sure, but ideally they would've convinced him not to run again in the first place. The present situation can be salvaged, but it's an iceberg that should have been easily avoidable.
Yes. That would have been ideal. Even more ideal would be if Amy Klobuchar had won the nomination, and Klobuchar-Booker were now up eight points in most polls.
Biden, and Biden alone, deserves mitiagting circumstances: his own senility makes him behave badly. This is sadly common. We should remember him like he was before his decline. That's the only fair thing. This consideration does NOT however go towards his family and close circle. Their behavior is unforgivable. They have humiliated a great man instead of protecting him, and endangered the whole nation in the process.
Yeah, one of the things about people going through mental decline is that in their lucid moments, they don't won't to admit they aren't as sharp and are getting closer to death and in their senior moments, they aren't sharp enough to know how far they've fallen. A lot of people in this thread seem to have forgotten how hard it is for people in this position to admit the main independent part of their life has passed.
The points people have raised about how family fights around stuff like "Dad you can't drive any more" style fights can be pretty nasty and hard seems pretty relevant. Or see "Ma, it's not a nursing home, it's a retirement community!" from The Sopranos etc.
The evidence of Biden’s serious mental decline has been there to see for years. The evidence that he’s mean and a bully has been there to see for decades. But your eyes must be open to see.
JD Vance's convention speech was full-on blood and soil nationalism, albeit without the "we must purge the land of foreigners" obverse side of the coin.
“That version of Kamala doesn’t exist, if it ever did”
She literally wrote a book on a moderate message of policing which Matt cited, and ran on that message in multiple campaigns. She was billed as “America’s prosecutor” in 2019.
The 2020 election rolled around and as Matt pointed out, things got really, really weird. Reeling from George Floyd and Covid, primary candidates had to move left, which was inauthentic for Harris, everyone could tell, people called her a “cop” and she dropped
I think the worst thing Biden could have possibly done in 2020 was announce he was picking a “black woman” as his vice president. Who did that help? It was such a weird thing to do. The number 1, 2 and 3 attacks against Harris is going to be the fact she was an unqualified DEI hire by a senile old man. This is going to resonate with some voters, who in the wake of 2020, feel that their companies launched well intentioned but often bad DEI programs that rewarded employees based on skin color and fostered tense atmospheres at workspaces.
Yes, if he'd made the same picks (both Harris and Jackson) then the people saying "oh they're diversity hires" would seem like assholes, but when he came out ahead and said "I have narrowed my candidate pool based on race and gender", those people have more of a point.
It wasn't weird at all in that post-Floyd moment, where it was mainstream to call opposition to affirmative action, support for policing, and even standardized testing as "racist". At the time it wasn't clear that the moment would only last a year or so.
It wasn't weird, but it was a bad choice even in the post-Floyd moment -- it's not like we're talking about some "invisible" identity group (e.g., being gay, non-Christian, etc.) where you have to explicitly flag that to get the "DEI points" for the appointment. Harris (and KBJ too!) being a black woman speaks for itself for anyone who is concerned about diversity. No one was going to miss those facts about her, but EXPLICITLY saying those were factors in choosing her immediately implied that she wasn't necessarily the best qualified person for the job.
Kamala Harris is a catastrophe of a candidate. I have zero belief that putting her in the spotlight will make her more popular instead of less. Any of the other options(except maybe Gavin Newsom) for replacing Biden are better ones no matter how messy the process for doing so, or who might be mad about it.
Nonetheless she clearly has a better chance than Biden. She at least has some outlier upside opportunity where she's competitive with Trump. Biden doesn't.
More importantly, I don't think I'm voting for Biden right now, but, if he drops out, I'm absolutely voting for whoever replaces him purely to reward someone actually making a choice that actually deserves rewarding. Any chance to incentivize that kind of decision making in politics is too important to pass up no matter how much I might loathe Kamala.
This is why I think the following twofold strategy sets up her AND the party best. Either Biden:
(A) Resigns and lets her run as president, allowing her to set up a veepstakes at the convention.
or
(B) Steps aside, and she embraces an open convention. The “I’ll take all comers” attitude reinforces her legitimacy by making it clear that she hasn’t been HANDED the nomination, and in case she gets defeated fair and square, it all happens out in public, and she’ll have precommitted to endorsing the nominee without complaining to her K-hive.
B is the only option that makes sense. It seems from the way he conducted himself at the NATO meeting and press conference afterwards (despite the awkward name mistakes), Biden is not yet so diminished he can’t function as President for the next six months. I don’t see Kamala having such a hard time at an open convention made up of delegates pledged to Biden, who want to get the nomination process over with as quickly as possible so they can move on to the campaign.
I think your assertion that he is not so diminished that he can’t function as President is simply wrong. He is that diminished. I can’t get my head around why people are so reluctant to admit this very simple and obvious truth. For Matt it was partisanship which makes even self proclaimed smart people - dumb. But aren’t we beyond that? He’s too old. He is greatly diminished. What is so hard to get about this?
I'd like to see material proof that he can't function as President, e.g., some recent policy or action that shows there's a vacuum in the Oval Office. Don't infer it from his public speaking performance.
In any case, we want to ease Biden aside. Getting him to leave the race is like moving a small mountain. Getting him to do that *and* resign as President is like moving Mt. Everest with a teaspoon.
Matt and his buddy Ezra have made the case that communication is an important part of governance in a Democracy. It is elevated in importance in an election year. I hear Democrats say look at Joe’s enormous accomplishments, look at all the great legislation. Yeah, and look at his poll numbers. Look at how he is losing in swing states. Matt and Ezra are right that being able to make the case to the electorate is important.
What if a 3am like emergency happens and we need Joe to make tough decisions? Do we the people trust him to do that? Mostly no, maybe you do, but mostly no. There is your vacuum. Leadership. He can’t lead if he can’t communicate. The optics are important and he looks weak. Not his fault that he does. He’s old. It’s normal. But he shouldn’t be POTUS.
Exactly. There is strong reporting to suggest Biden has already failed your test. Pointing to an OK performance doesn’t take away from the fact that there have been and will be times when Biden is clearly not OK. Who the hell is actually running the country?
They could choose to play up the severity of Biden's bout of COVID, saying that it has made him unable to effectively do his job, either temporarily or permanently. Seems like an easy out... and I think there's a lot of benefit to Harris being the incumbent if she's the nominee.
(Aside: Why is it "Kamala" and "Hillary" instead of "Harris" and "Clinton" -- in the latter case I can see there's potential confusion with Bill, kind of, but there's none in Harris' case.)
I think the concerns about the nomination being handed to Harris are bogus.
Democrats are absolutely desperate to beat Trump. They (ok, we) want hope, we want a jolt of energy. We're sick of the internal party conflict and emotional angst. If the nominee magically becomes Harris and she goes out and gives a barnburner of a speech, everyone on our side will be ecstatic, people will be energized, and the money spigots will begin to gush.
And who will complain that the handoff was rigged? Will Whitmer? No.* Newsom? Nope. Shapiro? No and no. They'll accept it and chant, "Let's go, Harris!"
*Internally Whitmer will be secretly hoping that Harris loses in November, of course. If Harris wins, then the Big Gretch is locked out of the 2028 nomination as well, and 2032 is a geologic age away in political terms, meaning Whitmer will never be a likely candidate for President.
P.S. C'mon, Joe. Do the right thing. Step aside *today*, dominate the headlines, and absolutely destroy Trump's final night at the convention. Oh that would be so sweet.
She’s right there. She was right there when Shapiro and Whitmer knew it was Dem primary suicide to be seen as stepping ahead of the first black female VP while she was doing the honorable thing despite Biden’s decision. Billed as part of the ticket, she commands part of that mandate from the primary voter.
>>And who will complain that the handoff was rigged?
Swing voters and the center-right haters who are constantly shouting in their ears.
*You and I* know that the concerns are bogus. But as you amply demonstrate, OUR votes are pre-determined. Theirs aren't.
Swing voters are the confused, flighty creatures of Agent K's famous speech. The more we can do to allay even the dumbest of their concerns -- without stooping TOO low, of course -- the better chances we have to win.
A is better, an open convention is only a democratic process among the politicians and insiders who attend, not among the broader party, whose voters were only given one real choice on their ballots. Biden getting fully out of the picture by resigning also frees up Harris to be her own candidate, at least for a few months. It would have been better for Biden to announce he wouldn't be running last year and have an open *primary*, but we're way past that now and this is what we're left with.
This idea that it's better for Harris's campaign if she's President as well is not well thought-out. OK, she's President right now. To take just one of a thousand examples, how does she handle Israel-Gaza and Bibi? Leave aside that she has no experience in dealing with either and would likely stumble, why in hell would she ever want to inherit that swamp of a problem, with absolutely no political upside and tons of downside?
If Biden resigns as POTUS, Democrats have to absolutely be certain Harris will prevail at the convention as nominee. Never say never, but I think it would be super dangerous for Democrats if the convention passed over the first Black woman to serve as President, and in the bargain truncating her term to five months.
I'd guess if she's elevated to the presidency before Chicago there's a 99.99% chance she'd be the nominee, but let's make sure of that. Otherwise, Biden shouldn't resign until after the convention.
If Democrats end up nominating Whitmer or Beshear or Kelly or whomever (extremely unlikely, but these are uncertain times), I reckon it would be best if Joe Biden remains as POTUS until his term is up in January.
I think your reasoning in your second paragraph demonstrates that you're overthinking the overall risk. As you say, it's 99.99% sure that she'd be the nominee; that's *why* I assumed she'd be presiding over a veepstakes, not facing any realistic challenge.
If she's elevated, there's no way she ISN'T the nominee.
Maybe I'm more risk averse than you, but it seems to me Democrats have made a number of unforced errors—pretty much completely ignored at the time—that have come back to bight them back ferociously (pressuring Biden not to run in 2016; RBG not resigning; Biden opting to try for second term; Biden's running mate process; etc). I'm tired of these screwups. And yes, we're in a very unpredictable situation if Biden opts out.
I agree as it happens that Harris will almost certainly be the nominee if she's POTUS headed into that convention (or even only VP). But what's the downside risk of Biden resigning the presidency in late August instead of early August? We can't obsess over tail risk, sure. But we shouldn't ignore it, either, at least when addressing it doesn't come with a high cost.
Also, while I'm comfortable with Harris as the nominee, and I'd imagine elevating her to the presidency before Chicago does effectively seal the deal (and maybe the DNC could make it official?), I think the optics for the campaign might be better if the convention avoids the appearance of a Harris coronation. We haven't had a true open Democratic convention in more than half a century, so this is all somewhat uncharted waters; but a ballot or two with Harris going up against Dean Phillips or Michael Bennet (or whomever) before she's nominated strikes me as being desirable. I suppose that could happen if she's already President, but I think it's more tenable if she's hasn't succeeded to that office yet.
B sounds good but the reticence, timidity, and behind closed-doors massaging of the Biden debacle by senior Dems indicate that they have no tolerance for that level of unpredictability. They're going to manage this all the way through.
I would prefer Pete as a Biden replacement because during the 2020 primary Pete was always the best version of Biden available but this seems too low on Harris.
The people still voting for Biden have clearly priced in Harris replacing him soon and Harris has a chance to distance herself from anything unpopular.(Especially if Biden is willing to fall on the sword a bit)
Half the slate of any set of presidential candidates have poor name recognition. Who outside political news junkies had heard of John Kerry, or Bill Clinton for that matter, prior to their campaigns?
One of my spicier takes: public communication is one of the most overrated aspects of the job. Biden's problem isn't that he's bad at it, it's that he just not really capable of it at all anymore.
I really think this is totally wrong. I don't like the way Trump communicates (and it sounds like you don't either), but there is a large part of the electorate that absolutely loves listening to him. Maybe more than any other politician I can remember.
Trump's gaffes are like your rambling drunk uncle. More amusing than damning, at least for many people. Also, not currently being POTUS, he's free to speak mainly to friendly groups full of people who adore him.
Biden's gaffes are like deer in the headlight moments. They just come across as a lot more damaging. And being president, he realistically has to talk to people as part of his job governing all Americans—not just loyal Democrats.
There are some things the American people are just not ready to accept and sadly Pete falls into that category. Yes, it shows an unpleasant streak of bigotry in our population, but we have to deal with reality.
Sadly, Pete will never be President unless and until he changes this fundamental fact about himself.
So stand aside, Pete, and hope that your children will be able to become President in a nation that is finally ready to accept a leader with an impossible to spell Maltese name.
A couple years ago Jonathan Last floated the idea of making him press secretary. It would be a step down from cabinet secretary but a step up into daily media exposure. That said, I don't envy anyone having to get up there and defend Biden right now.
I detest Pete. I'm Blue no matter who and will vote for him but I'll be so bummed out if he's nominated just because a subset of influential liberals swoon over degrees from the right universities.
I don't think Pete is really all that close to the nomination so I wouldn't worry, but I don't think his appeal has much to do with his degrees and more to do with the fact that he can actually articulate a coherent message
There were like 25 people or something running for the Dem nomination in 2020 and Kamala wasn't in the top 20. She's absolutely that bad. She's a long shot at best against Trump, who is himself a catastrophe. Any of Buttigieg/Whitmer/Shapiro/Polis/etc absolutely walk away with it.
What do you mean by, she wasn't in the top 20? I don't have the 2019/20 polling data at my fingertips, but in fact she was one of the top tier contenders, one of a very select group who was ever in first or second place in the polling data.
And by the fall of 2019, when it was obvious the primary had become a two-person race between Biden and Sanders, she was the only one of the other credible candidates who was quick-witted enough to promptly see that and react accordingly by dropping out. The others, Klobuchar, Warren, etc, either weren't as adept at assessing the situation, or had nothing better to do than go through the motions with a zombie campaign well into 2020, maybe to boost their profile or maybe they were just waiting around for lightning to strike.
They didn't run more successful campaigns than Harris -- they were just slower than she was to realize and accept that they weren't going to win.
The Jeb Bush flameout in 2016 is not a bad analogy. He wasn't a once-in-a-generation political talent but there was nothing wrong with him as a politician -- he was a popular governor of a swing state. In a different year he very easily could have made it to the top, but the timing wasn't right for him in 2016. Biden too has lost more presidential campaigns than he's won, and nobody says that disqualifies him.
Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar also had success in the campaign - more than Gabbard (unless you count making the short list of *Trump* VP candidates a few years later as a kind of success).
At no point did she poll close to the top 3. She entered at like 6% support on name recognition and bled her position the entire time until she dropped out. She was maybe the only candidate in the entire field who got consistently less popular by campaigning. Hell she was a worse candidate than Tulsi fucking Gabbard and I can hardly imagine a more damning indictment.
Ahhh, when I checked myself the chart didn't go back that far. She did briefly spike up to 13-14% in Jul 2019, but 538 did still have her behind Bernie/Warren.
The country is too polarized and the time for running a normal campaign is too short for anyone to walk away with it. Even if Biden is replaced and the replacement manages to beat Trump, it's going to be close like 2016 or 2020. At this point, I'm not thinking about election outcomes but fundamental principles. I'm not a Democrat but an independent and I can say for sure that I'll never forgive the current Democratic Party or it's leadership for blatantly lying and gaslighting us voters about Biden's mental and physical status and not even meeting the minimum bar.
I don't think you're being fully objective on Harris. As Yglesias has pointed out, her main drawback comes from the fact that the bulk of her political experience prior to 2020 came from competing against other Democrats in a heavily blue state. So yeah, she doesn't sound like Whitmer or Beshear.
But, quite honestly, she's grown into her role. And we also don't know what she would sound like if she were completely free to plot her own course, rather than subordinate her ambition to the real time needs of the Biden campaign.
She was a sharp, effective communicator and manager when she was putting people behind bars in California. I urge you to google up some of her recent appearances in various talk forums. She's really quite good.
Also, while I'm not completely immune to the fantasy proposition of a radically different ticket, there's just no polling evidence I've been able to find that suggests Beshear or Whitmer or whoever would perform more strongly than Kamala Harris would against Trump. Maybe they would! But it really is hopium and speculation at this point. Moreover, lack of name recognition and national vetting could be a problem for one of these other candidates.
There are no risk-free options for Democrats. All there is is navigating among different risks and opportunities. But I'm with Matt: Harris paired with a solid running mate seems a much more hopeful proposition than the current ticket. Maybe we can pull out a White House win. Or maybe not, but we keep the Senate (or take back the House). Needless to say, denying MAGA a trifecta would be utterly monumental.
But by that same logic, Steve Bullock would have been a catastrophic choice as well. And I think if he had for whatever reason been picked as the VP and were serving under an aging president (let’s say Warren picked him and then had a stroke or something) we would be a lot more optimistic. Kamala was a poor choice to appeal to a primary audience because she had to / chose to restrain all of her moderate tendencies.
I will grant you that she doesn’t exude “authenticity”, whatever that means, but neither do Buttigieg or Newsom, not sure about Whitmer or Shapiro. She’s not who I’d pick if we were starting from a blank slate, but she’s far better than the alternative.
I think people with strong Dem commitments tend to have blind spot about just how actively repulsive Harris is to exactly the sort of marginal voter they need. Simply not actively driving people away is a huge upgrade.
What is repulsive about her? That is a very strong word, and it sounds like a code word for woman of color, but I don't think that is what you are saying. How can people be repulsed by her if they don't even know much about her?
And heck, I know a lot of people who are repulsed by Trump, and he still won.
Trump is definitely repulsive. Kamala has a similar thing going on in the inverse. They both have this sort of calibrated inauthenticity where every word out of their mouth is mostly content free tribal signaling. Trump uses uses lib-rage baiting offensiveness. Kamala does faux-therapeutic/DEI speak. They're both fairly rambling and incoherent. Neither has demonstrated anything like a principled commitment to the content of their speech. And then you throw Kamala's incredible awkwardness(the mistimed forced laughing good lord) and it just gets pretty unbearable for anyone who isn't the precise target of the signaling.
I wonder if Pete would even really be in contention at an open convention. To me he seems diminished by his stint as Transportation Secretary as compared to the 2020 campaign and lacks the gravitas to be the nominee.
You're already demonstrating the very problem with changing horses mid race.
Kamala is the only practical option, but everyone will come out and share their two cents.
We might have our meager opinions, but media corps and big whale donors will also try to put their thumb on the scale, and do some favor trading behind closed doors.
Let them do deals behind closed doors…better than being left with someone who can’t reliably speak for himself, whom the majority of Democrats clearly don’t want and have been forced to accept because he thinks we owe him four more years.
I think you will find that even with our current horse the media corps, the big whale donors and even us with our meager opinions are all sharing our two cents.
Yes, democracy depends on forming coalitions, and not letting certain powerful people pull the politics around at their whim, especially when they're safe enough not to suffer the consequences.
I would much prefer Buttigieg to Harris, but I don't think there's any plausible path to Secretary Pete being the candidate this year even if he really wants it. He's also more than young enough to wait for 2028 or 2032.
I like Pete, but he is short, cerebral, and gay. Basically Michael Dukakis but gayer. It wouldn't stop me from voting for him, but he isn't exactly the central casting version of a president.
I can't judge her ability as a candidate, but her abilities as a person who speaks words and forms sentences seem quite good. I just looked up some recent appearances on youtube. The difference with Biden is quite frankly jarring. What are we still talking about at this point? MY's point 27 is starting to sound like less of a joke now. I also looked up Clinton's speeches from 2015 and they also remarkably clear and cogent. The idea that anything about Biden's performance is normal or acceptable on any level is borderline insane.
Of all the people stumping for Kamala Harris, very few of them outline a trajectory or a contingency plan.
Matt's gone farthest here talking about racism and sexism issue, but it's still pretty weak.
What happens when the convention is chaotic, and shows Americans Dems aren't organized and can't govern? (ala the simpsons)
What happens when Donny finally breaks 50% in the polls over that? And all the polling data and research and models from Biden break down or get thrown out?
Is there any chance some oppo research gets done to find some hypocrisy from when she was a DA, and get former convicted perps doing hit pieces on the news, about how they were screwed by the system? She already doesn't poll well black men, who've been sliding right.
What happens to a next presidential debate, if Donny refuses to show, because he just wants to claim triumphant victory about the first because he beat Joe so bad? Who even is VP for that debate with Vance?
And if people start smearing her as being a Biden backstabber, or that she was part of the cover up to hide his age?
And these are the very simplest of issues to iron out before going whole hog.
The real thing is, that for Harris or Biden, they will heavily rely on a reverse-coattails strategy to win this, where lower democrats/congressmen/celebrities have to get out there and stump for the top of the ticket, because otherwise nothing good will get done during a Trump presidency, and it's better to start that sooner than later with out all this leftist infighting.
They have been governing fine for the last 3 and a half years.
What you are describing is already probably priced in. Biden has been spending on ads while Trump hasn't yet. Things are about to get worse either way.
Of course there is a chance... (I think the beginning of your question might have been rhetorical, but thought I should still address it.) She has been vetted more that most other choices, being VP and all. Attacking her record as prosecutor seems ... counterproductive from the GOP perspective.
He'll get slammed for refusing to debate her? His performances against Clinton were terrible, remember those? We'll probably find out who the VP is at, or right before the convention. Just like we just found out that Vance is Trump's VP.
Pick one, backstabber or loyalist? Which one are you worried about? If they try both, the issue dissolves ... it will be destructive interference. If they stick to one... I still don't see what the problem is. There is little sympathy left for Biden after what he has done, and you can't really blame the VP for being loyal.
These issues don't get ironed out ahead of time, they get dealt with as they are encountered. That is why it helps to have some competent people on the campaign.
The real thing is that the Democrats lost a ton of trust by obscuring Biden's rapid decline, and the only way to regain some of that trust is to deal with the underlying problem, not to stand there frozen like a deer in the headlights.
This the equivalent of saying a football team down 14 points with 2 minutes left shouldn't try an onsides kick because it could be unsuccessful. Well, yeah, of course, but we know staying the course is going to result in a loss. There's no point in just beating the point spread.
If we were dealing with any other major issue with Biden, I'd say that he could potentially overcome it through a strategic change in the campaign. But he can't reverse the aging process and is physically and mentally incapable of running the kind of campaign that could alter the race in his favor.
As someone who has followed Harris career, read her book and probably seen most of her speeches, I think that people completely misunderstand her in a way that is really fixable.
The 2020 primary was unique in the sense that not only was there an ex-VP running, there was also a very popular left wing factional candidate running (Sanders) both the moderate and left lanes were clogged up, and Harris picked the wrong lane to try and shift to because she thought that was what the party wanted, when if she just ran as she was running all along she would have done much better.
If I was advising her I would basically have her do the following:
1. Message roughly the same on abortion, seems that position is relatively popular.
2. Hammer the fact that you put away criminals like Trump and that you made the streets safer under your tenure.
3. Lean into the ‘Do not come’ framing on immigration with the compassion around there being legal options and talk about how the GOP tanked immigration reform multiple times.
4. Don’t laugh as much in speeches (I’ve seen this start to happen already)
5. Talk about Trump and Vance as Ivy leaguers who have to support of the billionaire class rather than working people and unions.
6. Talk about record stock market, low unemployment, declining inflation and how the Biden-Harris has made the US have the best pandemic recovery in the world.
7. Talk about investments in infrastructure that Trump could not achieve.
8. Stay clear of court-packing and defund the police and pivot to promising to select good justices
Agreed, I think the key factor in analyzing Harris is whether you think the 2020 primary Kamala was the real Kamala, or her reacting (to be fair, poorly) to the unique circumstances of the primary. I'm willing to believe its the latter.
All else aside Harris has another advantage in that she could pick a moderate-ish swing state pol like Whitmer or Shapiro or Mark Kelly, or Ossof as her running mate.
Cooper 100% over Beshear - leave the "blue pol who does well in a ruby red state" where he is so he can either remain governor for a while or run for Senate in the future and at least make the other side sweat a little like Hogan's doing in MD.
He did an almost unbelievably good job threading the needle during Covid. I know a significant number of Kentucky Republicans and I don’t know anyone who really dislikes him. May sound like faint praise but I don’t think it is. Radiates decency and common sense.
Cooper maybe. I think Tennessee is just totally out of reach for Dems in this cycle. And while Beshear would send a strong moderate signal, the primary tangible benefit of a VP nominee is in their home state.
I agree: I think she could come out with a strong law and order message- “We shouldn’t tolerate crime, whether it is shoplifting and car-jackings or fraud committed by white billionaires. I’m Kamala the Cop and I’m going to go after all of it.”
I am quite skeptical that Kamala would be willing or able to use the "safe, legal, and rare" framework when talking about abortion.
Like, yes, being a black woman does ostensibly give her more room to moderate in an electorally savvy way. But she's Kamala Harris. Assuming political savviness on her part is like assuming an articulation of wonky policy details from Trump.
I can't un-read that interview with Astead Herndon (who would have been the perfect reporter for a "comeback" profile if only she'd given him something to work with). He asks if her positions have changed from her SF days and her reaction is deeply hostile, basically "I don't know what you are talking about (you idiot)." It left me with the strong impression that she doesn't want to help herself, or acknowledge that she has a problem.
I hope so, being suddenly in charge of a campaign with four months left would certainly focus the mind. The Herndon interview was such an own goal, though: she's just snooty and dismissive to a sympathetic (although not hackish) Black reporter who is very much on her wavelength and would clearly have loved to write a glowing profile.
Like it or not, if Biden steps down Kamala is overwhelmingly likely to be the nominee. I don't think she's the best candidate, but we've got to be clear-eyed if that's what we're pushing for. So that's what this article is about.
I buy the argument that if you call for Biden to step down you have to think Harris will be an improvement, but is she "overwhelmingly likely" to be the replacement?
Very few influential Democrats seem to actually want her, to the point where Harris skepticism seems to be paralyzing the kick-Biden-out process. Basically none of the people who have called on Biden to drop out has endorsed Harris; the most pro-Harris takes you get are like this one from Matt, admitting that there are better alternatives. Even Clyburn says there would need to be some kind of "mini-primary," not a Harris coronation. Why wouldn't they consolidate behind someone they see as more electable like Josh Shapiro, nudged by Pelosi or Obama if the field gets too big?
During the last three weeks it seem like "the party's decided" on Harris.
[deleted because I wrote, "darn it, dysphemistic, we love to read what you say, so just go ahead and post it," but I decided that would be sucking up too much so I went ahead and deleted it.]
Given the shift in the politics around abortion, she probably shouldn’t use “safe, legal and rare”.
Theres a reason GOP had more success on this issue when the debate was centered on late-term abortion and partial birth abortion. Keep the debate more about “edge” cases and you can keep large slices of the moderate electorate on your side on the issue.
But after Dobbs this topic shifted to the more mainstream cases which are lot harder to make the public feel “icky” about. Also, now the edge cases highlighted are the opposite; ones like when an actual child is pregnant with a rapists baby that put GOP on the offensive.
Lastly, as Matt pointed out and I’ve pointed out repeatedly on here, religious attendance and observance is clearly declining pretty rapidly. Realty is whether we are talking about edge cases or not the center of gravity on this issue has shifted left.
Just a lot to suggest that going back to a mid 90s paradigm is a mistake at least on this issue.
Some of Matt’s other suggestions for potential moderation by her are I think plausible, but no Democrat outside of Manchin is going to talk about Safe Legal & Rare in 2024, that’s clearly not a political slogan that anyone in the Democratic Party feels like reviving.
I don't think, for example, saying "don't come" re the border registers as moderation. I think it registers as "stop making this a political problem for me."
I'm a little concerned about this too. She's been doing great taking it to the Republicans on reproductive rights. But does she know how to talk to swing voters and suburban Republican women on this and other issues? She would have to adapt rapidly as the nominee.
The case for Harris isn't really electoral IMO, it's that she's the easiest solution to the massive coordination problem picking a new nominee would entail especially because delegates have no experience in doing this sort of thing these days, and that's not a small issue.
I totally agree. This is the least messy solution but not the optimal (which would be extremely messy). Even if she loses, which IMO is the likely outcome, the party leadership retains some level of unity and credibility with voters going forward. Right now, they have zero credibility for blatantly lying about Biden.
Yeah, people would mock and sneer her if she lost of course (America defiles it's losers) but that's just the way the game is played. The lasting party damage to everyone else involved including Biden's legacy would be minimal.
Yet another reason why Biden should just take the win, be prez for another 6 months and go back to Delaware to spend time with his grandkids.
Off topic side note: I would pay a lot of money to get a daily 20-30 minute podcast until the convention featuring Matt and Ezra Klein talking about the odds Biden drops out and what Democrats should do.
There is a lot of uncertainty about how Harris would campaign as a general election candidate. People are overweighting her 2020 primary campaign; that's not a great indicator. The uncertainty is good though since the Democrats are behind and it means she has upside potential
Yeah it’s funny people in the comments are putting far too much weight on the 2020 primary as far as how Kamala would campaign. It was even noted at the time that she campaigned farther left than her actual record in a misguided attempt to voters wanted Warren or Bernie.
And to those of you who think politicians can’t rebrand and pivot away from previous rhetoric please, please take a look at who the GOP just nominated for VP. Whatever positions she would be pivoting from vis a vis 2020 it pales in comparison to Vance’s complete rebranding.
It's not like Kamala Harris has some longstanding record as an ultra-woke. And in 2020 it's not like she was the left-wing factional candidate (that was Sanders or Warren). In fact part of her problem was that she wasn't any faction's favorite and it muddled her message. She has pushed moderate political messaging before and she can do it again.
Correct. If anything Kamal's turn in 2020 to the left was a quicker about face than anything she would have to do today.
Also, she's been VP now for 3 years. The likely scenario going forward is she would run as a continuation of Biden's policies and vision but with a younger more energetic voice behind it. The chances she deviates that strongly from Biden's record for practical reasons would be low. She would basically be inheriting Biden's campaign apparatus. Plus, she is literally part of the administration now. Would be very hard for her in a few weeks time to just fully disavow Biden's positions on a variety of issues, let alone formulate new ones on the fly.
The alternative to Kamala Harris is a long and divisive convention battle ultimately resolved on the nth ballot by delegates who have no descriptive legitimacy. That is not a good option.
At this point I feel like we have to assume that if you are going to vote for Biden you are comfortable with Harris being president because it seems unlikely that even Biden's fiercest defenders believe that he will make it another 4 years.
Given that, it seems to make sense to let Harris just run for president without the baggage of Biden.
It does seems like journalists still somewhat overrated Harris who has had 4 years plus a primary run to show anything that would impress people and largely failed to do so.
I feel like I am less of a "Harris hater" than most people here but I still don't really understand why she was ever considered a top tier primary candidate in 2020.
I think if you watch her stuff before the 2020 primary you would understand. Matt’s point about how her background would have been an asset in any other primary race is the point. This is more clear from her book. Also we have to remember that contrasting yourself in a primary where it’s all versions of the same platform is different from a general with diametrically opposed candidates.
"Yesterday, I announced that, as president, I'll establish a Social Security program for Latinos who open a sleigh ride that operates for 9 weeks in their backyard."
Now I want to see her actual 2019/2020 announcements
I agree that Kamala is not the BEST choice for this but I think that MY is right in saying that at least a part of why Kamala has not made a popular pivot is her position having to toe the Biden line right now. You let her off on her own and she has much more latitude to make some changes. Again, not that she's the best choice but I think MY is attempting to assuage concerns from Dem elites that if no Biden we get Kamala and Kamala bad. If we get Kamala, that's amazing news!!!! Because above all else Kamala is not Biden.
People liked the idea of a black woman from a large state, but once they saw her, they lost interest. He campaign imploded.
She also made several large gaffes that would have followed her on the campaign.
- Remember when she said she was going to end private insurance?
- Remember when she said she wanted to put in place the toughest gun laws through executive order?
I heard her say both, and immediately cringed because you just know these are the campaigns ads that will run against her, and both will be electoral poison.
A skilled politician looking to build a coalition would not have said these things.
And under Joe, she was put in charge of the border. The border was the administration's largest unforced error, and her name was on it. Combine this with the fact that the border is likely one of the top issues for swing voters, and Trump has a huge club to hit her with.
There's a huge benefit of running someone who can distance themselves from past problems. Trump best argument against Hillary was "She says she can make things great, but she's been in power for 30 years, and thing are terrible. Why do you believe her?"
This is a potent line, and Trump was able to make it because he was an outsider.
The best bet is a governor who was solving problems in their state, and can't be blamed for national problems.
There are literally two people alive who we know for a fact can do this job well and they aren't eligible. Every non-Harris possibility carries their own set of risks and potential downsides, let alone the potential for tearing apart the coalition.
I just listened again to the `Joe Biden is old' podcast MY did with Beutler on February 14th... It is darkly amusing that the answer to many of the snarky questions turned out to be a straightforward yes.
It really underscores how much (apparently misplaced) trust and goodwill the administration had at the time that has completely evaporated.
All that is to say, I do want Harris do whatever she can to win and that has to include throwing the president under the bus.
It seems to me that the problem with Harris is that she cannot, in fact, “deliver crisp, clear versions of Democratic Party talking points.”
When she gives a speech or an interview, she sounds like your loopy aunt who’s really into crystals. Her sentences meander more than Biden’s. She’s simply not an effective messenger.
I can't "Like" this because, while I agree that Harris isn't a great speaker, she's clearly ahead of Biden at this point in energy levels of delivery, which there's a pretty strong argument is the main thing voters are reacting to between Biden and Trump. (Trump's speaking patterns for the last few years have been worse than Biden's for most of that time, but Trump delivers his word salad in a loud, enthusiastic tone of voice, versus Biden's increasingly creaky tone.)
No disagreement from me that she’s better than Biden at this point in terms of energy - but if the standard is what Matt said it is, I don’t think she meets it either. She’s just really off-putting. (And lest I be accused of sexism let me just say that I thought Hillary was actually a massively underrated speaker.)
Biden and Harris are interesting foils of each other. Vintage Joe Biden always said the thing that would resonate with people, even if he had bad delivery. Whereas Harris is quite eloquent, but not always on message.
Not strictly on point, but what is with these American politicians just carrying on and not retiring until the point of mental collapse? What do they get from doing this? Bernie Sanders is still 'with it', but is he just going to carry on until he too has become senile?
It should be considered disgraceful to carry on working past the point of effectiveness, if one has the option to give up.
We have weak political parties who can’t boot them out of power!
>We have weak political parties who can’t boot them out of power!<
This is the answer, of course.
I would argue the particulars of the country's Madisonian constitution and modern conditions mean if anything strong parties capable of easing aging politicians into retirement are needed even more in America than in most other wealthy democracies. Every president elected between Eisenhower and Trump was either a governor or senator first. Senate seats and governorships are the most plausible launching pads for presidential campaigns (after the vice presidency). But how do Americans get themselves elected governor or senator? There are exceptions, but in the main it is by first getting elected to the House, or to statewide office (lieutenant governor, attorney general, etc). I call these "feeder" positions for the presidential track. The US has perhaps 1,000 such positions available for a population of approximately 335 million, or about one per 335,000 Americans. The UK's feeder positions—seats in the House of Commons—are far more numerous—approximately one position for every 100,000 Britons. There's more competition for presidential feeder track positions in America than the equivalent in the UK, and this mechanically has the effect of rendering Americans who arrive in Congress older than Britons who arrive in Parliament. The gap isn't huge—I think only about 3 years—but it adds up when you consider that, at that point (typically mid 40s), a talented Briton might plausibly be competing for their party's leadership in as little as five years (Cameron became the leader of the opposition—the UK equivalent of White House nominee—only four years after his first election to the House of Commons). But in America, House members typically serve at least a couple of terms before becoming Senators—and even then more often than not aren't considered prime presidential material until they've been reelected. That's the same for governors: although there are exceptions, you can make a much more compelling case for becoming your party's nominee for the presidency one you're in your second term as governor (and that's often after serving a full term in statewide office before becoming governor).
Obama (47) and Bill Clinton (46) seem really outlier-ish from our perspective in 2024 in terms of their ages when elected POTUS (Bill Clinton even more so than Obama, as he was elected governor at the age of 32! That's pretty unheard of these days). But 40-somethings becoming British Prime Ministers—John Major (47), Tony Blair (43), David Cameron (43), LIz Truss (47), Rishi Sunak (42)—are more common than those over 50, at least since the late 1970s. And Margaret Thatcher was only 53. Indeed, incredibly, Keir Starmer is the *first* PM to take office after the age of 60 since James Callaghan nearly a half century ago! A quick glance at other democracies reveals a similar capacity to select leaders who are young and vigorous.
The United States has become a gray, Kremlinesque gerontocracy by contrast.
America could ease this situation a bit by resuming the long-abandoned practice of expanding the House of representative every decade. That would make it easier for Americans to enter high level politics at a younger age. But beyond that, yes, we need real political parties again!
Right on cue from this week's The Economist:
"But age-related concerns in American politics run deeper than Messrs Biden and Trump. Data compiled by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, a Swiss-based organisation, show that America has the oldest legislators in the rich world. The average age of those who sit in the House of Representatives and the Senate is 59, two decades older than Mr Vance and almost a decade older than the oecd average for elected lawmakers. Mr Biden is 22 years older than the average head of government in the same group."
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2024/07/17/american-politicians-are-the-oldest-in-the-rich-world?
I think one of the biggest mistakes we ever made as a polity was limiting the House to 435. My main objection to it is that it means that representatives from different states have different size constituencies, but your argument that it's too hard to get a House seat when you become eligible at 25 also seems accurate.
Still don't quite understand why we stopped expanding the House. And yes, the effects of this have been entirely negative.
The usual explanation I've seen historically is that members of the House don't like the idea of adding seats because it substantially increases the risk they'll get pushed into a competitive district by the resulting redistricting. In recent years, I would presume Republicans would also be increasingly opposed to it because it would dilute their advantage in the Electoral College.
Sure. Don't rock the boat when you've got it good.
Adding a couple hundred more of them would just make each of them individually more powerless and make the only meaningful vote they take be the one where they vote for leadership.
What power do they have now? A Republican senator's literal only job is to eat lunch on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, and vote "no" on nominations.
They didn’t want to do rotational votes or build a new building.
I suspect the answer is pure status quo bias.
But reality is expanding the House would definitely help Democrats. So for the same reason DC is not a state, expansion is likely off the table. https://www.amacad.org/ourcommonpurpose/enlarging-the-house/section/6. Although based on this model House expansion of say 30 seats wouldn't have much of an impact.
"But reality is expanding the House would definitely help Democrats."
I think this is inaccurate unless there are additional restrictions on gerrymandering introduced. Smaller seats reduce natural gerrymandering while making partisan gerrymanders more effective. Republicans do more of the latter while Democrats rely more on the former.
Carter, Regan, Obama, Clinton, Trump, Biden and the younger Bush never served in the House, nor did any of them hold minor statewide office. People with what it takes to be president tend to make their entry at the senatorial or gubernatorial level.
In fact, George HW Bush is the only person elected President in the last 50 years to ever serve in the house. Only Biden and Obama served in the Senate, and Obama didn’t even even finish a full term. Too much time in Congress does not a president make.
I think you're defining minor statewide office differently than I would. Clinton was AG before he was governor, Carter and Obama were a state senators before becoming governor/senator. Biden didn't hold minor statewide office, but he was a city councilor before he ran for Senate. All of these guys held at least 2 elected offices before running for president.
Oddly enough, you're right about all the Republicans. Reagan and Bush Jr. both got in directly at governor. But they also had big name recognition already- Reagan from his movie career and Bush from his dad. Obviously Trump was also a celebrity already.
At the risk of wading into dangerous culture war waters, if the Democratic delegates this year want to do something useful, they should adopt a party rule that, going forward, the party will not nominate anyone for President who will be older than a certain age by the end of two terms, so this doesn't happen again.
In terms of electability, that would likely have a mild disparate impact in favor of women at this point. Maybe it shouldn't be true, but in society today with a few rare exceptions, having the average age of party grandees get older and older probably favors men. A private political party, rather than public laws, is a better place to push changes like that.
Lifetime appointments to the Supreme court should be reserved for people >75 year old. Now if we had term limits ...
For Democrats, the party typically picks the presidential nominee.
Many of the same traits that make the person successful as a politician -- incredibly high ego, a desire for power, self-belief that is off the charts, a need to be in the limelight -- are the same reasons they hate the idea of stepping down. They'd rather be compromised and still "in the game" than retire and be seen as just a regular person.
A friend of mine once said it is hard transition to go from a VIP to an FIP, a Formerly Important Person.
Clearly they undervalue napping.
I imagine Biden still gets some good naps in.
I think a related issue is the apparatchiks.
One of the many great parts of “Veep” was highlighting the many ways that a variety of people in politics are desperate beyond words to “in the room” when stuff goes down. In “Veep” this is played to comedic effect (and to be honest, probably with too much of a cynical lens) but of course the reason this works as comedy is because of the realization there is definite truth to this warped version of reality.
If the President/senator in question steps down there is a cascade effect to the aides who also now need to find something else to do. Now reality is all of these people very likely can find cushy/high paying gigs elsewhere; political consultant, cable news talking head, aide to another politician etc. But that would still mean you’re no longer as close to power as you once were.
Also, there’s going to be a big “first mover advantage” to inking that book deal as everyone wants to know when Biden’s age issues went from more theoretical to a genuine problem.
It’s possible that there’s no dramatic moment anyone can point to, that aides just managed to not see the deterioration because it was a matter of cumulative subtle changes over time, that time being years studded with work that kept them too busy to notice how much they were making excuses for him. And considering how Biden’s aides are still sticking with him, it’s possible that these are people loyal enough that they won’t be running out to sign a book deal (except maybe if Biden is the nominee and Trump wins, at which point all hell will break loose).
His aides might even love him, and it's hard to admit age related deterioration in people you love.
That's always been the case though. But the huge increase in the average age of a congressman and Senator is new. So what's changed?
I suspect it is one of the miracles of modern medicine.
Not really happening in other Western countries though, so that's not it, I think
Other countries have stronger parties that help force people to turn over the reins to fresh faces in time for the party to benefit.
In other countries you serve at the pleasure of the party. You can be told to go jump in the lake, that you're not continuing as a member of Parliament from your party, as Jeremy Corbyn was this past UK election by Labour. It happens that his brand is so strong in his riding that he won the election against Labour anyway.
They don't need to primary you in other countries.
Could the DNC or RNC just arrogate that power to themselves by trying to use a combination of trying to get people to care about whether a candidate is "[R/D]NC-endorsed" (as the ABA tries to do with judicial candidates) and/or use some level of trademark law to either try to make "Democrat" a brand-name that one can't affiliate with without approval of the party or else (likely more plausibly) re-brand as "Dem2crats" in a way that allows them greater branding power?
Could be something as simple as young, ambitious people staying out of politics and in more lucrative private sector jobs.
There's something to that. But I think it's more tied to inequality in that as the spread between what you could earn in the private sector vs. the public sector widen from the 90s forward ... that's created way too high a status / lifestyle penalty for public service. I mean the CDC Director salary controversy was over $375k. If feel like that role in the private sector is making $1.0 - $1.5m. He's since taken a pay cut to $209k which is crazy because his prior salary was $757k. There's just too high a talent pay gap to create a pipeline.
EDIT: I just think this is crazy. A House Rep. salary is $174k. Post-MBA, McKinsey and Bain are paying $192k + $70k target bonus. I feel like the House should be paying $500k and the Senate should be paying like $1.5m. Just using consulting because I feel like that's a realistic career path for someone who's moderately ambitious.
Or, we could simply impose very strong financial disclosur laws and let members of Congress have other jobs. That's what the UK does. Is there any evidence their parliament is more corrupt than Congress?
Yeah. Could work. I think the Texas House is part time right so reps. can ~ have full time jobs? But I'm thinking more about building a way more competitive talent pipeline. I think it's silly, sad, stupid that the current career path is like work for government then go be a lobbyist to get paid.
I think passing laws and appropriating over $6 Trillion in spending is a full time job. I don't want their attention divided.
Bad pay plus public service has little upside except for the super ambitious and is no longer seen as doing your patriotic duty or whatever. Our local PA state rep in my Philly neighborhood is young and tech savy and goes to tons of local community events to meet people and takes pride in the neighborhood, but half of the folks on the local facebook neighborhood page hate him just because of his political party. Even benign jobs like local election officials are retiring/resigning in droves now that a non-controversial position that you could do as a community service for 20 years now carries the threat of political violence.
People who assume all politicians are corrupt make lousy candidates.
It’s the relative success of capitalism that is preventing folks from going into public service!
A lot of fortunes have been created in politics.
True but it's the high risk/high reward route. I don't think Obama knew that he would get a $100 million deal with Netflix for narrating a nature show, post presidency, when he got into politics or ran for President.
There aren't too many low risk/reward ways to make a fortune. Is politics a lot worse? Politics is proximity to power by definition, and that's about the oldest and most reliable way to get rich.
We've stopped expanding the House. So, with time, the ratio of citizens per available seat has expanded. That's far from the whole story—as John FL points out, modern medicine plays a role—but with the passage of time House seats have simply, mathematically become rarer, as have statewide offices and other, similar positions that put one on the track high office like Senator, VP and POTUS. Compare this to other wealthy democracies.
Note that this would still be true (if less so) under literally any sub-linear-in-population expansion of the House. Under a linear expansion since the time that the house was set at 435 representatives it looks like we'd have a House of about 1,178 people.
True.
I actually favor something like a linear expansion. Not that it will ever happen, but, my preferred formula would be: smallest state gets two reps and we use that as the basis for district size. That would yield something like a 1,165 member House in 2024.
I really don't think there's anything wrong with the house having 1178 people. A lot of countries that are much smaller than ours have bigger legislatures. The UK has 650 in the commons and more than 700 lords, for example. Ours is 24th largest even though we're the 3rd biggest in population.
I would guess that fewer competitive seats exacerbates this problem. If you keep winning reelection, why would you leave?
It’s like saying, “ Michael Jordan would be even more legendary if he wasn’t such an asshole.” They are mostly inseparable.
Axelrod has said that when Obama was considering running for president, they had sincere discussions of whether he was too psychologically heathy to win.
When I think about ambition in business and politics I'm always reminded of the movie Nightcrawler. It really nails a certain type of person. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K7bEdW47Fw
I agree that much of this is a function of the personality types that are drawn to the hyper-competitive arena of statewide and national politics. I also think it’s true that these jobs require enormous sacrifices in one’s personal life that accrue over the course of a career, often leaving the officeholders with no real “there” there when they retire. Ancient Senators doddering around the capitol seem like sad cautionary tales for their younger colleagues.
It’s especially strange once the risks of staying too long were graphically demonstrated by Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
She died being adored as the Notorious R.B.G., and there's still a lot of Ginsberg cultists out there, I'm not sure it's that much of a cautionary tale for a selfish or narcissistic politician.
For a lot of them dying in power is winning
A parsimonious answer is that politics selects for extreme narcissism.
True in every democratic country though, and e.g. in France leading politicians are mostly under 50
They're really serious about that retirement age!
Sortition looking better all the time.
US parties are weak so individual officeholders treat their office as their personal entitlement, and people (or at least politicians) are terrible judges when it comes to their own capacities and indispensability for all the reasons everyone else is saying. I keep thinking that this would work much better if the Democratic caucus in Congress could just vote Biden out and elect a new leader. But members of Congress do this too as you point out.
That makes sense. I've been looking for an explanation of why the US *in particular* has super-old politicians, and why that's only recently become true. The relative weakness of the parties looks like a prime suspect, since it's also uniquely American and fairly new.
It does explain why its the US in particular, in the UK as soon as a party leader shows sufficient weakness they will be hit with a no confidence attempt. Often they go nowhere but having them constantly looming as a Sword of Damocles is rather effective at making politicians who are failing resign before they have to face the ignominy of being ousted (in fact even surviving a VoNC is considered the point at which a British politician should resign).
Which British person said "All political careers end in failure"?
I think the UK system makes that more or less true by default: you're in power until you lose it by failing, not by dying in office or retiring at age 92. It must be less enjoyable for the politicians, compared to our arrangement, but I think it's better for everyone else.
"All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs." was written by Enoch Powell in his biography of Joe Chamberlain.
I think the recency is mostly about improvements in health care. Plenty of past politicians have stayed long past their prime. And seniority matters in Congress which doesn't help.
Strom Thurmond is a prime example.
Besides weak parties, improvements in health care technology are almost certainly contributing to the gerontocracy problem as well -- people don't just live longer, but remain healthy longer as well.
That sounds right too. I was skeptical that rising life expectancy was that much of a factor because the median age in Congress has risen faster than that, but if you allow for people functioning better at any given age it might explain more.
(Although if the trend were just politicians getting very old while still remaining fully functional, I'm not sure we'd be discussing it as a problem)
I think on your latter point we need to distinguish between mental and physical health. There's been a lot more advancement on the latter than the former over the past 50 years or so; i.e., we've gained probably 10 to 15 years of physical health, but maybe only 5 to 7 years of mental health, so you have an increasing population of people with energy levels and the mobility necessary to handle decent public schedules, but whose brain functions are deteriorating.
I don't think this is unique to the US. Winston Churchill hung on until he was physically unfit. The Soviet Union famously suffered from a geriatric problem at the end (with countless Brezhnev jokes found all over the place), Xi Jinping is 71 and is unlikely to go away any time soon, Japan also has fairly old leadership.
It is true other places do it better than the US (and I think weak political parties are part of the problem), but I don't think this is just an 'us' issue.
Churchill left office 70 years ago! You might as well bring up William Gladstone.
Keir Starmer is the first UK Prime Minister to attain that office after the age of 60 since 1976. FIRST! And during this time fully five PMs have taken office in their 40s. Look at Canada. Look at Australia. Look at France. The United States has become an outlier.
You're basing 'outlier' on one country and I brought up Churchill purely because I know more about him than other international leaders. People tend to hang around until they're forced out
This is why we rarely have player managers in modern sports. A star athlete will want to compete even when he’s injured or having a bad game. He will be extremely reluctant to bench himself. Smart athletes understand their sport every bit as well as coaches, but they can’t view their own performance with detachment.
No no Sonia, *of course* we're not talking about you!
Sotomayor should probably have retired in June but it's not like the other examples--retiring after only fifteen years on the Court to make sure a Democrat appoints her replacement would be a new level of strategic retirement behavior. The most recent retired justice (Breyer) was appointed in 1994 and she was appointed in 2009. The problem re Sotomayor is not her staying on too long in any kind of objective sense but that it's unclear when her next good retirement chance will be.
Norms are shattering around us like mirrors in a funhouse shootout, why not just take strategic retirement to a new level to stave off a 7-2 conservative court majority?
I agree. There's some risk it encourages the conservative justices to do the same and diminish the possibility of a conservative-to-liberal switch from death or medically forced retirement, but the downside risks of her staying are worse in my opinion. But it's not really like RBG (who was older, less healthy, and longer on the Court in 2014) and even less like Biden (who on top of the political risks is clearly less capable of doing the job than he was four years ago).
Hopefully no one gives her a cool nickname like 2Pac Sotomayer which gives her a strange level of culture cache!
Part of it is people are less likely to drop dead at 62 from a stroke or heart attack.
Working an important job in Washington is fun. It’s a relatively posh, decorative, besuited, relaxing, ego-boosting, nice-smelling, superpower-y place to live and work nowadays, far more so than in, say, the 1970’s.
It’s especially fun if you’ve been there for a while and have spent many, many years climbing the ladder. Even more so if you came from a relatively grungy, generic place on the map with residents you would rather not live around. Or if you remember it as such.
In any case, it does appear to be a uniquely American thing. It’s the one way in which we genuinely do resemble the late Soviet Union.
A big difference is certainly that a lot of countries use voting methods that involve "party lists," where party leaders get to directly pick who the candidates are and public name recognition plays little to no role in voters' choices.
My family used to read a chapter from a Viking pulp novel every Christmas, and a memorable bit there was someone saying he didn't want to die in the straw like a cow.
Joe Biden has wanted to be president for decades, he's not going to resign and die in a nursing home. He's going to be there until the bitter end, dreaming of going out in a blaze of glory.
No offense, but your family sounds really weird!
It makes tourtiere pie sound downright normal.
He mentions Vikings. I'm wondering if it's a Nordic thing. IIRC the Danes (or is it the Swedes?) watch Donald Duck cartoons on Christmas Eve.
That *would* make a little more sense for the Viking thing!
Maybe Finns? Donald Duck (Aku Ankka) is wildly popular in Finland, for some reason.
Maybe that's it—Finland.
Then he shoves ahead of a surprised Mary and Joseph in line and takes the last room in the inn, right?
>He's going to be there until the bitter end, dreaming of going out in a blaze of glory.<
Not if 51% of his delegates invoke the good conscience clause at the convention. I'm not saying this nuclear option is likely. But I think we may be on the cusp of a "new ticket" tsunami.
I think "giving dramatic speeches at the convention, trying — and failing — to keep the final few delegates after 49% from straying" would count as a blaze of glory.
It seems apparent to me that the grueling task of running for higher office demands a significant level of narcissism generally. And to “turn that off,” especially when one has lost a lot of the relative neuroplasticity of a more youthful office-holder? Tough. Then add in Joe Biden’s history of being advised to give up before other challenges, the previous abuse he suffered for a speech impediment, and the successes he’s had in the past after hanging in there? Worse.
Kamala Harris would surely be a better candidate now. With Josh Shapiro as VP? Now there’s a combo!
I'm genuinely curious, is this truly different from most other political arenas? Quick googling shows that Senate is higher in average than UK, as a quick comparison. House is about the same, though? Taking the states as individual things, it is not surprising that some places without term limits have much older representation. Compared to the global arena, it seems far more normal, as well?
In European countries the actual leaders are *vastly* younger. Both the current and the previous UK cabinets were staffed by people aged 35-60, led by a 43 year old last time and a 61 year old currently. In the Netherlands PM Rutte retired recently at age 57, after 14 years. The 35 year old PM of France was recent nearly ousted by the 29 year old candidate of the far right, and has submitted his resignation to the 46 year old President Macron. The PM of Sweden is 61. The Chancellor of Germany is 66 and that’s getting near the upper limits for a European politician.
I did not mean to imply the US would be near the bottom of the lists. I was more curious what things looked like if you opened it up to other realms. Kings of the middle east and such. I see a few places have an odd cheat where they have ridiculously old kings, but younger ministers that take the head of state mark.
To quantify, add in India (74), Brazil (79), etc., and the ages start to get pulled up rather high. Not even having to pull in China (71) and Russia (71). (And again, I'm unclear how to consider places that have royalty, still.)
It's a real downside of living in a gerontocracy, that's for sure.
Same. I'd bar persons from becoming POTUS or Vice President after 75 or so, and from serving in Congress beyond 85. I'm actually inclined to think when the Biden/Trump era is behind us, we might actually get bipartisan support for such an amendment. Seems like it would enjoy broad support.
That's the kind of thing I expect would poll very well with the general public and yet no member of Congress will ever introduce an amendment to achieve or, if a such an amendment is eventually introduced, it will never be allowed to go to a vote. There are way too many Representatives and Senators who dream of becoming President and dying on January 21 after the last year of their second term.
Phase it in.
Well, yes, or have it kick in after 20 years or something. But that actually is a good idea for a bunch of reforms for all sorts of different things (e.g., Supreme Court term limits), but Congress tends to be allergic to doing that too.
At one point they also dreamed of serving 12 years like FDR yet that one passed
I agree that a more moderate Kamala Harris would be a formidable candidate. But that version of Kamala doesn't exist, if she ever did.
I was a little hopeful earlier this week that Biden's chances were better than conventional wisdom would suggest. But between his inability to be coherent for even a teleprompter speech (see NAACP speech highlights from this week), his increasingly narcissistic attitude toward policy questions and, most surprisingly to me, a relatively subdued and cohesive Republican National Convention, I'm more pessimistic than even immediately after the debate.
I'd still rather take my chances with Kamala than Joe. At least she will put up a good fight.
"I'd still rather take my chances with Kamala than Joe. At least she will put up a good fight."
Yup.
And a good fight translating into a close election—even if Trump still ends up winning—preserves downticket wins for Democrats. I suppose it's too much to hope for that Democrats will emerge from this election holding one of the chambers. But that is my hope!
It's been kind of shocking how Biden's image has changed over the last month - the nasty and defensive attitude he's taken has revealed him to be a bitter old man rather than a kindly grandpa type.
Not to defend him too much, but it probably feels like quite literally the whole world is against him at this point. The people around him should've never let the confused angry old man side of him show in public.
100% agree. It's no excuse, but he thinks he's been fated for this job for decades. He comes in, beats Trump. accomplishes more than anyone expected, and then gets killed for it.
I graduated in 09 and remember the snail like recovery from the Great Recession. It did permanent damage to my life If I was Biden I could totally get feeling like I solved an economic crisis super quickly, which my old boss who didn't want me to run in 2016, couldn't.
The fact the people who are calling on him to drop out come disproportionately for folks who backed guys like Mayor Pete makes him more dismissive. Mayor Pete's main accomplishment is he has the bio that Dem donors (and his old boss) love.
And I also suspect the fate of Carter/GHWB stays on him. Moderate presidents who leave after 1 term tend to get destroyed. The ideologues always hated them and love to say they lost because they were too moderate.
that said he should drop out. He is being selfish by not dropping out. He's done the best job of the economy of any POTUS in my adult life but the public hates the taste of the medicine and think he's too old. He's also being petty indulging personal grievances (no matter how legit they are).
Sigh
Age takes it's toll, and nobody likes it. In the Copa America final, when Messi twisted his ankle and was subbed out for a less experienced player, he went to the sideline and sobbed -- he knew it was his last Copa America game and he didn't get to finish it or even score. But he had to be subbed out for the good of the team.
>The people around him should've never let the confused angry old man side of him show in public.<
I'm glad they did. Makes it less likely he'll be able to hold on. I hate that for me it's come to hoping he screws up, but, provided it's not something serious that would harm the country, I am indeed rooting for him to screw up. Not proud to say that. But it's the honest truth. He needs to step down—the quicker the better for the country's sake.
Sure, but ideally they would've convinced him not to run again in the first place. The present situation can be salvaged, but it's an iceberg that should have been easily avoidable.
Yes. That would have been ideal. Even more ideal would be if Amy Klobuchar had won the nomination, and Klobuchar-Booker were now up eight points in most polls.
Biden, and Biden alone, deserves mitiagting circumstances: his own senility makes him behave badly. This is sadly common. We should remember him like he was before his decline. That's the only fair thing. This consideration does NOT however go towards his family and close circle. Their behavior is unforgivable. They have humiliated a great man instead of protecting him, and endangered the whole nation in the process.
Yeah, one of the things about people going through mental decline is that in their lucid moments, they don't won't to admit they aren't as sharp and are getting closer to death and in their senior moments, they aren't sharp enough to know how far they've fallen. A lot of people in this thread seem to have forgotten how hard it is for people in this position to admit the main independent part of their life has passed.
The points people have raised about how family fights around stuff like "Dad you can't drive any more" style fights can be pretty nasty and hard seems pretty relevant. Or see "Ma, it's not a nursing home, it's a retirement community!" from The Sopranos etc.
It sucks and it's depressing.
The evidence of Biden’s serious mental decline has been there to see for years. The evidence that he’s mean and a bully has been there to see for decades. But your eyes must be open to see.
As the convention has gone on, it has gotten a lot more full-throatedly MAGA. The post shooting serenity seems to have lasted only a few days.
JD Vance's convention speech was full-on blood and soil nationalism, albeit without the "we must purge the land of foreigners" obverse side of the coin.
“That version of Kamala doesn’t exist, if it ever did”
She literally wrote a book on a moderate message of policing which Matt cited, and ran on that message in multiple campaigns. She was billed as “America’s prosecutor” in 2019.
The 2020 election rolled around and as Matt pointed out, things got really, really weird. Reeling from George Floyd and Covid, primary candidates had to move left, which was inauthentic for Harris, everyone could tell, people called her a “cop” and she dropped
I would be willing to consider a truly moderate/centrist Democrat for president. Somebody like Bill Clinton would be very tempting.
And no Biden didn't govern as a moderate at all.
I think the worst thing Biden could have possibly done in 2020 was announce he was picking a “black woman” as his vice president. Who did that help? It was such a weird thing to do. The number 1, 2 and 3 attacks against Harris is going to be the fact she was an unqualified DEI hire by a senile old man. This is going to resonate with some voters, who in the wake of 2020, feel that their companies launched well intentioned but often bad DEI programs that rewarded employees based on skin color and fostered tense atmospheres at workspaces.
Yes, if he'd made the same picks (both Harris and Jackson) then the people saying "oh they're diversity hires" would seem like assholes, but when he came out ahead and said "I have narrowed my candidate pool based on race and gender", those people have more of a point.
It was also a bad idea with Ketanji Brown Jackson. Why mention her skin colour at all?!
Because he made a deal with Clyburn for an endorsement in the primary. It was a very clear quid pro quo.
And you think Clyburn wouldn't have noticed she was a black woman without Biden specifically mentioning it?
Clyburn wanted an explicit promise. At the debate. If you have an issue with that take it up with him.
Personally I would’ve highlighted her less obvious attributes.
It wasn't weird at all in that post-Floyd moment, where it was mainstream to call opposition to affirmative action, support for policing, and even standardized testing as "racist". At the time it wasn't clear that the moment would only last a year or so.
It wasn't weird, but it was a bad choice even in the post-Floyd moment -- it's not like we're talking about some "invisible" identity group (e.g., being gay, non-Christian, etc.) where you have to explicitly flag that to get the "DEI points" for the appointment. Harris (and KBJ too!) being a black woman speaks for itself for anyone who is concerned about diversity. No one was going to miss those facts about her, but EXPLICITLY saying those were factors in choosing her immediately implied that she wasn't necessarily the best qualified person for the job.
The moment never existed. Affirmative action failed in CA of all places in 2020
Affirmative action has been failing in California for a long time.
Kamala Harris is a catastrophe of a candidate. I have zero belief that putting her in the spotlight will make her more popular instead of less. Any of the other options(except maybe Gavin Newsom) for replacing Biden are better ones no matter how messy the process for doing so, or who might be mad about it.
Nonetheless she clearly has a better chance than Biden. She at least has some outlier upside opportunity where she's competitive with Trump. Biden doesn't.
More importantly, I don't think I'm voting for Biden right now, but, if he drops out, I'm absolutely voting for whoever replaces him purely to reward someone actually making a choice that actually deserves rewarding. Any chance to incentivize that kind of decision making in politics is too important to pass up no matter how much I might loathe Kamala.
This is why I think the following twofold strategy sets up her AND the party best. Either Biden:
(A) Resigns and lets her run as president, allowing her to set up a veepstakes at the convention.
or
(B) Steps aside, and she embraces an open convention. The “I’ll take all comers” attitude reinforces her legitimacy by making it clear that she hasn’t been HANDED the nomination, and in case she gets defeated fair and square, it all happens out in public, and she’ll have precommitted to endorsing the nominee without complaining to her K-hive.
B is the only option that makes sense. It seems from the way he conducted himself at the NATO meeting and press conference afterwards (despite the awkward name mistakes), Biden is not yet so diminished he can’t function as President for the next six months. I don’t see Kamala having such a hard time at an open convention made up of delegates pledged to Biden, who want to get the nomination process over with as quickly as possible so they can move on to the campaign.
I think your assertion that he is not so diminished that he can’t function as President is simply wrong. He is that diminished. I can’t get my head around why people are so reluctant to admit this very simple and obvious truth. For Matt it was partisanship which makes even self proclaimed smart people - dumb. But aren’t we beyond that? He’s too old. He is greatly diminished. What is so hard to get about this?
I'd like to see material proof that he can't function as President, e.g., some recent policy or action that shows there's a vacuum in the Oval Office. Don't infer it from his public speaking performance.
In any case, we want to ease Biden aside. Getting him to leave the race is like moving a small mountain. Getting him to do that *and* resign as President is like moving Mt. Everest with a teaspoon.
Matt and his buddy Ezra have made the case that communication is an important part of governance in a Democracy. It is elevated in importance in an election year. I hear Democrats say look at Joe’s enormous accomplishments, look at all the great legislation. Yeah, and look at his poll numbers. Look at how he is losing in swing states. Matt and Ezra are right that being able to make the case to the electorate is important.
What if a 3am like emergency happens and we need Joe to make tough decisions? Do we the people trust him to do that? Mostly no, maybe you do, but mostly no. There is your vacuum. Leadership. He can’t lead if he can’t communicate. The optics are important and he looks weak. Not his fault that he does. He’s old. It’s normal. But he shouldn’t be POTUS.
WSJ article says Biden was not capable when meeting with foreign countries.
That's a fail
Exactly. There is strong reporting to suggest Biden has already failed your test. Pointing to an OK performance doesn’t take away from the fact that there have been and will be times when Biden is clearly not OK. Who the hell is actually running the country?
They could choose to play up the severity of Biden's bout of COVID, saying that it has made him unable to effectively do his job, either temporarily or permanently. Seems like an easy out... and I think there's a lot of benefit to Harris being the incumbent if she's the nominee.
(Aside: Why is it "Kamala" and "Hillary" instead of "Harris" and "Clinton" -- in the latter case I can see there's potential confusion with Bill, kind of, but there's none in Harris' case.)
Fair point on Kamala, but HRC herself literally used "Hillary" as her major branding in both 2008 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_2008_presidential_primary_campaign#/media/File:Hillary_Clinton_presidential_campaign_logo,_2008.svg ) and 2016 ( https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/04/14/shooting-arrows-at-hillary-clintons-new-campaign-logo/ ), presumably to draw a distinction between herself and Bill Clinton.
There are more Harris’s. Not many Kamalas. Same as Bernie vs Sanders
There another Harris in presidential politics? I don't think it's really ambiguous.
I think the concerns about the nomination being handed to Harris are bogus.
Democrats are absolutely desperate to beat Trump. They (ok, we) want hope, we want a jolt of energy. We're sick of the internal party conflict and emotional angst. If the nominee magically becomes Harris and she goes out and gives a barnburner of a speech, everyone on our side will be ecstatic, people will be energized, and the money spigots will begin to gush.
And who will complain that the handoff was rigged? Will Whitmer? No.* Newsom? Nope. Shapiro? No and no. They'll accept it and chant, "Let's go, Harris!"
*Internally Whitmer will be secretly hoping that Harris loses in November, of course. If Harris wins, then the Big Gretch is locked out of the 2028 nomination as well, and 2032 is a geologic age away in political terms, meaning Whitmer will never be a likely candidate for President.
P.S. C'mon, Joe. Do the right thing. Step aside *today*, dominate the headlines, and absolutely destroy Trump's final night at the convention. Oh that would be so sweet.
She’s right there. She was right there when Shapiro and Whitmer knew it was Dem primary suicide to be seen as stepping ahead of the first black female VP while she was doing the honorable thing despite Biden’s decision. Billed as part of the ticket, she commands part of that mandate from the primary voter.
>>And who will complain that the handoff was rigged?
Swing voters and the center-right haters who are constantly shouting in their ears.
*You and I* know that the concerns are bogus. But as you amply demonstrate, OUR votes are pre-determined. Theirs aren't.
Swing voters are the confused, flighty creatures of Agent K's famous speech. The more we can do to allay even the dumbest of their concerns -- without stooping TOO low, of course -- the better chances we have to win.
If swing voters reject Harris, this won't be the reason.
No one reason is ever "the reason" in overdetermined times like this.
Everything is a margin play. So, we have to play ALL the margins.
A is better, an open convention is only a democratic process among the politicians and insiders who attend, not among the broader party, whose voters were only given one real choice on their ballots. Biden getting fully out of the picture by resigning also frees up Harris to be her own candidate, at least for a few months. It would have been better for Biden to announce he wouldn't be running last year and have an open *primary*, but we're way past that now and this is what we're left with.
This idea that it's better for Harris's campaign if she's President as well is not well thought-out. OK, she's President right now. To take just one of a thousand examples, how does she handle Israel-Gaza and Bibi? Leave aside that she has no experience in dealing with either and would likely stumble, why in hell would she ever want to inherit that swamp of a problem, with absolutely no political upside and tons of downside?
Let it stay Joe's problem until Jan. 20, 2025.
If Biden resigns as POTUS, Democrats have to absolutely be certain Harris will prevail at the convention as nominee. Never say never, but I think it would be super dangerous for Democrats if the convention passed over the first Black woman to serve as President, and in the bargain truncating her term to five months.
I'd guess if she's elevated to the presidency before Chicago there's a 99.99% chance she'd be the nominee, but let's make sure of that. Otherwise, Biden shouldn't resign until after the convention.
If Democrats end up nominating Whitmer or Beshear or Kelly or whomever (extremely unlikely, but these are uncertain times), I reckon it would be best if Joe Biden remains as POTUS until his term is up in January.
I think your reasoning in your second paragraph demonstrates that you're overthinking the overall risk. As you say, it's 99.99% sure that she'd be the nominee; that's *why* I assumed she'd be presiding over a veepstakes, not facing any realistic challenge.
If she's elevated, there's no way she ISN'T the nominee.
>there's no way she ISN'T the nominee<
Maybe I'm more risk averse than you, but it seems to me Democrats have made a number of unforced errors—pretty much completely ignored at the time—that have come back to bight them back ferociously (pressuring Biden not to run in 2016; RBG not resigning; Biden opting to try for second term; Biden's running mate process; etc). I'm tired of these screwups. And yes, we're in a very unpredictable situation if Biden opts out.
I agree as it happens that Harris will almost certainly be the nominee if she's POTUS headed into that convention (or even only VP). But what's the downside risk of Biden resigning the presidency in late August instead of early August? We can't obsess over tail risk, sure. But we shouldn't ignore it, either, at least when addressing it doesn't come with a high cost.
Also, while I'm comfortable with Harris as the nominee, and I'd imagine elevating her to the presidency before Chicago does effectively seal the deal (and maybe the DNC could make it official?), I think the optics for the campaign might be better if the convention avoids the appearance of a Harris coronation. We haven't had a true open Democratic convention in more than half a century, so this is all somewhat uncharted waters; but a ballot or two with Harris going up against Dean Phillips or Michael Bennet (or whomever) before she's nominated strikes me as being desirable. I suppose that could happen if she's already President, but I think it's more tenable if she's hasn't succeeded to that office yet.
B sounds good but the reticence, timidity, and behind closed-doors massaging of the Biden debacle by senior Dems indicate that they have no tolerance for that level of unpredictability. They're going to manage this all the way through.
A is only undersold. HE could easily paraphrase LBJ's renunciation/Nixon's resignation speech and defend his reputation on the way out the door.
I would prefer Pete as a Biden replacement because during the 2020 primary Pete was always the best version of Biden available but this seems too low on Harris.
The people still voting for Biden have clearly priced in Harris replacing him soon and Harris has a chance to distance herself from anything unpopular.(Especially if Biden is willing to fall on the sword a bit)
Pete is really good at the communication part of the job. It would be so nice to have a president who could talk like that.
It’s important to remember that Pete commanded very very little support among base black democratic voters.
People keep saying things like this but he seems to poll fine with the entire electorate.
Why do we need to double count any particular voters?
He still has poor name recognition. I just wouldn’t trust the cross tabs on this one too much
Half the slate of any set of presidential candidates have poor name recognition. Who outside political news junkies had heard of John Kerry, or Bill Clinton for that matter, prior to their campaigns?
Yes, I think this applies to a lot of talk about candidates who aren't Biden or Harris.
That's a different thing than the first thing.
It's possible Black voters in the Dem primary proxy better for Swing voters in the general
In a way that general election polling doesn't capture?
Black voters historically haven't been "swing voters".
Harris didn't command all that much either. The only 2 candidates with significant black support in the primary were Biden and Bernie.
One of my spicier takes: public communication is one of the most overrated aspects of the job. Biden's problem isn't that he's bad at it, it's that he just not really capable of it at all anymore.
But Trump is also historically bad at it, so there has to be more to it than that.
I really think this is totally wrong. I don't like the way Trump communicates (and it sounds like you don't either), but there is a large part of the electorate that absolutely loves listening to him. Maybe more than any other politician I can remember.
At one time this is true; now people leave his rallies early.
Trump's gaffes are like your rambling drunk uncle. More amusing than damning, at least for many people. Also, not currently being POTUS, he's free to speak mainly to friendly groups full of people who adore him.
Biden's gaffes are like deer in the headlight moments. They just come across as a lot more damaging. And being president, he realistically has to talk to people as part of his job governing all Americans—not just loyal Democrats.
Contra Pete.
There are some things the American people are just not ready to accept and sadly Pete falls into that category. Yes, it shows an unpleasant streak of bigotry in our population, but we have to deal with reality.
Sadly, Pete will never be President unless and until he changes this fundamental fact about himself.
So stand aside, Pete, and hope that your children will be able to become President in a nation that is finally ready to accept a leader with an impossible to spell Maltese name.
A couple years ago Jonathan Last floated the idea of making him press secretary. It would be a step down from cabinet secretary but a step up into daily media exposure. That said, I don't envy anyone having to get up there and defend Biden right now.
I detest Pete. I'm Blue no matter who and will vote for him but I'll be so bummed out if he's nominated just because a subset of influential liberals swoon over degrees from the right universities.
I don't think Pete is really all that close to the nomination so I wouldn't worry, but I don't think his appeal has much to do with his degrees and more to do with the fact that he can actually articulate a coherent message
He would have gone nowhere in 2020 if he went to a Cal State or a SUNY.
Well I'm not inclined to get into an argument about a strange hypothetical from 4 years ago, but I don't think that's true at all.
There were like 25 people or something running for the Dem nomination in 2020 and Kamala wasn't in the top 20. She's absolutely that bad. She's a long shot at best against Trump, who is himself a catastrophe. Any of Buttigieg/Whitmer/Shapiro/Polis/etc absolutely walk away with it.
What do you mean by, she wasn't in the top 20? I don't have the 2019/20 polling data at my fingertips, but in fact she was one of the top tier contenders, one of a very select group who was ever in first or second place in the polling data.
And by the fall of 2019, when it was obvious the primary had become a two-person race between Biden and Sanders, she was the only one of the other credible candidates who was quick-witted enough to promptly see that and react accordingly by dropping out. The others, Klobuchar, Warren, etc, either weren't as adept at assessing the situation, or had nothing better to do than go through the motions with a zombie campaign well into 2020, maybe to boost their profile or maybe they were just waiting around for lightning to strike.
They didn't run more successful campaigns than Harris -- they were just slower than she was to realize and accept that they weren't going to win.
Coffin is being hyperbolic but her campaign was a Jeb Bush sort of flame out. She had a ton of backing and press love and really bombed.
Only Biden, Pete, Yang, Tulsi, Bernie and I guess Harris ran campaigns that were successful in any way.(For different reasons)
The Jeb Bush flameout in 2016 is not a bad analogy. He wasn't a once-in-a-generation political talent but there was nothing wrong with him as a politician -- he was a popular governor of a swing state. In a different year he very easily could have made it to the top, but the timing wasn't right for him in 2016. Biden too has lost more presidential campaigns than he's won, and nobody says that disqualifies him.
If Jeb were the Republican candidate and Biden refused to step aside, I would be so sorely tempted . . .
Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar also had success in the campaign - more than Gabbard (unless you count making the short list of *Trump* VP candidates a few years later as a kind of success).
Warren staffers did well, Warren just embarrassed herself.
Tulsi made the transition from backbencher to rightwing former democratic talk show person. Sketchy morally but probably a good career move.
At no point did she poll close to the top 3. She entered at like 6% support on name recognition and bled her position the entire time until she dropped out. She was maybe the only candidate in the entire field who got consistently less popular by campaigning. Hell she was a worse candidate than Tulsi fucking Gabbard and I can hardly imagine a more damning indictment.
What do you mean? Wasn’t she at 15%, leading Sanders and Warren, for a few weeks in summer 2019?
Ahhh, when I checked myself the chart didn't go back that far. She did briefly spike up to 13-14% in Jul 2019, but 538 did still have her behind Bernie/Warren.
The country is too polarized and the time for running a normal campaign is too short for anyone to walk away with it. Even if Biden is replaced and the replacement manages to beat Trump, it's going to be close like 2016 or 2020. At this point, I'm not thinking about election outcomes but fundamental principles. I'm not a Democrat but an independent and I can say for sure that I'll never forgive the current Democratic Party or it's leadership for blatantly lying and gaslighting us voters about Biden's mental and physical status and not even meeting the minimum bar.
I don't think you're being fully objective on Harris. As Yglesias has pointed out, her main drawback comes from the fact that the bulk of her political experience prior to 2020 came from competing against other Democrats in a heavily blue state. So yeah, she doesn't sound like Whitmer or Beshear.
But, quite honestly, she's grown into her role. And we also don't know what she would sound like if she were completely free to plot her own course, rather than subordinate her ambition to the real time needs of the Biden campaign.
She was a sharp, effective communicator and manager when she was putting people behind bars in California. I urge you to google up some of her recent appearances in various talk forums. She's really quite good.
Every time people complain about Harris, it seems like all their evidence is from 2019-2021. I hadn't realized that time had frozen.
Also, while I'm not completely immune to the fantasy proposition of a radically different ticket, there's just no polling evidence I've been able to find that suggests Beshear or Whitmer or whoever would perform more strongly than Kamala Harris would against Trump. Maybe they would! But it really is hopium and speculation at this point. Moreover, lack of name recognition and national vetting could be a problem for one of these other candidates.
There are no risk-free options for Democrats. All there is is navigating among different risks and opportunities. But I'm with Matt: Harris paired with a solid running mate seems a much more hopeful proposition than the current ticket. Maybe we can pull out a White House win. Or maybe not, but we keep the Senate (or take back the House). Needless to say, denying MAGA a trifecta would be utterly monumental.
But by that same logic, Steve Bullock would have been a catastrophic choice as well. And I think if he had for whatever reason been picked as the VP and were serving under an aging president (let’s say Warren picked him and then had a stroke or something) we would be a lot more optimistic. Kamala was a poor choice to appeal to a primary audience because she had to / chose to restrain all of her moderate tendencies.
I will grant you that she doesn’t exude “authenticity”, whatever that means, but neither do Buttigieg or Newsom, not sure about Whitmer or Shapiro. She’s not who I’d pick if we were starting from a blank slate, but she’s far better than the alternative.
I think people with strong Dem commitments tend to have blind spot about just how actively repulsive Harris is to exactly the sort of marginal voter they need. Simply not actively driving people away is a huge upgrade.
What is repulsive about her? That is a very strong word, and it sounds like a code word for woman of color, but I don't think that is what you are saying. How can people be repulsed by her if they don't even know much about her?
And heck, I know a lot of people who are repulsed by Trump, and he still won.
Trump is definitely repulsive. Kamala has a similar thing going on in the inverse. They both have this sort of calibrated inauthenticity where every word out of their mouth is mostly content free tribal signaling. Trump uses uses lib-rage baiting offensiveness. Kamala does faux-therapeutic/DEI speak. They're both fairly rambling and incoherent. Neither has demonstrated anything like a principled commitment to the content of their speech. And then you throw Kamala's incredible awkwardness(the mistimed forced laughing good lord) and it just gets pretty unbearable for anyone who isn't the precise target of the signaling.
I wonder if Pete would even really be in contention at an open convention. To me he seems diminished by his stint as Transportation Secretary as compared to the 2020 campaign and lacks the gravitas to be the nominee.
You're already demonstrating the very problem with changing horses mid race.
Kamala is the only practical option, but everyone will come out and share their two cents.
We might have our meager opinions, but media corps and big whale donors will also try to put their thumb on the scale, and do some favor trading behind closed doors.
Let them do deals behind closed doors…better than being left with someone who can’t reliably speak for himself, whom the majority of Democrats clearly don’t want and have been forced to accept because he thinks we owe him four more years.
Secret smoke filled room
He won the primary.
The majority let it known they want him. That's democracy.
He has always been the candidate of process, norms, and institution.
There is no platonic ideal generic democrat, but the grass is always greener.
The time for that is over.
It wasn't a secret he's old.
It was a secret about how much his mental capacity has declined.
Where are you getting this from? Are you a doctor?
I voted for him. I knew he was old but I thought he was still able to prosecute the case and continued to think that until June 27.
I want him to step aside.
What primary? There was no real Democratic primary this year. It was like a Soviet election.
I think you will find that even with our current horse the media corps, the big whale donors and even us with our meager opinions are all sharing our two cents.
Yeah, and I think that's a problem that should be stomped out sooner than later.
Stomping out people sharing their two cents, truly the essence of our great democracy.
Yes, democracy depends on forming coalitions, and not letting certain powerful people pull the politics around at their whim, especially when they're safe enough not to suffer the consequences.
I would much prefer Buttigieg to Harris, but I don't think there's any plausible path to Secretary Pete being the candidate this year even if he really wants it. He's also more than young enough to wait for 2028 or 2032.
I like Pete, but he is short, cerebral, and gay. Basically Michael Dukakis but gayer. It wouldn't stop me from voting for him, but he isn't exactly the central casting version of a president.
I can't judge her ability as a candidate, but her abilities as a person who speaks words and forms sentences seem quite good. I just looked up some recent appearances on youtube. The difference with Biden is quite frankly jarring. What are we still talking about at this point? MY's point 27 is starting to sound like less of a joke now. I also looked up Clinton's speeches from 2015 and they also remarkably clear and cogent. The idea that anything about Biden's performance is normal or acceptable on any level is borderline insane.
Of all the people stumping for Kamala Harris, very few of them outline a trajectory or a contingency plan.
Matt's gone farthest here talking about racism and sexism issue, but it's still pretty weak.
What happens when the convention is chaotic, and shows Americans Dems aren't organized and can't govern? (ala the simpsons)
What happens when Donny finally breaks 50% in the polls over that? And all the polling data and research and models from Biden break down or get thrown out?
Is there any chance some oppo research gets done to find some hypocrisy from when she was a DA, and get former convicted perps doing hit pieces on the news, about how they were screwed by the system? She already doesn't poll well black men, who've been sliding right.
What happens to a next presidential debate, if Donny refuses to show, because he just wants to claim triumphant victory about the first because he beat Joe so bad? Who even is VP for that debate with Vance?
And if people start smearing her as being a Biden backstabber, or that she was part of the cover up to hide his age?
And these are the very simplest of issues to iron out before going whole hog.
The real thing is, that for Harris or Biden, they will heavily rely on a reverse-coattails strategy to win this, where lower democrats/congressmen/celebrities have to get out there and stump for the top of the ticket, because otherwise nothing good will get done during a Trump presidency, and it's better to start that sooner than later with out all this leftist infighting.
They have been governing fine for the last 3 and a half years.
What you are describing is already probably priced in. Biden has been spending on ads while Trump hasn't yet. Things are about to get worse either way.
Of course there is a chance... (I think the beginning of your question might have been rhetorical, but thought I should still address it.) She has been vetted more that most other choices, being VP and all. Attacking her record as prosecutor seems ... counterproductive from the GOP perspective.
He'll get slammed for refusing to debate her? His performances against Clinton were terrible, remember those? We'll probably find out who the VP is at, or right before the convention. Just like we just found out that Vance is Trump's VP.
Pick one, backstabber or loyalist? Which one are you worried about? If they try both, the issue dissolves ... it will be destructive interference. If they stick to one... I still don't see what the problem is. There is little sympathy left for Biden after what he has done, and you can't really blame the VP for being loyal.
These issues don't get ironed out ahead of time, they get dealt with as they are encountered. That is why it helps to have some competent people on the campaign.
The real thing is that the Democrats lost a ton of trust by obscuring Biden's rapid decline, and the only way to regain some of that trust is to deal with the underlying problem, not to stand there frozen like a deer in the headlights.
This the equivalent of saying a football team down 14 points with 2 minutes left shouldn't try an onsides kick because it could be unsuccessful. Well, yeah, of course, but we know staying the course is going to result in a loss. There's no point in just beating the point spread.
If we were dealing with any other major issue with Biden, I'd say that he could potentially overcome it through a strategic change in the campaign. But he can't reverse the aging process and is physically and mentally incapable of running the kind of campaign that could alter the race in his favor.
What’s so bad about Kamala in your view? She’s mostly just been weirdly absent as far as I can tell.
As a campaigner? It's the weird word salad answers to questions, the horribly awkward laughing and the general inauthenticity vibe.
As someone who has followed Harris career, read her book and probably seen most of her speeches, I think that people completely misunderstand her in a way that is really fixable.
The 2020 primary was unique in the sense that not only was there an ex-VP running, there was also a very popular left wing factional candidate running (Sanders) both the moderate and left lanes were clogged up, and Harris picked the wrong lane to try and shift to because she thought that was what the party wanted, when if she just ran as she was running all along she would have done much better.
If I was advising her I would basically have her do the following:
1. Message roughly the same on abortion, seems that position is relatively popular.
2. Hammer the fact that you put away criminals like Trump and that you made the streets safer under your tenure.
3. Lean into the ‘Do not come’ framing on immigration with the compassion around there being legal options and talk about how the GOP tanked immigration reform multiple times.
4. Don’t laugh as much in speeches (I’ve seen this start to happen already)
5. Talk about Trump and Vance as Ivy leaguers who have to support of the billionaire class rather than working people and unions.
6. Talk about record stock market, low unemployment, declining inflation and how the Biden-Harris has made the US have the best pandemic recovery in the world.
7. Talk about investments in infrastructure that Trump could not achieve.
8. Stay clear of court-packing and defund the police and pivot to promising to select good justices
Agreed, I think the key factor in analyzing Harris is whether you think the 2020 primary Kamala was the real Kamala, or her reacting (to be fair, poorly) to the unique circumstances of the primary. I'm willing to believe its the latter.
All else aside Harris has another advantage in that she could pick a moderate-ish swing state pol like Whitmer or Shapiro or Mark Kelly, or Ossof as her running mate.
Think she'd be looking at Andy Beshear or Roy Cooper first.
Cooper 100% over Beshear - leave the "blue pol who does well in a ruby red state" where he is so he can either remain governor for a while or run for Senate in the future and at least make the other side sweat a little like Hogan's doing in MD.
In Kentucky the governor's veto can be overridden by a simple majority. Beshear's not doing a whole lot which is, I think, part of his popularity
He did an almost unbelievably good job threading the needle during Covid. I know a significant number of Kentucky Republicans and I don’t know anyone who really dislikes him. May sound like faint praise but I don’t think it is. Radiates decency and common sense.
Cooper maybe. I think Tennessee is just totally out of reach for Dems in this cycle. And while Beshear would send a strong moderate signal, the primary tangible benefit of a VP nominee is in their home state.
(Edit: KT not TN)
Agreed, Cooper makes so much sense given the swing-ish state and that he is leaving office regardless.
Beshear has the benefit of youth and while Kentucky is out of reach, he would likely do well in the blue wall states.
This is kind of out of left field, but I really like the idea of Mitch Landrieu.
"Liked," but I think an all-female ticket would be a big mistake, so no Whitmer, please.
No Democratic Senator from a swing state, please.
Kamala the Cop vs Trump the Felon has interest optics.
I agree: I think she could come out with a strong law and order message- “We shouldn’t tolerate crime, whether it is shoplifting and car-jackings or fraud committed by white billionaires. I’m Kamala the Cop and I’m going to go after all of it.”
Omit "white" and run it!
Good edit
I think in there is Harris' best shot at being an effective mass communicator.
One of the take-aways I got from the EK podcast about her was that, like Hilary Clinton, she's a much better in person than mass-media communicator.
Get her in the same room as Trump and let her ask questions and she can do the prosecutor thing.
I am quite skeptical that Kamala would be willing or able to use the "safe, legal, and rare" framework when talking about abortion.
Like, yes, being a black woman does ostensibly give her more room to moderate in an electorally savvy way. But she's Kamala Harris. Assuming political savviness on her part is like assuming an articulation of wonky policy details from Trump.
I don’t think Matt is saying that she will make that pivot, rather that she should
I can't un-read that interview with Astead Herndon (who would have been the perfect reporter for a "comeback" profile if only she'd given him something to work with). He asks if her positions have changed from her SF days and her reaction is deeply hostile, basically "I don't know what you are talking about (you idiot)." It left me with the strong impression that she doesn't want to help herself, or acknowledge that she has a problem.
Maybe getting the nomination will put her in less of a crouch, though. Her current position can't be much fun
I hope so, being suddenly in charge of a campaign with four months left would certainly focus the mind. The Herndon interview was such an own goal, though: she's just snooty and dismissive to a sympathetic (although not hackish) Black reporter who is very much on her wavelength and would clearly have loved to write a glowing profile.
[deleted because I thought about it some more and decided that I had misread BK's point.]
Like it or not, if Biden steps down Kamala is overwhelmingly likely to be the nominee. I don't think she's the best candidate, but we've got to be clear-eyed if that's what we're pushing for. So that's what this article is about.
I buy the argument that if you call for Biden to step down you have to think Harris will be an improvement, but is she "overwhelmingly likely" to be the replacement?
Very few influential Democrats seem to actually want her, to the point where Harris skepticism seems to be paralyzing the kick-Biden-out process. Basically none of the people who have called on Biden to drop out has endorsed Harris; the most pro-Harris takes you get are like this one from Matt, admitting that there are better alternatives. Even Clyburn says there would need to be some kind of "mini-primary," not a Harris coronation. Why wouldn't they consolidate behind someone they see as more electable like Josh Shapiro, nudged by Pelosi or Obama if the field gets too big?
During the last three weeks it seem like "the party's decided" on Harris.
[deleted because I thought about it some more and decided that I had misread BK's point.]
[deleted because I wrote, "darn it, dysphemistic, we love to read what you say, so just go ahead and post it," but I decided that would be sucking up too much so I went ahead and deleted it.]
"...just go ahead and post it...."
That's nice of you to say, Marc, but mere confusion on my part does not improve the conversation.
Given the shift in the politics around abortion, she probably shouldn’t use “safe, legal and rare”.
Theres a reason GOP had more success on this issue when the debate was centered on late-term abortion and partial birth abortion. Keep the debate more about “edge” cases and you can keep large slices of the moderate electorate on your side on the issue.
But after Dobbs this topic shifted to the more mainstream cases which are lot harder to make the public feel “icky” about. Also, now the edge cases highlighted are the opposite; ones like when an actual child is pregnant with a rapists baby that put GOP on the offensive.
Lastly, as Matt pointed out and I’ve pointed out repeatedly on here, religious attendance and observance is clearly declining pretty rapidly. Realty is whether we are talking about edge cases or not the center of gravity on this issue has shifted left.
Just a lot to suggest that going back to a mid 90s paradigm is a mistake at least on this issue.
Sure, I'll concede that the electorate is broadly pro-choice.
But the larger point that Harris is unable or unwilling to moderate on contentious social issues stands.
Some of Matt’s other suggestions for potential moderation by her are I think plausible, but no Democrat outside of Manchin is going to talk about Safe Legal & Rare in 2024, that’s clearly not a political slogan that anyone in the Democratic Party feels like reviving.
I don't think, for example, saying "don't come" re the border registers as moderation. I think it registers as "stop making this a political problem for me."
I'm a little concerned about this too. She's been doing great taking it to the Republicans on reproductive rights. But does she know how to talk to swing voters and suburban Republican women on this and other issues? She would have to adapt rapidly as the nominee.
The case for Harris isn't really electoral IMO, it's that she's the easiest solution to the massive coordination problem picking a new nominee would entail especially because delegates have no experience in doing this sort of thing these days, and that's not a small issue.
I totally agree. This is the least messy solution but not the optimal (which would be extremely messy). Even if she loses, which IMO is the likely outcome, the party leadership retains some level of unity and credibility with voters going forward. Right now, they have zero credibility for blatantly lying about Biden.
Yeah, people would mock and sneer her if she lost of course (America defiles it's losers) but that's just the way the game is played. The lasting party damage to everyone else involved including Biden's legacy would be minimal.
Yet another reason why Biden should just take the win, be prez for another 6 months and go back to Delaware to spend time with his grandkids.
Off topic side note: I would pay a lot of money to get a daily 20-30 minute podcast until the convention featuring Matt and Ezra Klein talking about the odds Biden drops out and what Democrats should do.
Bring back the OG Weeds
Not nice of me to say, but I'm only faintly impressed by Brian Beutler, so that would be a good switch.
Yeah Brian isn't horrible, but he's pretty limited and they still don't have great chemistry
This. I’m comfortable with Kamala.
It’s not personal. It’s just business.
There is a lot of uncertainty about how Harris would campaign as a general election candidate. People are overweighting her 2020 primary campaign; that's not a great indicator. The uncertainty is good though since the Democrats are behind and it means she has upside potential
Yeah it’s funny people in the comments are putting far too much weight on the 2020 primary as far as how Kamala would campaign. It was even noted at the time that she campaigned farther left than her actual record in a misguided attempt to voters wanted Warren or Bernie.
And to those of you who think politicians can’t rebrand and pivot away from previous rhetoric please, please take a look at who the GOP just nominated for VP. Whatever positions she would be pivoting from vis a vis 2020 it pales in comparison to Vance’s complete rebranding.
JD Vance's pivot took place over a 4 year period. Kamala Harris only has about 10 weeks.
It's not like Kamala Harris has some longstanding record as an ultra-woke. And in 2020 it's not like she was the left-wing factional candidate (that was Sanders or Warren). In fact part of her problem was that she wasn't any faction's favorite and it muddled her message. She has pushed moderate political messaging before and she can do it again.
Correct. If anything Kamal's turn in 2020 to the left was a quicker about face than anything she would have to do today.
Also, she's been VP now for 3 years. The likely scenario going forward is she would run as a continuation of Biden's policies and vision but with a younger more energetic voice behind it. The chances she deviates that strongly from Biden's record for practical reasons would be low. She would basically be inheriting Biden's campaign apparatus. Plus, she is literally part of the administration now. Would be very hard for her in a few weeks time to just fully disavow Biden's positions on a variety of issues, let alone formulate new ones on the fly.
You get a free shake of the Etch-a-Sketch at the convention!
Without the uncertainty, it would be over. However, fresher faces would bring more uncertainty still.
There is no solution to the Democrats' coordination problem other than Kamala Harris.
Correct, but only because they are wretched safetyists.
The alternative to Kamala Harris is a long and divisive convention battle ultimately resolved on the nth ballot by delegates who have no descriptive legitimacy. That is not a good option.
It’s a better option than rule by behind the scenes power brokers. I want to see the nominee earn it by making beautiful speeches.
I honestly can't tell if "earn it by making beautiful speeches" is sarcastic or not.
At this point I feel like we have to assume that if you are going to vote for Biden you are comfortable with Harris being president because it seems unlikely that even Biden's fiercest defenders believe that he will make it another 4 years.
Given that, it seems to make sense to let Harris just run for president without the baggage of Biden.
It does seems like journalists still somewhat overrated Harris who has had 4 years plus a primary run to show anything that would impress people and largely failed to do so.
I feel like I am less of a "Harris hater" than most people here but I still don't really understand why she was ever considered a top tier primary candidate in 2020.
I think if you watch her stuff before the 2020 primary you would understand. Matt’s point about how her background would have been an asset in any other primary race is the point. This is more clear from her book. Also we have to remember that contrasting yourself in a primary where it’s all versions of the same platform is different from a general with diametrically opposed candidates.
The only moments she stood out was when she called Biden a racist and when Tulsi attacked her for her record as a prosecutor.
People still didn't like crime in 2020, she just failed to make "Smart on Crime" a big part of her brand.
She became notorious for weirdo convoluted policy. https://perchance.org/pgk4gv0c6p
Even Yang or Booker had policy ideas that stuck around, Harris ran a really straight down the middle flame out candidacy.
"Yesterday, I announced that, as president, I'll establish a Social Security program for Latinos who open a sleigh ride that operates for 9 weeks in their backyard."
Now I want to see her actual 2019/2020 announcements
Harris' problems are not solvable. She's been at this long enough. We've seen her in action.
Whoever gets tapped for this is being dropped into an active fight for the most important job in the world on the shortest possible timeline.
It's like me being picked for Superbowl quarterback the night before the big game with everyone saying "We just need to teach him to throw"
I can't imagine any other situation where the stakes are this high and people would accept arguments like this.
We need the absolute best person for this, and Kamala is not in the top 10.
Biden and Kalama both need to go.
I agree that Kamala is not the BEST choice for this but I think that MY is right in saying that at least a part of why Kamala has not made a popular pivot is her position having to toe the Biden line right now. You let her off on her own and she has much more latitude to make some changes. Again, not that she's the best choice but I think MY is attempting to assuage concerns from Dem elites that if no Biden we get Kamala and Kamala bad. If we get Kamala, that's amazing news!!!! Because above all else Kamala is not Biden.
The best evidence of Kamala's poor appeal is seeing her in action during the 2020 primary.
She dropped out on Dec 3, 2019, long before most:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries
People liked the idea of a black woman from a large state, but once they saw her, they lost interest. He campaign imploded.
She also made several large gaffes that would have followed her on the campaign.
- Remember when she said she was going to end private insurance?
- Remember when she said she wanted to put in place the toughest gun laws through executive order?
I heard her say both, and immediately cringed because you just know these are the campaigns ads that will run against her, and both will be electoral poison.
A skilled politician looking to build a coalition would not have said these things.
And under Joe, she was put in charge of the border. The border was the administration's largest unforced error, and her name was on it. Combine this with the fact that the border is likely one of the top issues for swing voters, and Trump has a huge club to hit her with.
There's a huge benefit of running someone who can distance themselves from past problems. Trump best argument against Hillary was "She says she can make things great, but she's been in power for 30 years, and thing are terrible. Why do you believe her?"
This is a potent line, and Trump was able to make it because he was an outsider.
The best bet is a governor who was solving problems in their state, and can't be blamed for national problems.
There are literally two people alive who we know for a fact can do this job well and they aren't eligible. Every non-Harris possibility carries their own set of risks and potential downsides, let alone the potential for tearing apart the coalition.
I just listened again to the `Joe Biden is old' podcast MY did with Beutler on February 14th... It is darkly amusing that the answer to many of the snarky questions turned out to be a straightforward yes.
It really underscores how much (apparently misplaced) trust and goodwill the administration had at the time that has completely evaporated.
All that is to say, I do want Harris do whatever she can to win and that has to include throwing the president under the bus.
It seems to me that the problem with Harris is that she cannot, in fact, “deliver crisp, clear versions of Democratic Party talking points.”
When she gives a speech or an interview, she sounds like your loopy aunt who’s really into crystals. Her sentences meander more than Biden’s. She’s simply not an effective messenger.
I can't "Like" this because, while I agree that Harris isn't a great speaker, she's clearly ahead of Biden at this point in energy levels of delivery, which there's a pretty strong argument is the main thing voters are reacting to between Biden and Trump. (Trump's speaking patterns for the last few years have been worse than Biden's for most of that time, but Trump delivers his word salad in a loud, enthusiastic tone of voice, versus Biden's increasingly creaky tone.)
No disagreement from me that she’s better than Biden at this point in terms of energy - but if the standard is what Matt said it is, I don’t think she meets it either. She’s just really off-putting. (And lest I be accused of sexism let me just say that I thought Hillary was actually a massively underrated speaker.)
Biden and Harris are interesting foils of each other. Vintage Joe Biden always said the thing that would resonate with people, even if he had bad delivery. Whereas Harris is quite eloquent, but not always on message.
So when you watched the clip talking about migration from South America in this piece that reminded you of your loopy aunt? Come on.