It's Gotta Be Kamala
What should the Democrats do?
I wouldn’t be surprised if Team Biden is hoping against hope that Joe can have a good day at the second (and final) scheduled Presidential debate on September 10, the way Ronald Reagan came back from a feeble first debate in 1984.
But Reagan was nine years younger than Biden is now and he was a mile ahead in the race.
Over the last 24 hours, there has been a tsunami of calls for Biden to drop out of the race from Democratic loyalists, such as the New York Times editorial board.
Many pundits are freely speculating about who should get the Democratic nomination instead of Vice President Harris: Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, etc etc.
But I don’t think you can toss aside a black woman Vice President in the 2024 Democratic Party.
Vice Presidents used to be thought of as disposable political hacks. FDR, for example, dropped two of his.
The last time a Vice President was dropped from a ticket, however, was 48 years ago when Gerald Ford let Nelson Rockefeller go and picked Bob Dole as his running mate in 1976. (Rockefeller, who had lots of fun things to do, didn’t seem to mind too much because he found the job frustrating and boring.) The media disliked Dole at the time (in later decades, they got used to Dole’s caustic wit and sort of liked him), so adding Dole didn’t appear to do Ford much good. Ford later called his dropping Rockefeller a big mistake.
I kind of think that the nuclear age made the Vice President harder to dump. Walter Mondale in the late 1970s was the first VP to be given his own military officer with a nuclear football of missile codes chained to his wrist. That tends to make people want to believe there is something special about the VP even if they know with one part of their mind that he or she was just picked due to some crass political calculation.
Biden promised in March 2020 to pick a woman Vice Presidential candidate. He never quite publicly promised to pick a black woman, but during the Summer of George, that was hard to avoid doing in the Democratic Party.
For the Democrats to get rid of a black woman in 2024 would alienate a lot of blacks and women.
(There also may be campaign donation issues that Harris could spend money raised by the Biden-Harris campaign, but a newcomer would have to re-raise the money. But don’t trust me for advice on campaign finance laws.)
My guess is that the strategy that would work best for the Democrats in November is for Biden to not just withdraw from the nomination, but to resign the Presidency this summer. If Biden were to give a well-written speech announcing that after a lifetime of public service, he’s come to realize that age has caught up with him, so in the national interest he will retire at the end of this July, he would generate a lot of public sympathy.
If Kamala Harris could read a couple of eloquent speeches in July, the first upon Biden’s retirement announcement thanking President Biden for his service and the second upon her swearing-in humbly taking on the heavy burdens of office, I suspect her image would switch in the minds of some number of swing voters from ditzy Veep to dignified new President to whom they wish well.
Granted, Harris is not an eloquent improvisational speaker, to say the least. But the Democrats have professional speechwriters. All she would have to do is read what they write for her. (This can, however, be difficult for the kind of egos that run for high office. For example, John Kerry employed good speechwriters in 2004, but while reading their tightly-written speeches, he’d add something like 80% more verbiage on the fly, sapping the energy from the room.)
Kamala Harris would then become President a few weeks before the Democratic convention. My guess is that the convention delegates would unify around their new President and nominate the incumbent quickly.
The news media would then pivot to emphasizing the need to elect a President in her middle-aged prime rather than an old man, like, say, the GOP nominee.
If Harris could stick to reading well-written speeches during the campaign and perhaps giving a couple of interviews to friendly journalists, pleading the demands of her new job for not talking up a storm, she could sidestep the fact that when she talks off the top of her head, she gets on everybody’s nerves.
Harris would have to survive the September 10 debate, but Trump might decide to make it all about him.
Do the Democrats’ have a better option this year?
For the most part pundits either seem to think no one will mind their passing over Kamala that much because she didn’t energize Democrats or, broadly, African-Americans last time; or those who do worry about it fantasize that she can be offered a Supreme Court seat, preferably Thomas’s. I think this is true, but …
An older black woman I met when we were poll workers together, dressed to the nines every day of voting but on Election Day showed up in a decidedly pink and green outfit, including a hat with letters on it and sparkly pink and green sequined tennis shoes.
She was sweet and friendly and clearly wanted to talk about her outfit but also seemed a little pre-emptively defensive that it was “okay” for her to wear this “because there were no words on it”. (This was to my initial puzzlement, as I didn’t care what she wore and had no foreboding there was political significance to it, merely assuming she liked pink and green, Preppy handbook style.)
It emerged that she had dressed this way because these were her sorority colors - and KH she explained, had been in that same sorority.
It became obvious that this sorority generally and the fact of KH having been a member, was *really* important to her. Moreover, the fact of their both having attended an HBCU where I think many people were in Greek organizations - I see there’s a book about it, “The Divine Nine” - I believe has a significance much beyond, say, my own mother, say, having an opportunity to vote for a Pi Phi (now a DAR member lady candidate would probably earn her fanatical devotion).
Yes, this is maybe a matter of indifference to black voters generally, and to younger ones - but it has a social valence with older women who may have more influence than the media realizes. “Greeks” generally being on the wrong side of their scheme, probably renders the media oblivious or at least neglectful of this facet of black American life.
Draft Mischelle Obama so Barack can complete his fourth term?