An obvious comeback to this is that Joe Biden and George HW Bush both ran bad presidential campaigns, only to be picked by the winner to be their VP, and ultimately won office in their own right. I wonder however if Biden's disappointing numbers relative to the economic fundamentals, is like HW failing to win re-election, evidence that parties should take seriously how prospective VPs do when running for President without the boost of being a semi-incumbent.
To compare HW Bush's 1980 run to Biden's disasterous runs in '88 and '08 is laughable and a dishonest read of history. HW Bush was a solid runner up to Reagan in 80 won 5 primaries and the Iowa caucuses. In '88 and '08 Biden never even managed a top 3 in a single primary. His '20 run was off to a similar start finishing 4th and 5th in Iowa and New Hampshire respectively, despite having the cachet of being a former two term Vice President, until Democrat elites decided to rig the contest against Bernie.
There is a reason why no serious political commentator considered Biden to be serious presidential material until Obama picked him off the ash heap of history to be his running mate.
> until Democrat elites decided to rig the contest against Bernie.
positively comical that this narrative is still being peddled 3 years on
It was shocking to you that a candidate whose:
(a) populism gives him an advantage in the demagogic IA caucus system
(b) home state was adjacent to NH,
(c) share of the black electorate was <1/3 of Biden's
would overperform in IA/NH relative to the rest of the primary slate?
Give me a break. It's been almost 8 years now of this BS, how about you finally internalize that outside of the bubble you spend every waking hour in, Bernie just isn't that popular?
I'm not a Berniebro and am glad that he did not get the nomination in '16 or '20 but I think he got done dirty by party elites twice over.
You deflected on Biden's disasterous runs in '88 and '08 as well as his horrific start in '20. A former two term Vice President has no business finishing 5th and 4th in Iowa or New Hampshire if they are a supposedly viable candidate for the presidency.
You do know that Bernie isn’t a Democrat?? And you do know that Bernie (and Obama) dominated caucuses that are very obviously undemocratic as they give a huge advantage to young people without children.
Did Bush run a bad primary in 1980? Reagan had almost been the nominee in 76 and Bush gave him a legitimate run for his money despite a pretty limited electoral background.
They absolutely should. But it's waaay too much chess, especially for the needs of any one candidate who's not thinking party all the time. Reagan in 80 made a play at Ford. My sense is didn't love Bush, but had to pick him or someone close. There's also a counter-incentive of not wanting to be too many people wanting the names reversed.
This is my take: after three years of great stress from the pandemic and its consequent economic disruptions topped off with the toxic whipped cream of inflation, Americans are grumpy. They have all decided to be grumpy at Biden.
But when it comes down to it, the terror of Trump is a far stronger emotion than grumpiness at Biden.
Biden will win, and I'm promising to drive 20 people to the polls in a swing state to make that happen.
Yeah, idk, that seems rather intellectually self-serving, but I think it is also the unspoken subtext of a lot of center-left leaning media establishment output.
I know I'm grumpy at democrats writ large because I live in a large east coast city that feels markedly less safe and grosser than it did in fuckin 2017, and no one seems to have a good reason as to why. Instead they just point out the safety relative to 30 fuckin years ago. Feels more.....visceral than your conceptualization of it. But I'm a grumpy, hungover motherfucker, so maybe it's me 🤣
That has to do with boomers finally retiring. Most police forces are understaffed even with prime age employment at higher levels than 2019. Quite frankly understaffed police departments and fire departments are a big opportunity for young African Americans and Latinos as those are good jobs with great benefits.
And I lived in what is now one of the most desirable smaller cities prior to the pandemic and we had a big rat problem because of all of the construction.
I hope you’re right but what if Biden has a stroke or some other debilitating health event say, next September? I’m much less sanguine about the election under those terms.
Inflation is an insidious, caustic force that damages everything it touches. Ask the social democrats in Germany al la 1933. While that is an extreme case, it is the perfect model to understand the effect of inflation has on the middle and working class.
Correct, it is all related to the inflationary crisis, which ended with the introduction of Rentenmark (sp?) from 1914-1924, then the crackup boom 1924-1929, then the inevitable deflationary/deleveraging depression. It is all related, and goes back to two causes, fiscal insanity and monetary malpractices. Hitler rise to power was intertwined with the policy mistakes of the Kaiser, German revolution of 1918 and the inability of the social democrats to do the right thing. We have had similar conditions set of fiscal insanity and monetary malpractice.
And your point is? You confuse establishment as being a monolithic bad thing. It’s bad only when applied to republicans; when the establishment republicans are in power, all hell breaks loose!
Nixon: Watergate
Reagan: Iran/Contra and Grenada
Bush Sr: Panama and Gulf War 1
Bush Jr: a manufactured war in Iraq, The Great Recession
And then there’s Trump; non-establishment, faux great businessman, and all around scoundrel!
Trump: COVID denier, insurgency and worst economic recession since the Great Recession.
Only one president left office with fewer jobs created than when they took office (7 million jobs lost). And that’s Herbert Hoover, another republican, I might add!
I’m not interested in your deranged ranting. “The establishment” has been in charge of the American Empire for 100 years. The Republican Party has always been a JUNIOR partner in the administration of the empire. They fill the role of “controlled opposition”.
Trump and Bernie Sanders got popular because of populist uprisings against the progressive ruling class and its hegemonic control over the empire. Bernie turned out to be a total fraud though and betrayed his own supporters when the DNC stole the primary from him and Trump is being disposed of via uni-party cooperation. This is the fate of anyone that challenges the system. Always has been.
“I’m not interested in your deranged ranting.”---DudeBro
Sorry, my deranged rantings are actual facts. Perhaps you’ve heard of them?
And if republicans are the junior partner, they managed to do more damage to America and democracy than the senior partner (democrats), ever could imagine!
And what exactly is the the Establishment? It’s just a word. Actually, it’s elites who created the system when the only citizens in this nation were White Christian land and business owners.
And the republicans control the Courts, decided corporations are people too, and unlimited dark money in politics is a constitutional right. Yup, republicans are clearly the junior partner, yet these conservatives on the court are the ones responsible for all the money corrupting our elections.
As for Trump, what medication are you taking? As though the “establishment” caused him to commit his crimes in broad daylight? Maybe Trump was part of the CIA’s LSD program in the 60’s, and he’s really just a puppet in their control!
If you’re going to make these claims, provide evidence. Until then, get some help!....:)
Robert, I’m not going to correct the factual errors in your (fake) analysis. You lack a lot of knowledge here and haven’t done even the most basic reading. I’m not here to educate you. It wouldn’t matter anyways because you are too emotional about this subject. You come across as very vaginal and I really have no interest in the opinions of lower status men.
I’m going to put you on ignore so I won’t be able to see your emotional response. Try not to be so hysterical in the future and maybe people will take you more seriously. (Good life advice in general. Despite what the religious left tells you, women don’t want men that are feminine and hysterical all the time)
In Biden's defense, I don't think they had enough data on Harris to know for sure how bad she'd be as VP. Additionally, I suspect most people felt Donald Trump would be gone by now, and none of this would feel as agonizing if the prospect was a more normal Republican winning in 2024 instead of Trump. Honestly I don't think Biden runs if Trump had been successfully impeached or was otherwise off the scene.
They had plenty of data - Harris won 2% of the primary vote in 2020. She was only selected for her race and gender like KBJ and KJP. Vice President word salad is just as incoherent as president teleprompter.
She won multiple high-profile statewide races in California. She was an obvious choice for VP. Her only mistake was tacking too far left in the primary. To me she actually has pretty centrist instincts—look at her record as DA. She did things the left AND right hated…which is the sweet spot IMO.
Excellent point. I was sure that trump would be gone by now leaving a wide open competitive field on both sides. In 2020 there was only one over arching and very important issue, make trump disappear. I thought we were there. A mistake. The monster has returned and our democratic republic and constitution are more vulnerable than ever. How can Americans of either party be associated with that and with him. Our country could be doomed
What do you mean? It would be more agonizing because the Democrat strategy literally seems to be "well, let's just focus on how awful Trump is (true) and hope his inflated ego and weird appeal to a certain group of population will not allow anyone else to replace him as the nominee". It doesn't really look like Democratic Party has a plan for if Trump has a stroke tomorrow.
I think the Dem tendency to brush off concerns about Biden's age is mostly people resisting the sort of magic thinking you see in that Michelle Goldberg column. The sentiment is something like: "Biden isn't so old that he's worse than the alternative of a contested primary with Harris as the frontrunner, stop complaining about what you can't fix."
It is understandable if some normie Democrat says "Biden seems old and tired, I wish we had somebody new." But it is sort of silly for a professional politics writer to just wish away the obvious massive difficulties that would ensue if he stepped aside. If the age talk were about facing facts that would be fine, but it tends to be mixed with fantasy about alternative candidates, and to come from writers who backed losers in the last primary.
Yup. The awkward truth about Harris is that she was only chosen as VP because Biden had boxed himself in with his (entirely understandable) pledges first to pick a woman, and then a black woman. It’s hard to imagine she’d have been his first choice absent those constraints. (One could argue that she wasn’t the best choice even *with* those constraints, but I don’t know enough about the possible alternatives to comment.)
Seen from abroad, it feels like the Dems made a series of choices in 2020 (starting with picking Biden) that put them in a strong position to win that election, but in a difficult one in 2024.
That said - even if for whatever reason Harris does have to become top of the ticket in 2024, I expect she *can* win against Trump, with the right support. But Democrats must be asking themselves how they managed to find themselves in this situation in the first place.
I feel like I never understand what the problem actually is with Harris. The problem is always cited as she polls badly. But why does she poll badly? What do people not like about her? It always seems to come down to they don't like her because they don't like her.
She hasn't done a lot, but vice presidents often don't do a lot. Has she actually screwed up anything? How are we rating her performance compared to other vice presidents? Is she worse than Pence? Biden himself was an unusually active vice president, so leave him out for a minute. The VP before him was Cheney, and Cheney was very unpopular but also was never going to run for office. Before him we have Gore... is Harris a worse VP than Gore? What is the stick we're measuring her against in terms of performance as a VP?
Obviously the reasons for disliking her are different for Republicans (mostly dog whistles about race), Leftists (her record as DA), and liberal Democrats.
As a liberal Democrat, I really cannot stress how atrocious her primary campaign was. Tacked way to the left, raised her hand on the debate stage saying she'd *ban* private insurance (then immediately recanted the next day), attacked Biden on busing (then immediately clarified the next day that their views on busing were identical), and just generally not building a base of support.
Having run multiple successful campaigns in California, she *had* met the criteria for presidential electability. But after squandering her frontrunner status in the primary so thoroughly, the burden of proving electability is now back on her. And like you said, she hasn't done a lot as VP, i.e. not doing enough to convince even the liberal Democratic base that she'd be a good candidate this time around (unlike last time).
Additionally, I think most of us who interact with the non-Brooklyn/San Francisco white working class are very skeptical of the nationwide electability of *anybody* from California. Josh Barro touches on this in the anti-Gavin Newsom article that Nate linked.
Good analysis. I really liked Harris until that first 2020 primary debate. That debate really was a debacle for so many promising Dems, including Beto, Castro, and Harris.
According to the books that have since come out about his campaign, Biden desperately did not want to pick her as his running mate, and basically had to be cornered into it by a coalition of Democratic leaders. That’s why the announcement came so late.
Lucky by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, and Battle for the Soul by Edward Isaac-Dovere. They’re the only two I’ve found that focus on Biden’s campaign instead of Trump’s.
Pretty much every POTUS candidate has been unpopular and wart-ridden in recent years - Obama is the only counter example. You could say Bill Clinton too, but he benefitted from weak opponents and had a unique third-way approach that worked. Do you remember how disappointing the POTUS primary field felt in 2020 - the process of elimination was working there. But that’s not really new. Best evidence of that is even thinking about someone like Gavin Newsome as an alternative (and then we can discuss Michael Avenatti.)
You note the unfairness that a female candidate faces in this process. 100% true. An extra burden to overcome.
Also, like most of her 2020 primary opponents, the VP was just not a great communicator and still isn’t. Bernie was the best, Pete was technically very good but comes across a little bit like an AI, and the others didn’t really register.
Neither party is developing real political talent, as evidenced by the GOP primary. There are names, but there is constant scarcity of talent in this realm.
Republicans HATED Obama. NeverTrumpers, etc., have tried to retcon all that, but they literally accused Obama of being a muslim Manchurian Candidate. Now they’re like all “if Democrats could get back to Obama’s message, they might win back the white working class.”
Yep. We’re supposed to take Andy McCarthy’s (from National Review) commentary on Trumps legal woes seriously, when he wrote a book—an entire book—accusing Obama of trying to impose Sharia law.
Cory Booker would have been a much better choice for Biden's VP imo. Out of the 2020 candidates, his message was the closest to Biden's from what I can remember. However, Biden had already pledged to select a woman, and then was pressured to select a black woman. Harris was really the only qualified black woman, despite her shortcomings
Biden was Obama's VP. Who thought he was a good campaigner or even a front runner for the 2016 nomination? Indeed, he's a notoriously poor speaker and an uninspiring candidate. My guess is that Harris can be groomed to be an effective candidate, not for 24 but for 28.
Then who *is* in charge? Clearly not Old Joe. Mr. Obama met recently with Mr. Biden at the White House and they talk often on the phone. Bucking Presidential tradition, Mr. Obama mostly still lives in Georgetown, and many leading Congressional Democrats are seen coming and leaving regularly. Valerie Jarrett, Ron Klain, Marc Elias- the whole cadre of Obama associates are still active in this administration, formally or informally.
An obvious comeback to this is that Joe Biden and George HW Bush both ran bad presidential campaigns, only to be picked by the winner to be their VP, and ultimately won office in their own right. I wonder however if Biden's disappointing numbers relative to the economic fundamentals, is like HW failing to win re-election, evidence that parties should take seriously how prospective VPs do when running for President without the boost of being a semi-incumbent.
To compare HW Bush's 1980 run to Biden's disasterous runs in '88 and '08 is laughable and a dishonest read of history. HW Bush was a solid runner up to Reagan in 80 won 5 primaries and the Iowa caucuses. In '88 and '08 Biden never even managed a top 3 in a single primary. His '20 run was off to a similar start finishing 4th and 5th in Iowa and New Hampshire respectively, despite having the cachet of being a former two term Vice President, until Democrat elites decided to rig the contest against Bernie.
There is a reason why no serious political commentator considered Biden to be serious presidential material until Obama picked him off the ash heap of history to be his running mate.
> until Democrat elites decided to rig the contest against Bernie.
positively comical that this narrative is still being peddled 3 years on
It was shocking to you that a candidate whose:
(a) populism gives him an advantage in the demagogic IA caucus system
(b) home state was adjacent to NH,
(c) share of the black electorate was <1/3 of Biden's
would overperform in IA/NH relative to the rest of the primary slate?
Give me a break. It's been almost 8 years now of this BS, how about you finally internalize that outside of the bubble you spend every waking hour in, Bernie just isn't that popular?
I'm not a Berniebro and am glad that he did not get the nomination in '16 or '20 but I think he got done dirty by party elites twice over.
You deflected on Biden's disasterous runs in '88 and '08 as well as his horrific start in '20. A former two term Vice President has no business finishing 5th and 4th in Iowa or New Hampshire if they are a supposedly viable candidate for the presidency.
And yet Biden did, and then he won both the primary and the general, so maybe your rule about who has "no business" being in a position is wrong?
You do know that Bernie isn’t a Democrat?? And you do know that Bernie (and Obama) dominated caucuses that are very obviously undemocratic as they give a huge advantage to young people without children.
Did Bush run a bad primary in 1980? Reagan had almost been the nominee in 76 and Bush gave him a legitimate run for his money despite a pretty limited electoral background.
They absolutely should. But it's waaay too much chess, especially for the needs of any one candidate who's not thinking party all the time. Reagan in 80 made a play at Ford. My sense is didn't love Bush, but had to pick him or someone close. There's also a counter-incentive of not wanting to be too many people wanting the names reversed.
I'm not worried about Biden getting reelected.
This is my take: after three years of great stress from the pandemic and its consequent economic disruptions topped off with the toxic whipped cream of inflation, Americans are grumpy. They have all decided to be grumpy at Biden.
But when it comes down to it, the terror of Trump is a far stronger emotion than grumpiness at Biden.
Biden will win, and I'm promising to drive 20 people to the polls in a swing state to make that happen.
Yeah, idk, that seems rather intellectually self-serving, but I think it is also the unspoken subtext of a lot of center-left leaning media establishment output.
I know I'm grumpy at democrats writ large because I live in a large east coast city that feels markedly less safe and grosser than it did in fuckin 2017, and no one seems to have a good reason as to why. Instead they just point out the safety relative to 30 fuckin years ago. Feels more.....visceral than your conceptualization of it. But I'm a grumpy, hungover motherfucker, so maybe it's me 🤣
That has to do with boomers finally retiring. Most police forces are understaffed even with prime age employment at higher levels than 2019. Quite frankly understaffed police departments and fire departments are a big opportunity for young African Americans and Latinos as those are good jobs with great benefits.
And I lived in what is now one of the most desirable smaller cities prior to the pandemic and we had a big rat problem because of all of the construction.
I hope you’re right but what if Biden has a stroke or some other debilitating health event say, next September? I’m much less sanguine about the election under those terms.
Inflation is an insidious, caustic force that damages everything it touches. Ask the social democrats in Germany al la 1933. While that is an extreme case, it is the perfect model to understand the effect of inflation has on the middle and working class.
There was not inflation in Germany in 1933. In fact, there was the complete opposite - there was deflation with mass unemployment.
Correct, it is all related to the inflationary crisis, which ended with the introduction of Rentenmark (sp?) from 1914-1924, then the crackup boom 1924-1929, then the inevitable deflationary/deleveraging depression. It is all related, and goes back to two causes, fiscal insanity and monetary malpractices. Hitler rise to power was intertwined with the policy mistakes of the Kaiser, German revolution of 1918 and the inability of the social democrats to do the right thing. We have had similar conditions set of fiscal insanity and monetary malpractice.
“Experience” is just code for “part of the establishment and loyal to the regime”.
So yes, democrats today care more about experience than republicans.
And your point is? You confuse establishment as being a monolithic bad thing. It’s bad only when applied to republicans; when the establishment republicans are in power, all hell breaks loose!
Nixon: Watergate
Reagan: Iran/Contra and Grenada
Bush Sr: Panama and Gulf War 1
Bush Jr: a manufactured war in Iraq, The Great Recession
And then there’s Trump; non-establishment, faux great businessman, and all around scoundrel!
Trump: COVID denier, insurgency and worst economic recession since the Great Recession.
Only one president left office with fewer jobs created than when they took office (7 million jobs lost). And that’s Herbert Hoover, another republican, I might add!
Any questions???????....:)
I’m not interested in your deranged ranting. “The establishment” has been in charge of the American Empire for 100 years. The Republican Party has always been a JUNIOR partner in the administration of the empire. They fill the role of “controlled opposition”.
Trump and Bernie Sanders got popular because of populist uprisings against the progressive ruling class and its hegemonic control over the empire. Bernie turned out to be a total fraud though and betrayed his own supporters when the DNC stole the primary from him and Trump is being disposed of via uni-party cooperation. This is the fate of anyone that challenges the system. Always has been.
“I’m not interested in your deranged ranting.”---DudeBro
Sorry, my deranged rantings are actual facts. Perhaps you’ve heard of them?
And if republicans are the junior partner, they managed to do more damage to America and democracy than the senior partner (democrats), ever could imagine!
And what exactly is the the Establishment? It’s just a word. Actually, it’s elites who created the system when the only citizens in this nation were White Christian land and business owners.
And the republicans control the Courts, decided corporations are people too, and unlimited dark money in politics is a constitutional right. Yup, republicans are clearly the junior partner, yet these conservatives on the court are the ones responsible for all the money corrupting our elections.
As for Trump, what medication are you taking? As though the “establishment” caused him to commit his crimes in broad daylight? Maybe Trump was part of the CIA’s LSD program in the 60’s, and he’s really just a puppet in their control!
If you’re going to make these claims, provide evidence. Until then, get some help!....:)
Robert, I’m not going to correct the factual errors in your (fake) analysis. You lack a lot of knowledge here and haven’t done even the most basic reading. I’m not here to educate you. It wouldn’t matter anyways because you are too emotional about this subject. You come across as very vaginal and I really have no interest in the opinions of lower status men.
I’m going to put you on ignore so I won’t be able to see your emotional response. Try not to be so hysterical in the future and maybe people will take you more seriously. (Good life advice in general. Despite what the religious left tells you, women don’t want men that are feminine and hysterical all the time)
But maybe you aren’t into women...
I’m not the hysterical or emotional one, but your response is hysterical!
“You come across as very vaginal and I really have no interest in the opinions of lower status men.”--DudeBro
So far just as hominem attacks, no actually facts presented. Thanks for proving my point!...:)
The irony of someone who uses "vaginal" as an insult, yet thinks they're qualified to be a judge of "what women want". 😂😂😂
In Biden's defense, I don't think they had enough data on Harris to know for sure how bad she'd be as VP. Additionally, I suspect most people felt Donald Trump would be gone by now, and none of this would feel as agonizing if the prospect was a more normal Republican winning in 2024 instead of Trump. Honestly I don't think Biden runs if Trump had been successfully impeached or was otherwise off the scene.
They had plenty of data - Harris won 2% of the primary vote in 2020. She was only selected for her race and gender like KBJ and KJP. Vice President word salad is just as incoherent as president teleprompter.
She also has a pretty stellar CV.
She won multiple high-profile statewide races in California. She was an obvious choice for VP. Her only mistake was tacking too far left in the primary. To me she actually has pretty centrist instincts—look at her record as DA. She did things the left AND right hated…which is the sweet spot IMO.
I agree with Matt Y that if she returned to her instincts she’d be liked more
CA is a one party state. Apparatchik, like Harris, win behind closed doors.
Excellent point. I was sure that trump would be gone by now leaving a wide open competitive field on both sides. In 2020 there was only one over arching and very important issue, make trump disappear. I thought we were there. A mistake. The monster has returned and our democratic republic and constitution are more vulnerable than ever. How can Americans of either party be associated with that and with him. Our country could be doomed
I would not fall into fatalism yet.
I think this is uniquely a Trump phenomenon, not
liberal or conservative one
What do you mean? It would be more agonizing because the Democrat strategy literally seems to be "well, let's just focus on how awful Trump is (true) and hope his inflated ego and weird appeal to a certain group of population will not allow anyone else to replace him as the nominee". It doesn't really look like Democratic Party has a plan for if Trump has a stroke tomorrow.
I think the Dem tendency to brush off concerns about Biden's age is mostly people resisting the sort of magic thinking you see in that Michelle Goldberg column. The sentiment is something like: "Biden isn't so old that he's worse than the alternative of a contested primary with Harris as the frontrunner, stop complaining about what you can't fix."
It is understandable if some normie Democrat says "Biden seems old and tired, I wish we had somebody new." But it is sort of silly for a professional politics writer to just wish away the obvious massive difficulties that would ensue if he stepped aside. If the age talk were about facing facts that would be fine, but it tends to be mixed with fantasy about alternative candidates, and to come from writers who backed losers in the last primary.
Yup. The awkward truth about Harris is that she was only chosen as VP because Biden had boxed himself in with his (entirely understandable) pledges first to pick a woman, and then a black woman. It’s hard to imagine she’d have been his first choice absent those constraints. (One could argue that she wasn’t the best choice even *with* those constraints, but I don’t know enough about the possible alternatives to comment.)
Seen from abroad, it feels like the Dems made a series of choices in 2020 (starting with picking Biden) that put them in a strong position to win that election, but in a difficult one in 2024.
That said - even if for whatever reason Harris does have to become top of the ticket in 2024, I expect she *can* win against Trump, with the right support. But Democrats must be asking themselves how they managed to find themselves in this situation in the first place.
Mayor Kisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta seemed to have a lot more charisma than Harris, and I very much hoped that Biden would pick her.
I feel like I never understand what the problem actually is with Harris. The problem is always cited as she polls badly. But why does she poll badly? What do people not like about her? It always seems to come down to they don't like her because they don't like her.
She hasn't done a lot, but vice presidents often don't do a lot. Has she actually screwed up anything? How are we rating her performance compared to other vice presidents? Is she worse than Pence? Biden himself was an unusually active vice president, so leave him out for a minute. The VP before him was Cheney, and Cheney was very unpopular but also was never going to run for office. Before him we have Gore... is Harris a worse VP than Gore? What is the stick we're measuring her against in terms of performance as a VP?
Obviously the reasons for disliking her are different for Republicans (mostly dog whistles about race), Leftists (her record as DA), and liberal Democrats.
As a liberal Democrat, I really cannot stress how atrocious her primary campaign was. Tacked way to the left, raised her hand on the debate stage saying she'd *ban* private insurance (then immediately recanted the next day), attacked Biden on busing (then immediately clarified the next day that their views on busing were identical), and just generally not building a base of support.
Having run multiple successful campaigns in California, she *had* met the criteria for presidential electability. But after squandering her frontrunner status in the primary so thoroughly, the burden of proving electability is now back on her. And like you said, she hasn't done a lot as VP, i.e. not doing enough to convince even the liberal Democratic base that she'd be a good candidate this time around (unlike last time).
Additionally, I think most of us who interact with the non-Brooklyn/San Francisco white working class are very skeptical of the nationwide electability of *anybody* from California. Josh Barro touches on this in the anti-Gavin Newsom article that Nate linked.
"mostly dog whistles about race"
Only white upper class leftist actually think that.......to be fair, it's mostly a class thing.
Good analysis. I really liked Harris until that first 2020 primary debate. That debate really was a debacle for so many promising Dems, including Beto, Castro, and Harris.
Choosing Harris has to be the biggest blunder of the entire Biden campaign
According to the books that have since come out about his campaign, Biden desperately did not want to pick her as his running mate, and basically had to be cornered into it by a coalition of Democratic leaders. That’s why the announcement came so late.
What books? I'd be interested in reading
Lucky by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, and Battle for the Soul by Edward Isaac-Dovere. They’re the only two I’ve found that focus on Biden’s campaign instead of Trump’s.
This comments section is weirdly Zero Hedge.
Oh man, if I had a REAL wayback machine and could go back and buy Biden at 2.6% chance to win the presidency on Valentine's Day 2020... https://web.archive.org/web/20200214034453/https://electionbettingodds.com/
Pretty much every POTUS candidate has been unpopular and wart-ridden in recent years - Obama is the only counter example. You could say Bill Clinton too, but he benefitted from weak opponents and had a unique third-way approach that worked. Do you remember how disappointing the POTUS primary field felt in 2020 - the process of elimination was working there. But that’s not really new. Best evidence of that is even thinking about someone like Gavin Newsome as an alternative (and then we can discuss Michael Avenatti.)
You note the unfairness that a female candidate faces in this process. 100% true. An extra burden to overcome.
Also, like most of her 2020 primary opponents, the VP was just not a great communicator and still isn’t. Bernie was the best, Pete was technically very good but comes across a little bit like an AI, and the others didn’t really register.
Neither party is developing real political talent, as evidenced by the GOP primary. There are names, but there is constant scarcity of talent in this realm.
Republicans HATED Obama. NeverTrumpers, etc., have tried to retcon all that, but they literally accused Obama of being a muslim Manchurian Candidate. Now they’re like all “if Democrats could get back to Obama’s message, they might win back the white working class.”
Yep. We’re supposed to take Andy McCarthy’s (from National Review) commentary on Trumps legal woes seriously, when he wrote a book—an entire book—accusing Obama of trying to impose Sharia law.
Lol @ footnote 6, in Jan 2019 the markets thought Beto & Kamala had a combined 24% chance of the presidency and Biden had 7%, I wonder how mistakenly low he got in Feb 2020... but anyway these head-to-head matchup averages can change in a hurry with more volume. The RCP Trump vs. Biden average was at Biden +6.3 on Oct 23, 2019, then went up to Biden +10.2 on Nov 4 - a +3.9% swing. Over the same time period the Trump vs. Sanders average went from +6 to +7.9 - only a +1.9% swing. Don't think Kamala made it far enough in that cycle to be in enough of those polls for statistical significance... https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_biden-6247.html https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_sanders-6250.html
Cory Booker would have been a much better choice for Biden's VP imo. Out of the 2020 candidates, his message was the closest to Biden's from what I can remember. However, Biden had already pledged to select a woman, and then was pressured to select a black woman. Harris was really the only qualified black woman, despite her shortcomings
Klobuchar would have been a good pick but after George Floyd it just became untenable
How about Stacey Abrams? How might she have fared?
She lost both her races for Governor and refused to concede after the first one. She doesn't seem very electable.
Agreed
Biden was Obama's VP. Who thought he was a good campaigner or even a front runner for the 2016 nomination? Indeed, he's a notoriously poor speaker and an uninspiring candidate. My guess is that Harris can be groomed to be an effective candidate, not for 24 but for 28.
Then who *is* in charge? Clearly not Old Joe. Mr. Obama met recently with Mr. Biden at the White House and they talk often on the phone. Bucking Presidential tradition, Mr. Obama mostly still lives in Georgetown, and many leading Congressional Democrats are seen coming and leaving regularly. Valerie Jarrett, Ron Klain, Marc Elias- the whole cadre of Obama associates are still active in this administration, formally or informally.
Apparently, Mr. Obama is a cat whisperer. 😎
Heh...