Biden, Harris, and a New Day for Democrats

I'm aware I'm two days late (it's been a very busy 48 hours in John World in addition to the real world, and that needed to take priority), but I couldn't let the biggest political news cycle of the election (or indeed, of the last few elections) go by without my thoughts.  So you know what's coming-five thoughts on the recent changes in the Democratic Party.

President Joe Biden (D-DE)

1. Joe Biden Steps Aside

On Sunday, President Joe Biden issued a statement declaring that he did not intend to continue to pursue a second term as president.  This comes after not just a horrendous debate performance in late June, but also after almost a year of Biden being behind in the polls, and weeks of Biden being asked by longtime allies (including a number of members of Congress), to stand aside as the nominee.  Biden becomes the first incumbent president since Lyndon Johnson in 1968 to not seek a constitutionally-allowed term, and the first president since George Washington to do so when he was pretty much guaranteed the nomination.

Biden's decision will be dissected by historians for decades, and I don't know that I can do it justice in one article (we'll go back to this).  I want to say a few things though.  I've talked on this blog a lot about both Biden being my personal hero (I had a photo of him hanging on my wall when I was 14, and he was just the junior senator from Delaware...a quick reminder that I grew up in rural Minnesota, not a place where you generally idolize random senators from the Mid-Atlantic).  I still have a photo of him on the wall of my library (different photo, but still).  Watching him get taken down the past few weeks has been hard for me, and I suspect hard for many people who have loved him and voted for him many times (he is the only president I've ever met, and was a total mensch in real life).

But it was also necessary.  It had become clear before the debate that Biden was not going to win unless something dramatic happened, and when that something dramatic happened (the debate)...it was something that made his candidacy even less palatable.  I said repeatedly on this blog that it was more important a Democrat beat Donald Trump than Joe Biden beat Donald Trump.  Biden, in an intensely courageous act, ended up agreeing.  The Democratic Party proved itself today to be a party run by a man of principle, and a man who cared more about the policies that he had spent his whole life championing than his own personal ambitions.  I can honestly say I've never been prouder of my hero, and I can think of few times I've been prouder of being a Democrat.

Vice President Kamala Harris (D-CA)

2. Kamala Harris Becomes the Presumptive Nominee

With Biden out of the race, the burden of being the nominee is now open, but not really.  While there are other names that will be tossed around (briefly Joe Manchin was considering it, which is maybe the funniest joke I've heard in a while), the reality is that no one will beat Vice President Kamala Harris, who has the endorsement of not just President Biden, but also both of the Clintons, and pretty much every ten minutes another congressional Democrat.  Harris, as the sitting vice president, is entitled to all of the campaign cash that the Biden-Harris campaign has raised (any other Democrat would have to start from scratch), and also inherits the campaign's impressive infrastructure, which includes 100+ GOTV stations across all of the major swing states.

Harris, of course, ran for president in 2020 before becoming Joe Biden's running-mate, so this will be her second presidential campaign.  This isn't how she expected to run (undoubtedly, she was assuming her next shot at the White House was in 2028), but when you're the VP, you always have to be ready to take over, and in this case, she appears ready.  She has spent the past few weeks handling an impossible situation flawlessly (defending Joe Biden while also auditioning for the top spot, knowing it was a very real possibility).  She also has several key advantages over Donald Trump that could matter, principally her age.  Harris is nearly 20 years younger than Donald Trump (who is going to face far more scrutiny about his age now that Joe Biden is out of the race and Trump assumes the mantle of the oldest major party nominee in American history), and honestly, she looks over 30 years younger.  She also has more stamina-it'd be easy to see Harris doing a couple campaign stops every day for the remainder of the race without breaking a sweat...Trump cannot keep up that kind of pace, and likely will rely on his running-mate to help that gap.  Harris will be a very potent and very serious nominee right out of the gate, and at this point appears to be (according to delegate whip counts) cruising to win on the first ballot.

Harris with Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, one of the states
she will need to gain ground in the coming days

3. Harris Starts to Win Back Ground in Fundraising & Polling

Harris has three major jobs in the coming days: introducing herself (and her VP) to the country, raising a mountain of cash to make up for the fundraising dip that President Biden experienced over the past few weeks, and getting her footing in the polls.

Two of these will be easy.  Harris is very likable, and honestly I think will catch on fast with the public.  She's going to be demonized by the right, but unlike Biden & Hillary Clinton, she's going to be harder to define because she doesn't have decades of voter records and impressions for the Republicans' to have a head-start with.  I also think it's possible the Republicans are going to overplay their hand in the same way they did with President Obama, and lean too hard against her on racial attacks (Donald Trump has repeatedly launched racist attacks against his opponents...it usually repulses swing voters).

Harris also will have the money.  In the time since her announcement, she's already raised $100 million, and has commitments for $150 million more in PAC money.  She also has both her VP announcement (which is a great fundraiser), her inevitable first public events with Biden and Obama, and the DNC (which will be another moment to tap into Democratic pride).  At the rate she's currently going, she will likely have more money on-hand than Trump before the DNC even starts.

The biggest question, though, is around polling.  Biden's polls are bad, catastrophic even.  On the day he dropped out, for example, he was down by 7-points in Michigan (Democrats don't win the White House if they lose Michigan).  There are several questions hanging over this election, and the biggest has been-will Harris be able to succeed where Biden hasn't?  There's signs that she could.  Voters have perpetually said they want someone other than Biden or Trump (they'll now get what they want), and Senate polling for Democrats in the Senate, specifically, is really, really good.  But House polling had also started to suffer under Biden, and any chance at a blue majority in either house of Congress will rely pretty significantly on Harris closing the gap and starting to exceed Trump in the major swing states/districts.  We will also learn whether or not the country, who of course did not elect Hillary Clinton in 2016 (even though she won the popular vote) will finally elect a woman as president this November.  There are a lot of good signs for Harris, and members of Congress in swing states/districts like Tammy Baldwin, Emilia Sykes, & Susan Wild were lining up behind her on the day of the announcement (which they wouldn't if they didn't believe she could deliver them a top-of-the-ticket victory).  But we will find this out soon (though not too soon...I would regard any polls for the next week or two to be fuzzy as voters get used to the new race).

Gov. Andy Beshear (D-KY), a frontrunner
for the VP slot

4. The World's Shortest Veepstakes

Harris will not just have to launch herself, but with the DNC just days away, she will also have to launch a vice presidential nominee, more than likely by the end of next week.  I will be doing a separate article about Harris's VP choices, and which names you're likeliest to hear, but I'll give a little preview now.  I do expect her choice to be a straight, white man with statewide elected experience (as either a governor or senator).  There are names like Pete Buttigieg & Gretchen Whitmer that are floating around, but Harris, already putting a lot of risks on her ticket, seems unlikely to go for a second one by nominating the first openly gay VP or the first all-female ticket (it's worth remembering-only one all-female ticket has even won a Gov/LG election together, and that was Massachusetts in 2022).  It's possible that Harris, trying to make up a polling deficit, will attempt to level-up in a place like Arizona, North Carolina, or Pennsylvania by naming a favorite son as a running-mate...though as I'll get into in the article later this week, I think that could be shortsighted if the candidate doesn't bring more to the table than a swing state.  Suffice it to say, we'll get a lot of auditions in the next few days, and Harris will have to quickly make a decision that most campaigns devote months to deciding.

Former President Donald Trump (R-FL)

5. Trump is Now in a Corner

I did not forget about the Republican ticket in all of this.  Donald Trump is still the Republican nominee, and as of this writing, still the frontrunner for the general election, given that the Democrats have not consistently led in swing state polls since at least October.  But Trump is now in a corner as a candidate.  He is now the oldest major party presidential candidate in American history, and will have to fend off the attacks that Biden had been receiving for the past four years (Trump, let's face it, has aged a lot in the past four years...it's going to show a lot more against Harris).  He has a less-defined opponent, one whom he barely attacked at the RNC, and one who will be able to campaign more than he can.  Trump is also stuck with JD Vance, which was a choice he made assuming that the Democrats would be stuck with Joe Biden.  I think on some level it never occurred to Trump that Biden might give up the nomination (the idea of relinquishing power for the good of others, I'm confident, has never occurred to Donald Trump), and he wanted to pick a mini-me clone, but Vance is a bad campaigner (look at the recent Diet Mountain Dew jokes) and Trump's chance to pick, say, Marco Rubio or Joni Ernst (someone who might've added to his base) is gone.

The biggest question for Trump, though, is if the clear lead he's had all election cycle is because voters hate Joe Biden or if they just want Trump back.  It's a legitimate question.  Polling is impossible, as I mentioned above, for figuring out how much ground Harris is capable of gaining, but it's possible that this is a fool's errand for any Democrat, and Trump is just inevitable.  However, I don't think that's going to be the case.  For years (even before the 2020 election) voters were saying "really-these two old guys are the best we can do?" and the Democrats being the party who said "we heard you, you said you wanted someone other than Biden or Trump...we did that" might be a gambit that pays off.  While it doesn't always work, giving voters exactly what they asked for isn't the worst strategy.  

Harris also has clear voters to go after.  In Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, & Wisconsin, the Democratic Senate candidates have been leading for almost all of 2024 (same with North Carolina Governor).  So Harris has an opening here to specifically target those voters who are either Trump/Dem Senate or Undecided/Dem Senate, as they are open to the party.  If all it was was Biden apathy, Harris can tap into that and get some very easy points before doing the hard work of going after voters who are undecided across-the-board (and getting her base out for her).  But this is the starting point she should be at, and I would imagine in the coming days (there's a reason she's kicking off her campaign in Milwaukee), that will be her plan.