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Thursday's debate was the gift that keeps on giving for political horse race junkies like me. 2024's campaign was shaping up to be the ultimate snooze-fest. Neither party fielded competitive primaries. Neither candidate provided any sort of vision for the future. Two geriatric candidates were fighting a rematch over a tiny sliver of undecided voters. Despite the heated rhetoric, it was boring.
Everything is different now, and this is shaping up to be one of the most dramatic campaign seasons in history.
Biden's chances to win the Democratic nomination keep plummeting. On PredictIt, he is down to 50%! Kamala Harris's stock is surging - now up to 33%.
But while many within the Democratic media complex have called for Biden to step down (he even lost Brian Stelter!) elected officials have been much more circumspect. Nearly all prominent Democrats continue to support Biden in public. The knives are being sharpened, favors are being called in, backroom deals are being made. But the party unity hasn't broken. Somebody (Obama maybe) will have to strike the first blow. Until then, it's far too risky to stick one's neck out.
Biden's political instincts are stronger than many give him credit for. I've mentioned before how he's used the SPR to keep gas prices down, knowing that simple things like that matter a lot. Now he has a new mantra. Trust no one. Increasingly relying on his wife Jill, he is now apparently bringing in Hunter as an advisor as well.
Biden only needs to last a few more weeks. To appear on the Ohio ballot, Democrats must nominate someone before August 7th. He just needs to run out the clock. Big public speeches or appearances are a no no, as every senior moment will now be dissected in minute detail. Once he's the nominee, the media will come back onside to save democracy.
In any case, I can't get enough of the drama. Make election season fun again.
Well, Texas rep Lloyd Doggett just became the first Democratic politician to call for Biden to step down. Call me crazy, but I honestly have a sneaking suspicion that this was all planned out ahead of time. Biden looked awful during the debate. But at the after party he seemed fine, and he was beck to his old self the next day in North Carolina. I think Biden always intended to be a one-term president but that's not the kind of thing you can pull off these days barring death or permanent disability. He would have had to announce he wasn't seeking the nomination some time around last summer, at which point he would have immediately become a lame duck where he lost whatever pull he had with congress and saw half of his administration overshadowed by the other Democrats jockeying for position. There was also the traditional incumbent's advantage to consider. And there was no guarantee that whoever the Democrats ended up nominating would be better than Biden. He had to run again.
At this point, the entire Republican apparatus has had a year to prepare a campaign against Joe Biden. The attacks are pretty standard at this point — he's old, he's demented, he caused inflation, he fucked up the Afghanistan pullout, the "Biden Crime Family", etc. What happens if, at the eleventh hour, Joe Biden is no longer the candidate? Suddenly, a year's worth of planning is down the toilet. Now they'll find themselves likely up against some "Generic Democrat" on whom they will have no opposition research, no idea who his base is, no idea what his policy positions are. Meanwhile, the Democrats could have been planning this for months and have ready solutions to all the problems out there. Plus they can run on the idea "that he knew when to step aside", unlike somebody else. This is a person who didn't have to spend primary season pretending to be further left than they really were and didn't have the misfortune of months of oppo research from members of their own party. A candidate who's optimized for winning a general election.
Then there's the matter of the debates. Trump was eager to debate Biden. Maybe a little too eager. He agreed to an unusually early first debate and to a format that stripped him of the ability to interrupt his opponent and to draw on a supportive studio audience. If a new guy comes in soon, there's the possibility that he pushes for two more debates with the same rules. Trump really isn't in a position to refuse given how adamant he's been about debating. If he wants his mike permanently unmuted then he'll get criticized for being afraid to let the public hear what his opponent has to say — "He agreed to the rules for Biden because he thought he could win against Biden; if he wants to change the rules it must because he doesn't think he can win." Maybe give him his audience back as a token of goodwill. Now he's got to go up against someone who's much younger and more adept at pushing his buttons than Sleepy Joe.
The major downside is that the country collectively goes "Who?" and votes for someone they're familiar with. But this is overrated, both because Joe Biden is massively disliked in some circles and because most of the people who will ultimately decide the election aren't really paying attention until after Labor Day. Trump can and should run his "Who is Lou Lipschitz" routine for a couple months, but after that it starts to wear thin and make people think "Is that all you've got?" I don't actually think this is what will happen but I hope it will. It would make this fall much more interesting than another slow descent into a Trump presidency.
The problem with this theory is all the likely Democrat candidates are poisonous in their own right.
Newsom comes up constantly, but California and his governorship of it in particular is practically a cautionary to the rest of America. Virtually the entire comedy scene had to flee his state due to mismanagement and talks about it all the time on podcast, interviews, standup specials.
Gretchen Witmer comes up, I can't tell why. The only thing she's notable for is participating in one of the few FBI entrapment plots/misinformation events that was so bad it actually did get thrown out of court.
There is Harris, but while Biden at least has the excuse of dementia, it's unclear what Harris' excuse for her constant word salads are. She polls worse than anyone.
Buttigieg I guess still exist, but has overseen possibly one of the most disastrous 4 years the Department of Transportation has ever seen. Rail disasters, air disasters, bridge disasters, you name it. It's hard to imagine failing up with that public a record of incompetence.
And that's more or less all the contenders unless Bernie Sanders wants to give it another go. But after how the DNC ratfucked him to position Biden as the nominee in 2020, I sincerely doubt they'd tap him for 2024, even if he is politically the least toxic candidate.
There is always RFK Jr... but the DNC ratfucked him in the 2024 primaries as well, and will almost certainly not tap him either.
It’s actually a bummer that Amy Klobuchar has completely and permanently disappeared from this conversation. I’ve said before that I was enthusiastic about her candidacy during the 2020 primary season. She’s still only 64 - an absolute spring chicken compared to the current candidates - with a long and unimpeachably successful political career. Now, in the intervening years she has revealed herself to be less moderate/non-progressive than she appeared in early 2020; she was an intense COVID hawk, and has been absolutely abysmal on free speech/“fighting disinformation” issues as of late. However, I would still compare her very favorably to all of the individuals you have listed. I can imagine a future timeline in which I would consider voting for her, if the Republican nominee is wacky/unqualified enough. The “moderate, technocratic wing” of the Democrats might be in full thrall, at least rhetorically, to the wacko wing at this juncture in time, but if it ever reasserts itself, she’d be a great representative on paper.
However, she appears to have been permanently blacklisted from consideration due to the absolutely pathetic complaint that, in her former capacity as county attorney in Minneapolis’ Hennepin County, she didn’t terminate Officer Derek Chauvin after some (almost certainly specious and worthless) complaints were lodged against him. Even though the Dems have largely stopped talking about George Floyd and the “Racial Reckoning”, she’s still too toxically adjacent to it to ever be a choice that the progressive base would accept. Yet another thing the Summer of George permanently stole from us.
Amy Klobuchar couldn’t name the President of Mexico over a year into his term. She sat on the Senate Commerce Committee at the time, and Mexico was our largest trading partner
(Nota bene Klobuchar doesn’t show any recognition when given López Obrador‘s name - she doesn’t go “Oh, AMLO, of course!” like anyone with passing familiarity to the leader would, but rather stares daggers at the host)
Given technocracy refers to rule by qualified experts, I’m puzzled why she of all candidates is meant to exemplify those traits?
I don't know much anything about Klobuchar, but I wonder if there exist any politicians, regardless of the smarts level, who hasn't committed at least one gaffe like that that can be conveniently brought up to go "Wotta idiot!" by the opponents.
AMLO is, if not quite a household name, someone that the politically informed could be expected to know of in the USA(although perhaps knowing what it stands for is too much).
I guess I'm not politically informed, then.
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