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Notes -
(Hoo boy, here I go!)
Biden's debate and technocrats' Mandate of Heaven
The Democratic Party is in a pickle after last Thursday's debate: their presumptive nominee's performance appeared to confirm his opponents' claims that his age was harming his ability to carry out his duties - but it is almost too late to replace him on the ticket.
Doing so after primary season and so close to the election would be tumultuous. His Vice President is - so the conventional wisdom has gone - considered unpopular enough that switching over to her would be just to jump to another losing proposition. Anybody else would have a very short window to establish their legitimacy as successor - it would probably be pretty chaotic.
Some think that wouldn't be that bad, such as Eric Levitz in this Vox article:
https://www.vox.com/politics/358461/replace-joe-biden-drop-out-kamala-harris
As presented, that hypothetical sounds okay to me, but I think there's a major problem that its use reveals. Is he claiming the parties are symmetric? I don't think that's how the Democrats want people to see things:
Right now, the Democrats (and pretty much the Western center-ish left overall) present their claim to rule as being deserved because they're the best at it. They are certainly not just photonegative Trump. No, they are the party of experts, the adults in the room, the best-of-the-best, the credentialed, the institutions. You can count on the left to do things right, unlike their manchildren opponents. They can be counted upon to not blunder when it matters.
But that means they have more to lose from obvious mistakes. Experts aren't supposed to make mistakes. Technocrats aren't supposed to look chaotic.
If Trump were in Biden's position, but otherwise himself, well - the chaos of replacing him would probably (though never say never) not be much greater than the chaos of sticking with him (supposing for this hypothetical that Trump has only Biden's kind of personal support base - not so in our reality!) When the dust settles, any replacement would be hard-pressed to be more of a loose cannon (though again, never say never!) Chaos is kind of the baseline there, but since I don't think it's overall a selling point, having to pick some emergency successor may turn out to be a positive in the long run, in that Vox hypothetical.
But the adults in the room are supposed to have steered us clear of emergencies. Ending up in this situation at all is a pretty fracturing blow to the desired perception of the Democratic Party as the systematically competent option. For how could they have let this happen?
Now, with enough narrative control, this perception probably could have been maintained. If the desire was to keep Biden, perhaps publicize claims made by Experts that Biden's debate performance - despite what laymen might think - showed that he was actually in excellent health, while Trump's showed that he very much was not, and anyone who questions this is some kind of undesirable. If the desire was to replace him, perhaps click one's tongue and say oh well, that one man had his chance, but now it's time to effortlessly switch to the Plan B that everyone always knew was waiting in the wings and is totally normal, laudable, and precedented, and anyone who questions this is some other kind of undesirable.
Abject panic from the ruling class (as shown by the pre-Elon Bluecheck class this past weekend) is the last thing that a technocracy should show if it means to preserve its mandate to rule.
This may yet be turned around. Maybe (surprisingly soon) all decent human beings will know that concerns about Biden's age or discussion of the June debate are to be replied to with "ugh, why are you so obsessed?" or similar, and raw social force will be enough to get people to act like they forgot this crack in the mask. Or maybe not. But if not, then this isn't just one bad debate, or even one bad candidate: the Expert Class must then face the question of just how expert they are, and if they're not: what are they?
I think this needs to be said for the sake of those living in the US bubble - the American electoral cycle is very, very unusual. Unusually long and unusually structured. Note that in the past month, both the UK and France have held national elections, had full campaigns, and are now ready to vote. The months and months and months of campaigning and rallying and debating and convening are just not necessary to anything. And I tell you that four months is actually plenty of time for the Democrats to pick a candidate and sell them to the American population, that having the Democrats actually discuss who might be a good President will work better for them than just expecting everyone to get in line for Biden because his turn isn't over yet.
An open convention isn't chaos. It's exciting. It's drama. It's the antithesis of the top down process that gave us Hillary and Biden. It's the antithesis of the control mentality that tried to hide Biden's incapacity until it was too late.
I don't think these are valid comparisons. When the EU starts having elections for the head of the executive - a single person leading the entire Union - and will be able to crack it in a month, then we can start acting smug. I'm pretty sure that would turn into a massive clusterfuck if they tried right now, which is why they don't.
How about India, then?
As I understand it, the Indian general election cycle takes around six months, and India is over four times the size of the US. Its elections are much quicker.
My point isn't about the raw population sizes, but the amount of competing interests ,and their geographic distribution. I don't know much about India, but if they're also heterogenous in that regard than yeah, that's a good example.
My impression is that the US system is a leftover from another era, and America probably could pull off a simplification of their system at this point, but the interests boiling down to "NY+California vs everyone else" is still a bit of a sticking point... which might be another way of saying, "they can't pull it off, and the system is still serving it's purpose".
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