On The Biden Withdrawal

History is not on the side of the centre-left, when Democratic presidents fall behind in the polls and choose not to run for re-election. On both previous occasions in the past 75 years (Harry Truman in 1952, Lyndon Johnson in 1968) the Democrats proceeded to then lose the White House to their Republican opponents. In 1952, Truman’s vice-President Alben Barkley did actively seek the presidential nomination for himself, but Barkley ultimately withdrew after objections were raised that his advanced age (74) made him unfit for the top job.

So what happens next, now that Joe Biden has finally seen the writing on the wall? A few Democrats (e.g. the Clintons) have already endorsed vice-president Kamala Harris. If a few more Party heavyweights grudgingly do likewise over the next few days that will make it a fait accompli.

At present, the best thing Harris has going for her is that she is not Joe Biden, and the polling indicates she would do no worse (but little better) against Donald Trump. So far in her political career though, Harris has been a lacklustre campaigner, and she was one of the first of the party’s presidential candidates to be eliminated in the 2020 primary voting.

It would be optimistic to assume that she would mobilise the black vote that has always been crucial to Democratic success. The polls indicate she has low approval ratings among young black voters in particular, and is not widely perceived by black voters as someone who treats the issues that strongly affect black communities as being important. This contrast with the perceptions of Barack Obama is very telling:

While Harris and Obama are both biracial, Obama identifies as Black, worked as a community organizer, represented a majority Black district as a state senator, and married a Black woman who is a strong advocate for racial justice. Harris, however, identifies as Black and South Asian, married a wealthy white man, had a long career working as a prosecutor, and represented a state that’s only 6.5% African American.

This track record may explain why Nancy Pelosi, a key party heavyweight, has reportedly been lukewarm about a Harris ascension to the top of the ticket, and more in favour of an “open” convention, whereby delegates would go uncommitted to the convention in Chicago next month. There would then be competition between candidates and (perhaps) multiple roll call votes and trade-offs, before the party finally emerged united behind a single candidate. The risk is that this process could look chaotic.

No doubt, merely handing over the baton to Harris would be easier for the party’s bureaucrats to manage, but it would fix very little. One of the few important jobs that Harris was handed as vice-President was the immigration issue, a task Harris is said to have resented. Fair enough too, to some degree. Arguably, the problems at the border were so controversial that the Democrats needed to put the full symbolic power of the Presidency behind explaining and defending the party’s stance on this issue. To some extent, Harris was hung out to dry by Biden.

Shunting immigration off to Harris not only did her no favours, it has left Democrats vulnerable to the wild allegations, outright lies and scare tactics being deployed by Trump. Holding an open convention would have the great virtue of enabling the Democrats to change the election narrative on immigration, and on most other issues. It would also side-line Donald Trump for weeks on end, soak up all the oxygen in the news cycle, and provide the eventual candidate with a useful launching pad for the campaign proper.

Even if Harris happened to emerge from the convention as the ultimate victor, the open process would enable her to re-define herself, on her own terms. Chances are though, the Democratic Party Establishment will not take the risk.

Footnote One: If Harris is simply anointed by the Democratic party, many left/liberal voters appear likely to stay home. Abortion is the strongest issue the Democrats have to counter that inclination and bring out the vote. On that score, Harris would undoubtedly be more capable than Biden of mobilising voters in defence of reproductive rights. (Biden, a staunch Catholic, never sounded like a convincing champion of a woman’s right to choose.) Mindful of that threat, Trump has been trying for months to sound like a moderate on abortion, and that posture of moderation will evaporate the day after he gets re-elected.

Footnote Two: Biden wanted to run on his record. As some of his critics have pointed out, this unrelenting emphasis on his past achievements has only underlined Biden’s inability to embody and promote a vision for the future. Moreover, Biden – like other incumbents in a post-Covid cost of living crisis – has always had trouble convincing the public of his accomplishments in office. If you look at the polling record of his term in the White House, Biden’s approval ratings went south in August 2021, and have never recovered.

Footnote Three: One odd aspect of the Republican party’s hostile stance on immigration is that the spouses of both Donald Trump and J.D. Vance seem to be living contradictions of the negative messaging. A native of Slovenia, Melania Trump became the first foreign-born First Lady, and Usha Vance’s family were immigrants:

Usha’s heritage and identity — Usha’s parents are South Asian immigrants and she’s of Indian descent — appear to be at odds with her husband’s and the larger party’s politics, specifically the implicitly racist and explicitly xenophobic parts. Usha introduced herself and her husband at the convention on Wednesday, after speakers spent most of the previous day hammering home anti-immigrant rhetoric, some dipping into extremist fear-mongering and accusing immigrants of rape and murder.

The contrast is so striking that some observers have chosen to promote the myths that both women must be the unwilling captives of the husbands’ careers. In both cases, there is no evidence to support the “damsel-ification” myths.

Footnote Four: Whoever the Democrats do select, Trump will now be the sole candidate afflicted with age-related cognitive decline. During a brief period late last year, Trump mis-identified Joe Biden as President Obama on seven separate occasions. As long ago as 2017, reporters were raising questions about Trump’s speech patterns and his apparent cognitive decline, and citing eerily similar evidence to that used against Biden in recent months.

For example: Trump’s response in 2017 about his collusion with Russia was so garbled, one journalist wrote, as to make professional transcribers question their choice of career. As Trump put it:

“There is no collusion between — certainly myself, and my campaign, but I can always speak for myself — and the Russians, zero!”

When President Trump offered that response to a question at a press conference last week, it was the latest example of his tortured syntax, mid-thought changes of subject, and apparent trouble formulating complete sentences, let alone a coherent paragraph, in unscripted speech.

Or how about this, also from 2017:

“People want the border wall. My base definitely wants the border wall, my base really wants it — you’ve been to many of the rallies. OK, the thing they want more than anything is the wall. My base, which is a big base; I think my base is 45 percent. You know, it’s funny. The Democrats, they have a big advantage in the Electoral College. Big, big, big advantage. … The Electoral College is very difficult for a Republican to win, and I will tell you, the people want to see it. They want to see the wall.”

That was Donald Trump, seven years ago. Yet because Trump’s energy levels seem higher, and because his basic motor functions are more robust than Biden’s, his very similar cognitive lapses in concentration, his inability to complete a line of thought and his incoherent sentence formulations continue to be ignored.

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