Mike Johnson, Dean Phillips, and the paradox of the popular ‘generic’ Republican and Democrat
Tiana Lowe Doescher
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Despite the deluge of polling that indicates that former President Donald Trump will surely win the 2024 general presidential election, Democrats still have a secret weapon should they choose to break the glass in case of the emergency of President Joe Biden‘s abysmal approval ratings. The alternative to the octogenarian president, who is losing by 5 points to the Republican front-runner according to national polling by the New York Times, is not Vice President Kamala Harris, who only fares 2 points better against Trump. The surefire way to top Trump by 8 points is to run “an unnamed, generic Democrat.”
Yes, a literal empty suit performs 13 points ahead of the sitting president and 11 points better than the vice president, once touted as the future of her party. And recall that this is against the challenger battling four separate rounds of criminal indictments; against fellow Republican hopeful Nikki Haley, Biden would lose by 8 points, according to the New York Times.
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Of course, the “generic Democrat” famous enough to theoretically give Biden a run for his money — say, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) or Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg — cannot do so without losing the party backing required to maintain such plum standing among Democrats, and unlike Biden, a Democrat of a much more moderate generation, none of these nationally recognized “generic Democrats” are actually generic enough, at least in terms of substance if not style, to replicate the appeal reflected in the polling. The paradox of the “generic Democrat” means that, on the other hand, a Democrat who actually acts and legislates in a generic, like Democratic presidential hopeful Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN), will barely register on the Richter scale of the party’s nonexistent primary.
Republicans spent three humiliating weeks learning this the hard way. After eight attention-starved Republicans joined with the entire Democratic caucus to boot Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) from the House speakership, Republicans spent 22 days cycling through three separate candidates and three separate floor votes before finally finding a congressman so generic, so forgettable, and so inoffensive both with the Capitol and the national media that when Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) was able to achieve what Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Steve Scalise (R-LA) could not, half the press pool on the Hill asked themselves in bewilderment, “Mike Johnson — who?”
Neither Scalise nor Jordan are much more (if at all) outside of the mainstream GOP than Johnson, but in the unyielding focus of the national spotlight, both congressmen were insufficiently generic to pass the muster of the GOP’s razor-thin margin in the House. Scalise was too closely associated with McCarthy and “the establishment,” while Jordan was too closely associated with Trump and the Freedom Caucus. Johnson, with a name and face so unremarkable you could have plucked him out of central casting, was just right.
Of course, presidential elections aren’t parliamentary. If the primaries were, Democrats likely could and would nominate as inoffensive a candidate, like Phillips, as possible, and perhaps Republicans would be more inclined to choose a Haley instead of a candidate who has already lost once to Biden. But as it stands, Democrats don’t have anyone waiting in the wings to save the party from Biden’s historic unpopularity, and Republicans at least will give them the leg up of choosing Trump.