The Democrats are in trouble, but the problem doesn’t begin and end with President Joe Biden’s poor and declining condition. Biden’s at the heart of this story, but the Democrats’ current predicament begins and ends with Kamala Harris.
Top Democrats, including Biden, realize Harris would be a horrible presidential candidate, but that skipping her would shatter their identity politics-obsessed base. If Biden’s vice president were a good politician whom people believed would be a good president, Democrats wouldn’t have this problem.
If Biden had chosen a capable vice president, that vice president could sub in today and take the nomination, or better yet, could have subbed in when the 2024 campaign began.
But instead of choosing his running mate on the basis of who would be a good successor, Biden chose on the basis of race, sex, and name ID. He chose the highest-profile black woman in America.
In other parties and at other times, the highest profile black woman would have also been a perfectly good option for the presidency, but that wasn’t the case in the Democratic Party of 2020. This is the risk when you set race and sex criteria for important nominations: Choosing on any criteria besides fitness for office — whether that’s race, sex, whom you owe a favor to, who will make you look good, who can raise more money, whom you always wanted to meet — increases the odds that will get someone unfit.
It’s clear that Biden and his inner circle have no confidence in Harris, otherwise they would have given her responsibilities besides speaking at abortion rallies. She’s a cringeworthy speaker with far higher disapproval than approval ratings.
Just as Democrats’ race-and-sex politics gave them Harris as the vice president, those affirmative action politics make it impossible for them to skip her if they try to replace Biden.
Every single person making this argument, including Nate Silver is a moron because if the Ds passed over Kamala Harris to nominate your dream (white) nominee the election would be over. Any decent analyst should get that. https://t.co/A7Ka4IUv5U
— Rachel Bitecofer
(@RachelBitecofer) June 28, 2024
This, in turn, makes it harder for them to ditch Biden, even after he has shown the world that he is not mentally well enough to serve another term.
The party has erected identity politics rules that it has to follow. The party and its surrogates have attacked as racist anyone who rejects these affirmative action rules.
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If Biden or enough folks in party leadership try to skip the sitting vice president in order to replace their failing president, it will trigger a massive freak-out among the activists and the portions of the base that have imbibed decades of Democrats’ affirmative action dogma.
Their own corrupt rules will be their undoing.