TRUMP (PROBABLY) WINS IN 2024; THE GOP WINS THE SENATE

 

10/30/24

PART I:   THE PRESIDENTIAL SLUGFEST

Yours truly felt more confident about the ruminations in my 10/11/24 post, IT’S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE TRUMP 47 than I do as I pen this final pre-election screed.   While it still looks like Trump 47, this year, the conventional wisdom is correct in at least one aspect:   This race is very close, perhaps rivaling Kennedy/Nixon and Bush/Gore.   But maybe not…

 

I have spent way too much time poring over such poll summary sites as RealClear Politics, 538, and 270 To Win.    The most salient conclusion I can draw is that the time so expended would have been better spent with Car & Driver or Motor Trend, but the most relevant conclusion for this piece is that former President Donald Trump is probably going to wind up being our 47^th president, despite his seemingly valiant efforts to punt, simply because Vice-President Kamala Harris’s efforts to lose have been even more stout-hearted, the tendency to bollix up the proverbial two car funeral comes more naturally to her, or both.  But I digress.  In any case, yours truly feels neither confident in nor all that reassured about my tepid prediction of a Trump victory, or, more properly, a Harris loss.   While I am delighted that Ms. Harris will lose, I’m not all that happy that Mr. Trump will win, and I fervently hope that neither wins by a landslide and thus feels that s/he has a mandate to impose his or her most half-butted and/or outright dangerous ideas on the American electorate.   But enough about my preferences, which are irrelevant; let’s get down to some numbers.

 

The polls, taken as a whole, continue to show the seven swing states (Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona), along with the overall national vote, in statistical ties.   Mr. Trump appears to be strongest in Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina.   Ms. Harris appears to be strongest in Michigan and Wisconsin.   Again, though, the candidates are within the margin of error in all these states.   Since, as I stated in my 10/11/24 post, IT’S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE TRUMP 47 that, given what the Biden/Harris obsession with electrifying America’s automobile fleet will do to the U.S. auto industry, Ms. Harris is going to have a very difficult time winning Michigan, I have to give that state to Mr. Trump, and I do so confidently.   Also, as I did in 2016 (TRUMP WILL WIN, AND WIN BIG, ON TUESDAY, 11/4/16), I will go with my gut and give Wisconsin to Ms. Harris, even though my going with my gut in this regard in 2016 resulted in perhaps the only state I didn’t call correctly in that contest.    Given that Mr. Trump is ahead in the average of all the other swing state polls, I feel confident in giving him those states, especially given the “reverse Bradley effect,” cited in both the previously cited posts and still alive and well.   Notice, by the way, that the Democrats are trying to come up with their own version of the “reverse Bradley effect” that yours truly cited over eight years ago.   In the Dems’ version, a concoction of the last few days, women are afraid to tell anybody they are going to vote for Ms. Harris out of fear of their husbands, so, while they say they are going to vote for Mr. Trump, they are secretly voting for Ms. Harris.   Yours truly could say a lot more about that poor excuse for an idea, but, out of some perhaps misguided desire to be civil, I’ll just limit my comment to an admonition to not count on that supposition.   But I digress.

So, to wrap it up, it looks to his observer that Mr. Trump could carry all seven swing states except for Wisconsin, which would give him an electoral victory of 302 to 236, which would have the look of a minor landslide, or at least a low grade temblor.   Something tells me, though, that Mr. Trump couldn’t possibly win six of the seven swing states, could he?   Maybe, but something tells me it will be closer than that.

As for that 10%-20% chance of a blowout victory by Mr. Trump that I cited in my 10/11/24 post, that is probably off the table, unless, of course, one considers to aforementioned 66 point win in the electoral college such a blowout.   Enthusiastic Trump supporters talk of Mr. Trump’s pulling off some completely unforeseen wins in a handful, or more, of blue states.   While such an outcome is possible in Minnesota, Virginia, or New Hampshire, it is unlikely in all those states.    By the way, New Jersey, which seems to come up in a lot of conversations with Trump enthusiasts, is not going to go for Trump, but, if by some miracle, it is even close in New Jersey, this thing is all over.  On the other side of that coin, Ms. Harris could with near equal likelihood (i.e., not very), surprise Mr. Trump in Iowa and even Texas.   As with New Jersey for Mr. Trump, if Texas goes for Ms. Harris, or even if it’s close in the Lone Star State, this thing is all over, but, if that is the case, we’ll know that by the time Texas votes are counted.

 

PART II—HOW ABOUT THE SENATE?

 

To most astute observers, and definitely to this astute observer, control of the Senate is as, or more, important, than control of the White House, especially given our choice in the latter between a candidate with a few screws lose and a candidate whose search for a clue, especially regarding economics, is akin to that of the search of Diogenes for an honest man.    The overall battle for the Senate looks like a nearly assured Republican victory.

 

Governor Jim Justice will pick up Senator Joe Manchin’s seat in West Virginia.   That will even up the Senate.   It is highly likely that Tim Sheehy will defeat Senator Jon Tester in Montana, but, with Sheehy’s margin hovering around 5% and Mr. Tester’s being one of the most durable Senate candidates in modern history, this one isn’t in the bag for the GOP.   Still, if the GOP wins Montana, they will have 51 seats in the Senate. 

 

The GOP has a more than decent chance of defeating incumbents in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, with their best shot probably in Ohio.   The Republicans won’t win all these seats, but they won’t lose all of them either, which should give them a cushion should Mr. Tester pull this one out (unlikely), Ted Cruz manage to beat himself in Texas (more unlikely, but not impossible), or Rick Scott lose in Florida (most unlikely).

 

So, according to yours truly, who has something of a knack for calling elections, Mr. Trump wins a second term or, more properly, the Democrats and Ms. Harris hand Mr. Trump a second term.   The GOP wins the Senate.   I am more confident of the second prediction than I am of the first.

 

By the way, how about the House?    Yours truly has long felt that the only way to say anything intelligent about a political contest is to look at it individually in at least reasonable depth.   Given that there are 435 House races, this is a task I am not about to undertake for the vast amounts of money, which, if increased by a factor of ten, would still amount to $0.00, that  I am paid for writing this blog.   So I will fall back on what sounds like a cop-out but, in reality, is probably true:   Whichever Party wins the White House will also win the House.  I think.

 

Happy election night.   While I eagerly look forward to that event, which, for yours truly, combines the delights of Halloween, New Year’s Eve, and my birthday in one evening, I find myself eager to get this whole election over with, and I have never felt that way before.

 

 

IT’S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE TRUMP 47

 

10/11/24

 

Like most of you, yours truly has been following this election with more than the average observer’s degree of interest and sense of frustration, or downright anger, that our choices have come down to Vice-President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.   Neither would do anything to address what may be our nation’s greatest problem, or at least its greatest problem addressable by politicians:  our leaping, catapulting, exploding debt.   Neither candidate inspires much confidence in his or her intellect or grasp of the issues.   Neither displays anything resembling a sense of history and its ramifications for the present.   Neither seems to know much at all about economics that can’t be displayed on a teleprompter and/or fed to him or her five minutes before a speech.   Neither seems up to the task of doing the hard political work necessary to fortify our dramatically depleted military, our last line of defense in a dramatically, if not fatally, dangerous world.   In short, neither has any business being president of the United States, but here we are.   That we have reached this point says a lot more about the state of our nation than it does about either candidate, but that is another, more fundamental, issue.  

 

So who will win this contest of shallow thinking carnival barkers?   It’s still a bit early to be making a definitive call, but I’m starting to get the idea that we are about to experience Trump 47.   Normally, a state-by-state analysis is necessary to make such a call (See my much heralded  TRUMP WILL WIN, AND WIN BIG, ON TUESDAY, 11/4/16), and I may be doing such an analysis in the next week or so, but the thoughts and analysis below apply to the electorate in general and, more to the point, to the seven or so states that will decide this contest, unless my final point turns out to be more than idle musing.

As yours truly sees it, the 2024 electorate is  divided into three camps:

1.       Those who hate Mr. Trump.

2.       Those who love Mr. Trump.

3.       Those who can tolerate Mr. Trump but can’t tolerate Ms. Harris.

 

The first two groups are static; neither will grow nor shrink.   The strong, engrained feelings engendered by Mr. Trump are not going to be changed in the next few weeks.   The first group is the largest group of the three, but none of the three comprises a majority of the electorate.   So if the Republicans are going to win, they have to expand #3, those who can tolerate Mr. Trump but can’t tolerate Ms. Harris, to the point at which it and #2, those who love Mr. Trump, together comprise a majority of the electorate.   The logic involved is very simple but implementing it won’t prove to be easy, despite the help that the GOP seems to be getting from Ms. Harris in this endeavor.

 

Wait a minute, you might interject.   Why isn’t there a group #4, those who love, or at least like, Ms. Harris?   Simply because this would be such a minuscule group of people that addressing, or even acknowledging, it would be a waste of time.   There are few people who support Ms. Harris because of her policies, persona, experience, or ability to lead this nation.   Her entire appeal lies in her not being Mr. Trump and her whole campaign is based on hatred of Mr. Trump.   People are not working hard for Ms. Harris because they want her to be president; they are working hard for Ms. Harris because they don’t want Mr. Trump to be president.   In her supporters’ minds, Ms. Harris is thus the ultimate lesser of two evils.   Howard Stern’s comment, made directly to Ms. Harris’s face, that, yes, he will be voting for her, but that he would vote for “that wall over there” if it were running against Trump, is far more emblematic of today’s Harris supporters than most of them will admit in private.

 

This regrettable state of the Democratic Party is its own fault.  It was handed the ultimate political gift when President Biden decided, or was told, to abandon his campaign.   (See my seminal THE DEMOCRATS KICK A GIFT HORSE IN THE ARSE, 7/22/24, and earlier posts cited in that article.)    The American electorate was, at the time and probably now, disgusted, or at least highly uncomfortable, with both Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump.   Either of the two parties that could somehow dump its standard-bearer while the opposition party kept its ticket-topper was bound to win…unless the Democrats, when given such a chance, nominated Kamala Harris, who was the only Democratic, other than Joe Biden, that could lose to Donald Trump.   And what did the Dems do?   They kicked their gift horse in the arse by nominating the hapless Ms. Harris.  If they had nominated Shapiro, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Kelly, or a whole host of others, there would indeed be a fourth category of voters, i.e., those who love, or at least like, the Democratic candidate, and this election would be over.   But, gutless, spineless, and ever sensitive to the perceived sensitivities of any of its constituencies, the Democrats nominated Ms. Harris.   But I digress.

 

So does the GOP have a chance of expanding the pool of those who can tolerate Mr. Trump but can’t tolerate Ms. Harris?   Yours truly thinks it has a good chance of doing so for a number of reasons.

 

First, most elections are won or lost on the economy, and polls consistently show that voters have more confidence in Mr. Trump’s ability in economic matters than they have in Mr. Harris’s prowess in this area, which seems as foreign, arcane, and difficult to her as does particle physics.   The Democrats could argue, and legitimately so, that economic growth and employment are in great shape right now and that the stock market rally of the last four years has made a lot of people, perhaps especially a lot of Republicans, wealthier.    But the point the Dems miss in making that argument is that inflation is not only the great destroyer of civilizations but is also the economic phenomenon that affects everybody.   And, yes, the Dems could argue that inflation is now down…to a level about the same as the highest level it reached during the Trump presidency.   Further, if the Dems were smart, they would let those few among them who understand the way the world works point out that a large measure of the inflation that the GOP so decries can be ascribed to Mr. Trump; it was Mr. Trump who nominated the hapless Jay Powell for Fed president.  Mysteriously, or maybe not so mysteriously, the Democrats have not made this argument, or at least have not done so loudly and repeatedly.  

 

Regardless of the legitimacy of many of the Democrats’ counter-arguments to the nearly laughable “The economy is in the pits” GOP argument, what matters is how people feel and what people know.  People know that prices, broadly measured, are about 20% higher than they were when Mr. Biden took office and, according to the polls, they feel that Mr. Trump could do a better job on the economy than Mr. Harris.  Judging from Ms. Harris’s observations on the economy, which sound distinctly like they are coming from a ten-year-old, they are probably right. 

 

Second, not only do polls show that people think Mr. Trump would do a better job on the economy than Ms. Harris, they also show that people think Mr. Trump would do a better job on immigration and crime.   So if one of the candidate is perceived to be better on the economy, immigration, and crime, which candidate would you bet on?   There is always abortion, an issue on which the electorate looks far more kindly on  the Democrats, largely because of the GOP’s ineptitude on this issue.   But is abortion strong enough to outweigh the economy, immigration, and crime?   Probably not, but remember 2018, when the Dems wrested effective control of Congress largely due to that very issue.

 

Third, the vice-presidential debate may prove to be more consequential than any VP debate in history and far more so than most pundits, including yours truly, initially thought .   Governor Tim Walz did manage to pick his nearly lifeless carcass off the canvass as the debate progressed and made it hard not to like him personally, but, all-in-all, he got his head handed to him by Senator J.D. Vance.  Mr. Vance was cool, calm, collected, and in control of the facts.  He joined Mr. Walz in making the debate, mirabile dictu, that most rare occurrence in today’s malignant politics: a civil affair.   Mostly, though, Mr. Vance did much to convey the idea that he is not the he-man woman hater that the press has made him out to be.   He was reasonable and calm, somebody with whom many might not agree but with whom many would not be uncomfortable, let alone alarmed.  

 

Why was the ordinarily barely consequential VP debate so important in 2024?   Given Mr. Trump’s age and questionable approach to taking care of himself, and, to put it as gently as I can, the passions Mr. Trump enflames in this increasingly violent world, Mr. Vance is more likely than a typical vice-president to move to the Oval Office before 2028.  Even if the unthinkable does not happen, given Mr. Vance’s youth and innate appeal, a Vice-President Vance is far more likely to be become president in the 2028 election than would typical and/or former vice-presidents.    After this debate, I can almost guarantee you that a lot of people who could not even countenance a Vance presidency before the debate are now at least not appalled by the idea.

 

Fourth, given the Biden administration’s near outright assault on the internal combustion engine and Ms. Harris’s enthusiastic support for this effort, Ms. Harris is going to have a very difficult time carrying the state of Michigan.   The antipathy toward those who have decided that we must abandon the internal combustion engine, by force if the proper “incentives” don’t work, is not limited to auto workers; it is felt by Michiganders of all walks of life who are, and have since about 1903, been fiercely supportive and protective of the industry that has become, in many ways, synonymous with their beautiful and normally prosperous state.   A conversion, fast or slow, wholesale or retail, to electric cars will not bode well for Michigan or its prosperity, and Michiganders are not likely to vote to cripple their state for the sake of the dreams of those on the coasts who consider the lifeblood of the Great Lakes State somehow evil.    If Kamala Harris cannot carry Michigan, she is in big trouble.  

 

If the Democrats had selected Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who is popular in her home state (or at least was until the sacrilegious video she recently made involving a Dorito masquerading as a Catholic Eucharist made anybody, Catholic or otherwise, question not only her feelings regarding the sacred, but also her intelligence, common sense, and attitude toward at least 20% of her constituency) and, of necessity, has always been supportive of its most salient industry, as their standard-bearer, Michigan would not be a much of a problem for the Democrats.   If the Democrats had picked Josh Shapiro, the immensely popular and usually at least somewhat reasonable governor of Pennsylvania, they would have virtually assured themselves of victory in the Keystone Commonwealth, thus rendering Michigan somewhat less important.   But, no, the Democrats had to nominate Kamala Harris, whose origins in San Francisco and its environs make winning either Michigan or Pennsylvania more difficult than it had to be.

 

Finally, and maybe most importantly, the “reverse Bradley effect” that I cited in perhaps my most famous post, TRUMP WILL WIN, AND WIN BIG, ON TUESDAY, 11/4/16,  i.e., the tendency of many Trump voters to not admit their support for Mr. Trump in polite company is far from dead.   In fact, given that the hatred of Mr. Trump that was still, as hard as it is to believe, embryonic in 2016, has been nurtured, kindled, stoked, and enflamed for the last eight years, with plenty of help from Mr. Trump himself.   Mr. Trump is now a bigger villain among those who hate, or merely dislike, him than he was in 2016; hence, admitting that one is going to vote for Trump subjects one to even more vilification and ostracization than it did eight years ago.    Yet it seems, to this observer, that there are more people who want to cast the type of protest vote that, at its core, constitutes a vote for Donald Trump.   With Mr. Trump within, or very close to, the statistical margins of error in all the swing state, these “Who?   Me?   Vote for Trump?   No Way!” votes from places you wouldn’t expect could make all the difference.

 

One more thought…

 

While all pundits, including  this one, agree that this will be a very close election, yours truly is starting to get the impression, simply from talking to people and paying attention, that this might not be as close as people think.   There is a chance, albeit a small one, maybe 10% or, at most, 20%, that this could be something of a blowout.   Ms. Harris is unwittingly doing her mightiest to expand the aforementioned Group #3, i.e., those who can tolerate Trump but can’t tolerate Ms. Harris; the more she eschews answering substantive questions in favor of babbling inanely and incoherently about her middle class background among people who are proud of their lawns and her amorphous plans for an “opportunity economy” while disavowing her long-held views that might be all the rage in San Francisco but are anathema to voters elsewhere, the more people question her substance, her ability, her seriousness, and her trustworthiness…and the more tolerant people might be toward even Mr. Trump if she is the alternative.  

 

This will probably be a close race, but there is a small chance that it breaks big for Mr. Trump, or, more properly, away from Kamala Harris.

 

TIM WALZ IS THE PERFECT RUNNING MATE FOR KAMALA HARRIS

 

8/12/24

Yours truly had been waiting to opine on Vice-President Kamala Harris’s selection of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate until the hosannas on the left and the vitriol on the right have calmed down.  Finally realizing that I would be waiting until well after the election if I were to stick to that time frame, I have decided to pass judgment on this crucial selection after the passage of a week or so has made nary a dent on the unceasing derision and hagiography Mr. Walz has drawn from the right and the left.

 

Let’s revisit the criteria I outlined in my 7/1/24 post  and repeated in my 7/10/24 post (SO WHO SHOULD AND/OR MIGHT REPLACE PRESIDENT BIDEN AT THE TOP OF THE TICKET?) for the perfect replacement for Joe Biden at the top of the ticket.  Yours truly stated that the perfect Democratic presidential candidate should be

 

·         Not Joe Biden,

·         Reasonably moderate or can be marketed as such without inducing overwhelming amounts of laughter, as was done with Joe Biden in 2020, and

·         Not burdened by excessive amounts of personal or political baggage.

 

and asked

 

Who meets the above criteria?    The ideal candidate would be somebody whose name elicits the reaction “Who?”   The Democrats need the most generic candidate they can find, somebody on whom its various constituency groups can project their aspirations for a standard-bearer while pummeling the electorate with the message that Mr. Trump wants to eliminate abortion, imperil democracy, and engage in all sorts of other evil designs that he somehow didn’t get around to inflicting on us during his first term. 

 

Now that the Democrats, by rapidly coalescing behind perhaps their weakest potential candidate, came close to blowing the gift of the Magi (if “the Magi” in this case were to be Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi, and Joe Biden) presented to them by President Joe Biden’s, er, voluntary withdrawal from the race, the same criteria that would have afforded the Democrats a better candidate than Ms. Harris are at least as applicable to her choice of a second fiddle.   By these criteria, Tim Walz is perfect.   He is so close to anonymous that yours truly, who follows such things more closely than does the average bear, didn’t have him on my list of potential Joe Biden stand-ins.   Further, Mr. Walz was on few lists of potential running mates for Ms. Harris until his ill-chosen, but nevertheless applicable, description of the Trump-Biden ticket as “weird.”    Indeed, as soon as Mr. Walz was selected, the various Democratic constituency groups began projecting their own aspirations for a vice-president and, perhaps ultimately, president.   To “moderates,” Mr. Walz is the reasonable congressman who wrested a swing rural district from a Republican by portraying himself as separate from the loon-tune factions of the Democratic Party.    To those same loon-tune factions, Mr. Walz is one of them, the “progressive” governor of Minnesota who could finally be himself once freed from the restrictive influences of a district that doesn’t see the world the same way that Minneapolis, Hollywood, and the Upper East side see it. 

Mr. Walz is every man, but not in the way his and Ms. Harris’s spinmeisters would like to convince us he meets that description.  Instead, he is every man in that he is everything that the constituency to which he is presenting himself at any given time would like him to be.

We could talk until we are blue in the face about Mr. Walz’s views on insuring voting rights for recently released felons, giving drivers’ licenses to illegal aliens, hesitancy to deploy the National Guard when Minneapolis was burning during the post-George Floyd riots, and, to those of us who remember what conservatism was in the pre-Trump era, such expansions of government as free college, guaranteed incomes through manipulations of the tax code, and free breakfast and lunch for every school child in Minnesota courtesy of the overburdened taxpayers.   However, pointing out such aspects of Mr. Walz’s approach to government will either appeal to certain quarters of the electorate or, more importantly, and likely, will not be heard by those who would find such actions, and the philosophy that underlies them, unsettling, troubling, or outright appalling.  The latter group, unless they get their news from sources other than the networks or the left-leaning counterparts to Fox News on cable (i.e., CNN and MSNBC), will only hear that Mr. Walz is “America’s Grandfather,” “Coach,” “a paragon of Midwestern values,” and other such pap and pabulum.   Such is the state of the American electorate.   And, to be fair, such is the state of Ms. Harris’s opponent; most people need little reason to vote against Donald Trump.   That somebody as ineffectual and vapid as Ms. Harris is running at least neck and neck with Mr. Trump only proves that point.

Mr. Walz is the ultimate blank slate or empty suit onto which voters can project all their hopes, wishes, and stretched self-reassurances.   He is the putty that the Democratic Party and its spokespeople in the mainstream media can use to form whatever image might comfort the constituencies they are trying to appeal to at any given time.  Mr. Walz’s record doesn’t matter.   All that matters is his relative anonymity and the opportunities it affords.

One more thing…

Yours truly keeps waiting for the Harry Truman analogies for Mr. Walz.   Such analogies would be strained, of course, but that doesn’t matter because 98% of the electorate doesn’t understand President Truman; indeed, about half the electorate probably doesn’t know who Mr. Truman was.   All that matters is that both Mr. Truman and Mr. Walz both hail(ed) from Midwestern states and “Give ‘em hell, Harry” has gone down in history as one of our nation’s most liked and respected presidents, a guy even conservatives can admire.   Look for Mr. Walz to be called by some overly enthusiastic Democratic wag as “another Harry Truman,” or something along those lines.  Maybe somebody has already said something to that effect and yours truly just hasn’t noticed.

THE DEMOCRATS KICK A GIFT HORSE IN THE ARSE

 

7/22/24

 

The media are making President Biden’s decision to forgo running for re-election look like an event that will enter the annals of history on the same page as LBJ’s decision to not run in 1968 or FDR’s opposite decision in 1944, which was, come to think of it, a much closer analogy, but I digress.    Yes, Mr. Biden’s deciding to leave was a big deal, and certainly drew yours truly’s attention for most of yesterday, but didn’t we all see it coming?   As Brook Benton would have put it, it was just a matter of time after the continuing series of “bad nights” Mr. Biden suffered after the debacle of a debate that threw Mr. Biden’s campaign into chaos. 

 

What made yesterday interesting, even historic, time may tell, was the Democrats’ reaction to the gift Mr. Biden had given them.   They were given the chance to run a fresh, new candidate against the eminently beatable Mr. Trump.   As I have written repeatedly and continually (See my 7/10/24 post, my 7/1/24 post, and the much earlier posts linked to the latter.), both former President Trump and Mr. Biden should be, or would have been, easy to beat.   While the GOP, as is its custom, blew it, Mr. Biden gave his perhaps his greatest gift to those who have embraced him for decades:  a near assurance of victory in 2024.   But what did the Democrats do?   They, as of this writing, have coalesced behind the only candidate, outside the Party’s loony left and/or the pool of potential candidates encumbered with copious quantities of personal and/or political baggage, who still could lose this election to Mr. Trump.   This is the political equivalent of putting a winning lottery ticket through a shredder.  It has long been said that there are two parties in this country, the evil party and the stupid party.   It looks as though the stupid party has found a companion in its ineptitude.

 

Some of you will doubtless wonder what I am talking about.   Isn’t Mr. Trump’s victory inevitable after the assassination attempt and the vastly entertaining, reportedly highly successful, and somewhat odd convention in Milwaukee?    (The convention is perhaps grist for a latter mill.)

 

No.

 

Those of us who have been watching politics for a long time realize that the positive afterglow of things like assassination attempts and successful conventions is as ephemeral as the life a post-copulation praying mantis.   Ronald Reagan’s popularity soared in the aftermath of the attempt on his life in the third month of his presidency.   But his ratings plummeted soon afterward, costing the GOP big in 1982.   Fortunately for the Republicans, and the country, Mr. Reagan recovered politically by 1984, but the assassination attempt was a minor, at best, factor in that race.  Both parties routinely get honeymoons after their conventions, but they wilt as quickly as a rose purchased at a truck stop on an Interstate.   The same is happening to Mr. Trump.   His numbers improved after the attempt on his life and the GOP convention, but that could as easily be attributed to Mr. Biden’s incompetence and the growing awareness thereof as to any newfound enthusiasm for Mr. Trump in the eyes of the electorate.   Even now, few polls show Mr. Trump getting over 50% of the vote nationally or even in the contested states in which he had opened a lead over Mr. Biden.   His leads in all but a few of the battleground states, most of which were already at or near the margin of error, are tightening now that Mr. Biden is out of the electoral picture.

 

Mr. Trump looked like a winner when Joe Biden was his opponent.   Now that Mr. Biden is gone, it is going to be much tougher for Mr. Trump to move back into the White House.   Put another way, Mr. Biden could and, in all likelihood would, lose, but Mr. Trump couldn’t win by any means other than default.  The pundits on the right who tell you otherwise know this; that is why they were so eager to keep Mr. Biden in the race.   Against just about any other Democrat (and, as yours truly wrote in my last post, the more generic the candidate the better for the Dems), Mr. Trump is in trouble…except, maybe, if he runs against Vice-President Harris; Mr. Trump has a chance to win by default against her, the same way he would have won against Mr. Biden.

 Why is Ms. Harris a bad choice for the Dems?   Besides being too far to the left for the liking of most voters, she carries with her the burden of Mr. Biden’s policies, especially his border policies, for which she, at least according to the current White House, bears special responsibility.   Ms. Harris does not show signs of being overly intelligent, in tune with what is going on (much like her boss), or interested in the issues of government.   Check out her explanation of the Ukraine situation:

 “Ukraine is a country in Europe. It exists next to another country called Russia. Russia is a bigger country. Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine so basically that’s wrong.”

Ms. Harris was not talking to first graders at the time, but it is often hard to escape the notion that she considers us all first graders.    She gives the impression of being a very silly person whose infatuation with herself makes even life-long politicasters look self-effacing.  

All that having been written, Ms. Harris retains a better chance of beating Mr. Trump than did her boss.   The media machine has been running full blast for at least the last few months, telling us how, after a “rough start,” Ms. Harris has shown signs of being a capable leader and a notable statesman, or, as she would put it, statesperson.   They speak of her newfound eloquence and seriousness.   And this drumbeat will continue until election day.    She retains Mr. Biden’s two key issues:  

 

·         Mr. Trump is an enemy of democracy who will do all sorts of ghastly things he somehow never got around to doing in his first term, and

·         Mr. Trump hates women and hence will ban abortion but the Democrats will enshrine and protect a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy.

 

And a lot of her potential for success turns on Ms. Harris’s selection of a running mate.   The Republicans have already made a poor choice in this arena.   Rather than selecting somebody who has a chance of bringing in groups of voters who could push Mr. Trump over the 50% line, Mr. Trump has chosen as his running mate a man whose appeal is limited to voters who would, under no circumstances whatsoever, consider supporting anybody but Donald Trump.  J.D. Vance is a great selection if the goal is to make a point that has already been made; he is a terrible selection if the goal is to win an election.  

 

Ms. Harris, on the other hand, could go in the opposite direction and reach to the center.   Already, talk has swirled around several of the names mentioned in my July 10 post as possible alternatives to Mr. Biden:  Andy Beshear, Roy Cooper, and Josh Shapiro.   Even the name of Tim Ryan, whom yours truly casually brought up in my last post but quickly dismissed, has come up a few times.    Mr. Ryan would be interesting in that his selection would set up a rematch with J.D. Vance of the 2022 Ohio Senate race.   Mr. Vance won that one, but by a margin far narrower than the margin by which the rest of the Ohio GOP ticket won their offices.  Mr. Ryan remains the longest of shots, but I found it interesting that he has been mentioned.  Another name bandied about is that of Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, the former astronaut who was elected in a swing state and is married to Gabby Giffords, who remains a popular figure in this country for her courage and determination in the wake of the assassination attempt on her.   One could legitimately argue that none of these potential candidates is a moderate, but this is politics; it doesn’t matter if these guys are moderate, it only matters that they can be sold as moderate.   Given the attention span of the typical voter, such a sale should not be difficult.

 

Ms. Harris could also select a woman as her running mate, presenting the American people with the first all-female ticket in history.   A liberal friend of yours truly, a smart guy whom I have known and respected since college and who is originally from the Detroit suburbs, makes a terrific case for Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.   (Reportedly, Ms. Whitmer has taken herself out of the running for vice-president, but, c’mon, she’s a politician.)  Senator Amy Klobuchar would do her Party the double favor of being a woman who could move the ticket to the center.  She also has some ethnic and Midwest appeal.    At any rate, an all-female ticket would go a long way toward overcoming Ms. Harris’s obvious shortcomings.   Not only would it energize the Democratic Party, characterized most saliently by its obsession with identity politics, but would enchant the typical voter who has a hard time looking beyond the surface of things and so would be excited by the prospect of doing something historical.

 

 

Maybe, given the aforementioned Democratic obsession with identity politics paired with the problems of transferring the enormous Biden/Harris campaign fund to anybody but Ms. Harris (These money problems may turn out to be even more formidable than is widely believed at this stage; let’s see what happens in the coming days or weeks.    But I digress.), Ms. Harris was the only choice the Democrats realistically had.   Or perhaps nothing is set in stone, and Ms. Harris may still not wind up on the top of the ticket.  Yours truly doubts the latter, given the decidedly undemocratic nature of the Democratic Party and that the Party chieftains having settled on the candidate they will instruct the cadres to support.    

 

Ms. Harris will be the 2024 Democratic standard-bearer.   And she still can win; after all, she is running against Donald Trump, which, believe it or not, is a lot like playing the 2024 Chicago White Sox.   But this would have been a lot easier for the Democrats had they run, say, J.B. Pritzker…or Josie Dokes and Joe Bagodonuts.

 

SO WHO SHOULD AND/OR MIGHT REPLACE PRESIDENT BIDEN AT THE TOP OF THE TICKET?

 

7/10/24

 

As yours truly watches the developments of the last few days, I am reminded of Sam Spade’s telling the hapless rookie gunsel Wilmer Cook

 

“6, 2, and even, they’re selling you out, sonny”

 

as Kasper Gutman and Joel Cairo weigh their dwindling alternatives in the climactic scene of The Maltese Falcon.   While the outcome of the Democrats’ situation is difficult to predict as long as a guy with a tentative grip on reality holds so many cards, it sure looks like the powers-that-be in the Democratic Party, the same band of popinjays who consistently told us our own eyes were less truthful than their repeated gaslighting, are about to sell out their boy.

 

But who should these estimables select to replace President Biden, whose prospects don’t look any better than those of young Mr. Cook when the real prize is at stake?

 

It shouldn’t be hard to defeat either Donald Trump or Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential race.  (See my nearly instantly seminal post THE DEMOCRATS SHOULD DUMP PRESIDENT BIDEN, BUT…, 7/1/24 and the earlier posts linked to it.)   While “None Of the above” is a perennial favorite in presidential races, this year Mr. Of the Above is making Ronald Reagan’s 1984 pummeling of Walter Mondale and Richard Nixon’s utter destruction of George McGovern in 1972 look like photo finishes.   Among the mounds of evidence that the electorate wants somebody, almost anybody, other than these two national embarrassments is last week’s Wall Street Journal poll.   When asked

 

“If you could change the majority party candidates for president, would you….”

 

47% of respondents favored “Replace both candidates on the ballot.”   That showing more than doubled the 22% who replied “Keep both candidates on the ballot.”   14% wanted to replace only President Biden, 12% wanted to replace only Mr. Trump.   Clearly, the numbers showed enormous, and growing, dissatisfaction with the standard-bearers of both major parties.   However, even these results wouldn’t be a big deal if they didn’t confirm numbers that prevailed for months; “the debate” just slightly intensified the voters’ disgust with both candidates and, of course, with one in particular.

 

So it seemed clear to yours truly as early as last November (See 2024 WILL NOT BE A BIDEN VS. TRUMP RACE, 11/18/23.) that at least one of the major parties would replace its then front runner.   In a variation on the classic Prisoner’s Dilemma, if one of the parties replaced its front-runner while the other kept its guy, the former would win in a landslide.  It seemed all too easy.  However,  the Republicans long ago decided to eschew a potential cake walk to victory in favor of a hard slog along a tortuous, peril-infested path.   The Democrats appeared poised to make the same masochistic choice until, mirabile dictu, their standard-bearer proved so inept that he unwittingly handed his Party the gift that they had previously vociferously refused to accept.   To recall a classic Twilight Zone episode, the Dems got what they needed even if they don’t know it.  (“What You Need,” Christmas evening, 1959)

So assuming the Dems don’t blow this one, they have an opportunity to walk away with this election.   All they have to do, as I outlined in my 7/1/24 post, is nominate somebody who is

·         Not Joe Biden,

·         Reasonably moderate or can be marketed as such without inducing overwhelming amounts of laughter, as was done with Joe Biden in 2020, and

·         Not burdened by excessive amounts of personal or political baggage.

 

Who meets the above criteria?    The ideal candidate would be somebody whose name elicits the reaction “Who?”   The Democrats need the most generic candidate they can find, somebody on whom its various constituency groups can project their aspirations for a standard-bearer while pummeling the electorate with the message that Mr. Trump wants to eliminate abortion, imperil democracy, and engage in all sorts of other evil designs that he somehow didn’t get around to inflicting on us during his first term.   However, it looks like the ticket of Josie Dokes and Joe Bagodonuts will not be available this year, so the Dems must look elsewhere.

 

One of my readers mentioned Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky who has managed to win, and do a reasonably good job, in a deep red state.    Mr. Beshear would indeed be a great selection.   And, while we’re on the subject of Democratic governors of red states, North Carolina governor Roy Cooper would be worth a look.   Less anonymous but equally attractive would be Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, who governs not a red state but, rather, a swing state that will be crucial in what will be a close election and who either is a moderate or has convinced a large number of voters of his moderation.   A not so prominent Democrat who so deeply impressed yours truly in the early stages of the 2020 candidate that I might even consider voting for him in a general election is Tim Ryan, a member of the U.S. House from Ohio.    However, that Mr. Ryan holds some viewpoints that might induce yours truly to remotely consider backing him surely dooms his chances in today’s Democratic Party, which is sad for our constitutional Republic, but that is grist for another mill.

 

Let’s be honest with ourselves, though:   None of the men mentioned in the last paragraph is going to appear on the top of the Democratic ticket.   So let’s get serious.

 

How about the Democratic Joan of Arc, Michelle Obama?   Clearly, the Obama camp would be pleased with this choice for any number of reasons, not the least of which is a nostalgic yearning for what they consider the good old Obama days.   And the guy who was in charge during those supposed halcyon days would have a lot of influence in his wife’s administration, despite the inevitable vociferous protestations to the contrary.   Nearly all the components of the Democratic base love Ms. Obama, and a large chunk of independents, primarily the group too widely defined as “suburban women” are ga-ga for Michelle, or so we are told.    Maybe most importantly, her candidacy could solve the “Kamala problem,” discussed more extensively below. 

 

However, Ms. Obama has repeatedly said she has no interest in the job.   Her only political experience and/or expertise comes from having served as First Lady and, one would hope should she somehow find herself back in the White House, from what she may have learned from her father, who was a Democratic precinct captain on the South Side of Chicago.   Therefore, Ms. Obama probably is a bridge too far, but, by today’s lowered standards for the presidency (Look, again, at the two guys currently at the top of the Republican and Democratic tickets.), having been First Lady may be all it takes.   And, while Ms. Obama might continue to insist that she is not interested in the job, the decision may not be entirely hers, especially in these parlous times for the Democratic Party, and we all know better than to take somebody even remotely connected to politics at her or his word.   So Ms. Obama, while a long shot, shouldn’t be counted out of the running entirely.

 

How about the woman who is considered by many the only practical alternative to Mr. Biden, Vice-President Kamala Harris?    Denying the sitting Vice-President, who, in this case is both Black and a woman, the nomination of a Party that is obsessed with identity politics would be, at the very least, a very bad look, and has the potential to tear the Party asunder.   And the $100mm plus in the Biden/Harris campaign war chest can, if Mr. Biden bows out, only go to Ms. Harris, as far as anybody has been able to figure out, and then only after Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris win the nomination, according to at least a few people who seem to know a thing or two about such matters.    These are two compelling arguments for somehow granting Ms. Harris the top spot on the ticket and only after Mr. Biden is formally nominated, which would be quite a trick even by Democratic Party standards.   Besides the difficulty of doing so, there is also the, according to the polls, the reality that Ms. Harris only marginally improves the Democrats’ chances in a race against Mr. Trump.   Is it worth it to go through all these machinations and rigamarole to pick up a percentage point or two?   Only, it seems, if there is no alternative, and there may not be.

 

On the other hand, dumping Ms. Harris may not tear the party apart.   James Clyburn, the South Carolina Democratic U.S. House Representative who fancies himself, somewhat justifiably, as the kingmaker in Black Democratic politics, a modern day Big Bill Dawson, and the guy who, supposedly, gave Mr. Biden the nomination in 2020, has, in at least one of his observations in the midst of this dumpster fire for the Democrats, called for a “mini-primary” to determine the Party’s nominee should President Biden drop out, insisting that whatever a “mini-primary” is would be “fair to everybody.”   If Mr. Clyburn is even halfway indicating that he will not be “all-in” for Ms. Harris in a post-Biden race for the Democratic nomination, maybe the Dems would be able to eject her from the ticket, or at least the top of the ticket, without tearing the Party apart.   But there remains the money problem, and it’s a big one.

 

If yours truly were a Democrat, and it looked like there was a way to get around the “Kamala problem,” I would be trying to drum up support for the guy who, in my opinion, would be the strongest candidate, none other than Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker.   Mr. Pritzker could eliminate the money problem merely by writing a check; after all, his checkbook is responsible for a large measure of his political success to date.   But his desirability as a Democratic candidate transcends his financial assets.   He has a reasonably good story to tell, a story that he labels responsible compassion or compassionate responsibility, or some such drivel.   According to this story, he has vastly improved the finances of the state of Illinois, indeed, brought the state back from the brink of fiscal collapse, while maintaining his fealty to every Democratic social objective and interest group.   While one could poke plenty of holes in this story, it is objectively true:   Illinois is, after a term and a quarter of Mr. Pritzker, in better fiscal shape than it has been for years.   Seemingly unbeknownst to much of the electorate, or at least to those among the pundits who scream the loudest, the biggest issue in 2024 is the fiscal condition of this nation’s government, which is abysmal and bound to get worse should either of the current major party candidates get elected.   It could, probably will, also get worse should Mr. Pritzker somehow wind up in the White House, but at least he can somewhat legitimately promote himself as a governor who has actually reduced his state’s deficit and can do so while completely legitimately assuring his Party’s base that he has been an ardent champion for their interests.  J.B. Pritzker is what the Democratic Party needs.    Whether he is what the country needs is an entirely different question, but, right now, at least to the politicians, what the country needs is not the priority.

 

Any of the aforementioned, save Mr. Biden and, probably, Ms. Harris, defeats Mr. Trump in 2024.   All the Democrats have to do is accept the gift fate has, belatedly due to their own hubris, given them.

 

LET’S ASSUME FOR A MOMENT THAT PRESIDENT BIDEN ISN’T TELLING THE TRUTH…

 

7/4/24

Far be it for yours truly, or anybody, to accuse a politician of prevaricating or President Biden of not realizing what he is saying, but, assume for a moment that all of Mr. Biden’s protestations that he has no plans to drop out of the presidential race are somehow untrue.  

 Should Mr. Biden really be on his way out of the race, his, or the Party’s, timing would come into question.  If Mr. Biden is indeed getting out of the race, why doesn’t he just do it now?   Depending on how conspiratorial one wants to get, there could be a number of reasons.

One possible reason for the delay involves party nominating rules.  if Mr. Biden leaves the race before being formally nominated, what was supposed to be three-day celebration of the wisdom of choosing such a titan of modern statesmanship as the Democrats’ standard-bearer would turn into something actually meaningful, something we haven’t seen since 1980, or maybe 1968:  an open convention.   However, if Mr. Biden leaves the race after being coronated at the United Center, his replacement would be decided by a series of deals and schemes concocted by Democratic party elders, a return to the smoke-filled rooms of the past, though were we to deal with actual smoke-filled rooms in 2024, the smoke might have an entirely different origin than was the case in, say, 1948, but I digress.

Yours truly is of the admittedly unconventional view that an open convention would be good for the Democrats.   As I said in my last, nearly instantly seminal, post (THE DEMOCRATS SHOULD DUMP PRESIDENT BIDEN, BUT…, 7/1/24), an open convention would be something most potential viewers have never seen.   It would be exciting, maybe even riveting.   Viewership of the conventions, which have become more sleep-inducing than a speech by a Fed chairman, has done a convincing imitation of the Hindenburg over the last forty or so years.   But not a post-Biden withdrawal 2024 convention.  Decisions would be made.   Drama would be everywhere.   Rumors and innuendo would fly.   The people would love it and watch intently; it would be the ultimate shiny object.   The Dems would be getting all the publicity, and, despite what you might be told and despite all the falsehoods you have heard about the ’68 convention’s horrific consequences for the Democratic ticket that year, the old adage about there being no bad publicity would apply to an exciting, brawl of a Democratic convention.   People would soon be asking “Donald who?”  

 

Another advantage of an open convention for the Democrats in 2024 is that it would be easier for the Democrats to dump Kamala Harris from the ticket, or at least to keep her in the second slot on that ticket, under such circumstances.   (A further discussion of Vice-President Harris in this context will be grist for a latter post, so keep reading my posts.)  An open convention provides a degree of plausible deniability, as in “We didn’t drop Kamala; it was the will of the people as transmitted through their duly elected delegates” or some such drivel.

 

Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on one’s point of view, my well-reasoned thoughts on the desirability of an open convention is not, well, conventional wisdom.   The Democratic powers-that-be don’t want to take a chance on a messy, disorderly, or worse, convention, though it’s starting to look like such an outcome is inevitable, which is grist for yet another mill.   So they would probably like to see President Biden be nominated before stepping aside so they then can go about doing their wheeling and dealing to choose the candidate they want.   As yours truly has pointed out before, the Democratic Party, despite its nearly fraudulent name, is the less democratic of the two major parties.   It could be plausibly argued that the proverbial fix was in for the Democrats in 2020, 2016, 2008, 2000, and 1968, and I’ve probably skipped a few election years in that series.   Why should this year be any different?    If yours truly is right in my assessment of the wishes of the elders of the Democratic Party, it would make sense to delay Mr. Biden’s withdrawal until after the Chicago convention.

 

Another reason to delay revealing the truth about Mr. Biden’s candidacy is the desire to make Donald Trump’s selection of a running mate more difficult by forcing him to make that decision without benefit of knowing who his opponent would be.   Mr. Trump would have more latitude in this choice if he knew he would be facing Mr. Biden than he would if he were choosing a more formidable (as in “just about any other”) candidate.

 

A third reason to delay Mr. Biden’s withdrawal from the race, should that be the intention, also involves Mr. Trump’s choice of a running mate.   Delaying the withdrawal until, say, 15 minutes after Mr. Trump announces his running mate, would steal the 72 hours or so of nearly undivided attention such a selection usually brings.   Mr. Trump makes his selection, everyone is excitedly focusing on that choice, 15 minutes later Mr. Biden withdraws, and people forget about Mr. Trump and what’s his, or her, name.

 

Before we start having too much fun with this, recall what I wrote near the end of my last post:

 

“Will the Democrats remove Mr. Biden?   The prospects decrease with every day that last Thursday fades into the proverbial rear view mirror.”

Last Thursday is fading fast, so the chances that Mr. Biden sticks on the ticket are increasing.   However, one, or maybe two, more “bad days” will seal Mr. Biden’s fate, so we have to be thinking of what comes next.

In my next post, I will start naming names, as many of my readers have requested.   But it’s Independence Day, my wonderful wife and I are off to a celebration of our nation’s birth, and I am trying to keep these posts short.   So the real fun will have to wait a few days…unless developments render speculation regarding a replacement moot.

THE DEMOCRATS SHOULD DUMP PRESIDENT BIDEN, BUT…

 

7/1/24

 

Yours truly has been arguing since late 2023 that the 2024 presidential race will not be a Biden/Trump contest; see my uncannily prescient 4/8/24 piece, NOW IT’S THE DEMOCRATS WHO ARE “IN A WHOLE HEAP OF TROUBLE” and the posts linked to it.   In that April piece, which was my most recent post on this blog and that merits a re-reading even before proceeding with this missive, I outlined a situation that seemed obvious to yours truly, and hence to you, my loyal readers, at the time.    It has taken the rest of the world a while to catch up, but, in the wake of President Biden’s debate debacle, while it is not clear that the Democrats will replace Mr. Biden at the top of the ticket, it is glaringly obvious that they should show old Joe the door.   This is clear to anybody not blinded by an unwillingness to see born of intimidation by the enormity of the task of replacing Mr. Biden or by Mr. Biden’s reputation for vengefulness, a reputation that rivals that of Donald Trump.

Why should the Democrats rid themselves of the albatross they have created at the top of their ticket?   The first and most obvious reason is for the good of the country.   If there were ever any doubt that Mr. Biden is incapable of serving in more than a titular manner in the most demanding job on the planet, that doubt was removed by last week’s debate.   This is not a matter of age; it is a matter of mental vigor and competence.   Mr. Biden simply is not “all there” any more and that is glaringly obvious.   The estimables of the Democratic Party and their accomplices in the press had been telling us not to believe our lying eyes, that the signs we were seeing of Mr. Biden’s enfeeblement were “deep fakes,” that the President was, if you will, richly adorned, but we, like the little boy in the fable, could see on Thursday night that the Emperor had no clothes.  Mr. Biden, it is now readily apparent, enters the battle of wits completely unarmed.   The learned commentators on both sides of this country’s yawning ideological gap were quick to caution us that our allies were watching the debate and doubtless walking away unsettled, but it took them awhile to point out that our adversaries were also watching the debate and walking away encouraged.   This is, to put it perhaps tritely, no way to run a country. 

 

The problem with this “good of the country” argument for replacing President Biden is that it naturally leads to the argument that Section 4 of the 25^th Amendment should quickly be invoked, removing President Biden from office as soon as possible before our enemies get the idea that they ought to strike while the proverbial iron is hot.   Replacing the President as his Party’s standard-bearer would be difficult enough; removing him from office would be a herculean task in a Party, and an entire political class, woefully bereft of herculean figures.

 

The good news for the Democrats, and perhaps for the country, is that, leaving aside the patriotic argument, there are clearly political reasons to give Joe Biden the proverbial gold watch and send him into not early enough retirement.    The most salient of these is glaringly obvious, at least to yours truly; to wit, if the Democrats carefully replace Mr. Biden at the top of the ticket, they will win the election, probably take over the House, and vastly improve their chances of retaining the Senate in a year in which the electoral deck is heavily stacked against them in the latter chamber.

 

Why am I so confident in this prediction?   It is abundantly clear, from polls, from conversations that all of us have had with people from all points on the political spectrum, and from other forms of anecdotal evidence that the far and away favorite presidential candidate, even more so than in years past, is “somebody other than these two jokers.”   People are crying out for a candidate who is neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump, and yahoos and carnival barkers like Chase Oliver, Jill Stein, Cornell West, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., will not fill the bill.   Since the GOP has apparently failed to grasp that the broader electorate is not nearly as enamored of their standard-bearer as they are, all the Democrats have to do to win this election is to nominate somebody who is

 

·         Not Joe Biden,

·         Reasonably moderate or can be marketed as such without inducing overwhelming amounts of laughter, as was done with Joe Biden in 2020, and

·         Not burdened by excessive amounts of personal or political baggage.

 

The third of the preceding points rules out the likes of Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, and Gavin Newsom, all names that have entered the conversation.    The Democrats don’t need to replace trouble with trouble.   All they need to do is to find somebody sufficiently milquetoast and non-descript to sneak past an increasingly apathetic electorate who will lap up the “Trump is the end of Democracy who will, among other things, end abortion,” argument that has been their entire campaign up to now and on which they were counting to bring Joe Biden home to victory in November before he made that such a longshot last Thursday night.

 

But what about Kamala Harris?   As I’ve written before, most recently in the aforementioned certainly now seminal 4/8/24 piece, Vice-President Harris is a problem, but a problem that the Democrats are surely smart enough to overcome, as is the perhaps larger, and related, problem of the hundreds of millions of Biden/Harris campaign dollars that, apparently, only Ms. Harris could access should Mr. Biden be persuaded to step aside.

What about the problems that will arise from an open convention?   One suspects that, given how the Democratic Party, despite its name, usually works (Again, see that searingly insightful 4/8 piece.), one suspects that the convention will be open, if at all, only nominally.    But yours truly would argue that a truly open convention would actually help the Democrats by focusing the electorate on something exciting that most people have not seen in their lifetimes.   People love shiny objects.  The campaign had been rendered dull and tarnished by the absence of meaningful primary races in either party and was only awakened from its slumber by, well, Mr. Biden’s slumber last Thursday night.   An open convention would surely rouse the campaign from what will doubtless be the nap it will re-assume by August.

Will the Democrats remove Mr. Biden?   The prospects decrease with every day that last Thursday fades into the proverbial rear view mirror.

Should the Democrats replace Mr. Biden?   Most assuredly, if they want to win the presidency, and perhaps both houses of the Congress.   The GOP has handed the Democrats an opportunity of a lifetime; they would be foolish and/or or timid to the point of pathos, not to take it.