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How do you solve a problem like Joe Biden?
I didn't watch last Thursday's Presidential debate (the earliest-ever, between two people who have already been President, were not yet their parties' nominees, but were guaranteed to be, and both of whom would if they won be the oldest person ever to take the oath of office), so my impressions of it are based mostly on the reactions of political pundits and commentators.
Joe, you had one job to do: look vigorous and on-top-of-things, more coherent than Trump. Well, also a second job: refute a few of Trump's most egregious and predictable lies, and ideally even bait him into blowing his top and gibbering incoherently. You didn't do any of those things. Not for lack of preparation -- you've been in political debates for fifty years, you've watched this particular opponent debate before, you knew what to expect.
Joe Biden has accomplished amazing things, even bipartisan things, in 3-1/2 years in the White House, against a just-barely-Democratic Senate and a Republican, dysfunctional House. He's good at working Capitol Hill and getting things done there; I have no doubt that he'll continue to do that competently for the next seven months, and he might well be able to do it for another four years. He's been moderately successful in foreign policy, and might well be able to continue that for another four years. The question is whether he's still capable of running for President, in particular against Donald Trump.
Trump's go-to "negotiating" tactic over fifty years in business is to assert dominance through bullying, lies, and bluster, so his opponent looks and feels diminished before negotiations even start. Anybody Trump runs against will be the target of an ocean of lies, abuse, and insults, both in real-time debates and in dueling public statements; his opponent needs to not look weak or cowed, even for an instant, and to respond quickly, clearly, and punchily, without getting distracted from pushing his/her own positive agenda.
There are a number of up-and-coming Democrats who could do that. I haven't watched any of them enough to have a strong opinion on who's best at it. The heir apparent, Kamala Harris, has been outspoken on abortion (which appears to be a winning issue for Democrats). And she has advantages over most of the other up-and-coming Democrats in the "baiting Trump into blowing his top and gibbering incoherently" department: her gender and her skin color. Donald Trump cannot resist bullying any woman who steps outside her proper roles of arm-and-bed-candy, and the thought of being contradicted by not only a woman but a woman of color would be intolerable to him. And, of course, him trying to bully her would hurt his standing with both blacks and women.
But Harris has poor poll numbers, about the same as Biden's. Why? I can't think of anything significant she's done wrong... but then, I can't think of anything significant she's done right, other than breaking ties in the Senate, because she hasn't been given a lot of high-profile assignments. I dearly wish she had been, from day one, so the American people would now have a more-informed (positive or negative) opinion of her abilities on a national stage. I dearly wish Joe had said, publicly and repeatedly starting two or three years ago, that he wasn't running for re-election, so all those up-and-coming Democrats could have made their cases, and we wouldn't be where we are without a Plan B. But that's not the timeline we're on.
There is of course a problem with changing nominees this late in the race (although as the pundits point out, four months would be a long campaign in most European nations). For almost sixty years, the American people have been accustomed to choosing their party nominees in primaries, to the extent that they consider anything else to be "anti-democratic". But political parties aren't governmental entities; they're private clubs whose main purpose is to choose a nominee who can win a general election. Primaries aren't a great way to do that, since they get input mostly from highly-engaged voters of your own party; they don't tell you anything about independent, cross-over, or less-engaged voters.
Few of the up-and-coming Democrats have won, or even participated in, a Presidential primary in any state. (Pete Buttigieg won in Iowa, IIRC, and is very good at talking to both opponents and conservative voters, so he's a possibility too.) One of them, however, has been in a winning nationwide election -- not at the top of the ticket, but as VP to a President in his late 70's, which means people had to think she could realistically have to step into the Presidency. They may have been voting for Biden, or more likely against Trump, but Harris apparently didn't drag down Biden's campaign the way Sarah Palin did for John McCain. And stepping aside in favor of his own VP wouldn't be as much of an "admission of defeat" for Biden as stepping aside in favor of "anybody else from my party". Setting aside Harris in favor of yet another white man, like Buttigieg, might cost a substantial number of black and female votes -- not flip them to Trump, but make them less enthusiastic about voting at all.
So that's the way I'm leaning, as of today. Ask me again next week, and everything may have changed.
Joe, you had one job to do: look vigorous and on-top-of-things, more coherent than Trump. Well, also a second job: refute a few of Trump's most egregious and predictable lies, and ideally even bait him into blowing his top and gibbering incoherently. You didn't do any of those things. Not for lack of preparation -- you've been in political debates for fifty years, you've watched this particular opponent debate before, you knew what to expect.
Joe Biden has accomplished amazing things, even bipartisan things, in 3-1/2 years in the White House, against a just-barely-Democratic Senate and a Republican, dysfunctional House. He's good at working Capitol Hill and getting things done there; I have no doubt that he'll continue to do that competently for the next seven months, and he might well be able to do it for another four years. He's been moderately successful in foreign policy, and might well be able to continue that for another four years. The question is whether he's still capable of running for President, in particular against Donald Trump.
Trump's go-to "negotiating" tactic over fifty years in business is to assert dominance through bullying, lies, and bluster, so his opponent looks and feels diminished before negotiations even start. Anybody Trump runs against will be the target of an ocean of lies, abuse, and insults, both in real-time debates and in dueling public statements; his opponent needs to not look weak or cowed, even for an instant, and to respond quickly, clearly, and punchily, without getting distracted from pushing his/her own positive agenda.
There are a number of up-and-coming Democrats who could do that. I haven't watched any of them enough to have a strong opinion on who's best at it. The heir apparent, Kamala Harris, has been outspoken on abortion (which appears to be a winning issue for Democrats). And she has advantages over most of the other up-and-coming Democrats in the "baiting Trump into blowing his top and gibbering incoherently" department: her gender and her skin color. Donald Trump cannot resist bullying any woman who steps outside her proper roles of arm-and-bed-candy, and the thought of being contradicted by not only a woman but a woman of color would be intolerable to him. And, of course, him trying to bully her would hurt his standing with both blacks and women.
But Harris has poor poll numbers, about the same as Biden's. Why? I can't think of anything significant she's done wrong... but then, I can't think of anything significant she's done right, other than breaking ties in the Senate, because she hasn't been given a lot of high-profile assignments. I dearly wish she had been, from day one, so the American people would now have a more-informed (positive or negative) opinion of her abilities on a national stage. I dearly wish Joe had said, publicly and repeatedly starting two or three years ago, that he wasn't running for re-election, so all those up-and-coming Democrats could have made their cases, and we wouldn't be where we are without a Plan B. But that's not the timeline we're on.
There is of course a problem with changing nominees this late in the race (although as the pundits point out, four months would be a long campaign in most European nations). For almost sixty years, the American people have been accustomed to choosing their party nominees in primaries, to the extent that they consider anything else to be "anti-democratic". But political parties aren't governmental entities; they're private clubs whose main purpose is to choose a nominee who can win a general election. Primaries aren't a great way to do that, since they get input mostly from highly-engaged voters of your own party; they don't tell you anything about independent, cross-over, or less-engaged voters.
Few of the up-and-coming Democrats have won, or even participated in, a Presidential primary in any state. (Pete Buttigieg won in Iowa, IIRC, and is very good at talking to both opponents and conservative voters, so he's a possibility too.) One of them, however, has been in a winning nationwide election -- not at the top of the ticket, but as VP to a President in his late 70's, which means people had to think she could realistically have to step into the Presidency. They may have been voting for Biden, or more likely against Trump, but Harris apparently didn't drag down Biden's campaign the way Sarah Palin did for John McCain. And stepping aside in favor of his own VP wouldn't be as much of an "admission of defeat" for Biden as stepping aside in favor of "anybody else from my party". Setting aside Harris in favor of yet another white man, like Buttigieg, might cost a substantial number of black and female votes -- not flip them to Trump, but make them less enthusiastic about voting at all.
So that's the way I'm leaning, as of today. Ask me again next week, and everything may have changed.