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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024

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Re-reading my comment I think it came across as if I'm trying to split hairs a little too much. If Biden were to get swapped out I think people would have a right to be mad, but if the actual winner of the whole election got switched out, people would have a right to be maximum furious. The latter case is the sort of existential democratic crisis that is worth getting existential mad about. The current what to do about Biden crisis is not existential and thus the anger should be some degree lower than maximum.

Perhaps the better question would be, let me set up this scenario, which would be "more fair" or "more democratic"?

  • Biden dropping out at some point during his presidency, and Kamala taking over. No one voted for Kamala in the primaries, well, to be more specific many voted against her. Biden chose her as an individual with zero direct democratic input after winning the primary. Biden is the source of democratic legitimacy here.

  • Biden dropping out now, and a new candidate taking over at the convention. No one would be voting directly for the candidate like a primary, which is a weaker link of democratic authority, but on the other hand the delegates were chosen more or less democratically from the party constituents and are the source of democratic legitimacy here.

Both scenarios clearly have a break in the direct line of "democracy", defined more lazily here as just "people should have voted for the person who ends up in charge", which is why I say the word is unclear and "fair" is better -- and that it's hard to directly compare which is better without using more accurate words. It's also why a some political scientist types get exacerbated when we call our system of government a democracy, because it isn't. The whole "representative" idea comes into play at some point, and we just need to reasonable decide where to make the tradeoff of general direct democracy vs. vesting that authority indirectly in another.

Put another way, who has the better claim to representing Democrats? Biden as an individual, or the delegates in aggregate? So it might seem like I'm splitting hairs, but actually it's a pretty significant question. Honestly, I think given the circumstances, the delegates actually have a stronger case. The first bullet point is undermined by the self-evident behind the scenes work of the party apparatus itself to stifle other would-be competitors, several states decided they wouldn't even bother with primaries before any serious challenge even emerged. In other words, we can't escape the shadow the DNC and related party machinery casts over the whole thing. I think the second bullet point is "more fair".